As the holiday season approaches and U.Va. students all over Grounds prepare to drop their books and face-plant on the nearest couch, Christmas stop-motion, claymation-like productions are gearing up to traumatize watchers of all ages — CAPS therapy sessions beware. From “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to the classic “Nestor The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey,” these television specials popped up in the 1960s and onward, retelling Christmas stories and creating new ones using the unique medium of clay. With their casts of weird characters and specific pre-climate change nostalgia that can only be described as “Christmas if it actually snowed in December,” these shows have made their mark on the holiday season — but like all things on Earth, they don’t matter unless they can be applied to U.Va. students. Obviously.
That Elf Everyone Hates/Hermey the Misfit Elf
Let’s be real. Nobody likes that damn elf or anything he’s attempted to do for Santa’s Workshop, let alone the elf community at large. He hates making toys — the one thing he is on this earth to do — and has to make it everyone else’s problem. Another group of people who make themselves everyone else’s problem? Northern Virginia residents. Just like Hermey the Elf lives in a different reality, insisting he has to be a dentist instead of just doing his job in the workshop, NOVA kids live in a region completely inconsistent with the rest of the state — in both its wildly bland aesthetics and tax bracket. Hermey’s dreams of dentistry fall flat in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” much like a NOVA students’ Commerce admissions essay. Hermey, I’m sorry you’re stuck in the North Pole — you would’ve loved rushing a U.Va. business fraternity.
Yukon Cornelius
I swear to god — I have seen a man who looks exactly like this red-headed bearded hiker on Humpback Rock getting way too into some obscure native plant species. Either there or on the bus back to Hereford Residential College — no hate on the bus system. Yukon Cornelius looks the part of your typical member of the Outdoors Club at U.Va., which is pretty wild considering he’s actually a prospector in the “Rudolph” film — but just like any other student at U.Va., the man has to get a bag somehow. Even if it requires accepting that Chevron engineering internship and taking a quick hiatus from the mountains. As long as he can bring his Nalgene water bottle!
The Misfit Toys
Aww it’s the island of misfit toys who have nowhere to go! They feel so left out by the rest of the North Pole! They have no friends and no purpose! They look like English majors to me. They might get hated on, by me and by every older relative who’s made it their life mission to knock a college student’s confidence, but trust me — they’re necessary for everyone’s character development. You just need someone who will read way too far into something and come up with just the kind of drawn-out run-on conclusion unfathomable by a STEM major who can hardly stand to fill out a Post-it note. English students might be living in constant fear of irrelevance, but unlike the misfit toys, English majors do have a place to crash — Bryan Hall. Eat your heart out, second writing requirement.
Heat Miser and Snow Miser
For Heat Miser and Snow Miser we have to get a little more conceptual and be a little looser with the guidelines, exactly like anything having to do with construction dates at U.Va. Specifically Alderman Library. Nothing reads as more attention seeking than moving your opening time from fall generally to November to January — by no stretch of the imagination is January considered fall. I personally interpret it as Alderman’s own debilitating stage fright issue and phobia that it will never surpass the Clark Stacks, even after the three-year renovations. This flip-flop hot-and-cold attitude is a little too similar to two claymation characters who represent two weather extremes fighting for preeminence and not much else but who still manage to take up an entire song in “The Year Without a Santa Claus.” The title fits too — I’d alter it to three years without peace in the Clemons stacks.
Whether you saw yourself in any of these Hoo-ified claymation characters or not, I have one request — leave the stresses of Grounds behind during this year’s break. The squirrels can deal with them while you’re gone.
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