December (Christmas Time)

OK, so next-day isn't so bad...much better than I was doing =/

So, what happened in December, you ask?  Let's see...There was Christmas all around here in Scranton and the JVs jumped into everything from light displays up at Nay Aug Park to the Christmas events my company organized for the season.  There was also a brief journey into New York City with some Villanova friends to attend the annual Villanova Alumni Christmas party, and my kids had their first major performances of the Michael Jackson Review.  All in all, a fairly busy month, so let's see if I can't fill you in on all that happened:

The "Holiday House" just down the road from us on Moosic
Street, they decorate with extravagance for every major holiday.

It was Christmas time in Scranton!  Which, as a small town that was founded predominantly by Catholic immigrants many years ago, meant a whole plethora of different annual traditions from the lighting of the Times Tribune Tower (affectionately known to the Scranton house as "The Christmas Pole"), to the annual light show up at Nay Aug Park.  We had some fun getting into the season by visiting some of these festive spots around town:

The Guadalupe House Christmas Tree!
Decorated by yours truly, I might add.

We also had a few Christmas-related events at UNC throughout December.  We kicked off the month with the inaugural installment of a program called "Pop Up Studios" which features local artists who organize fun, quirky events around town, usually during Scranton's First Friday activities.  For the month of December, they paired up with the kids at our program to develop The X-Mas Games, a mash-up collaboration of traditional Christmas activities with themes of The Hunger Games, a popular teens novel series by Suzanne Collins (which, if you haven't read, I highly recommend).  The event featured activities such as marshmallow catapults with the objective of scoring points in cups of hot coco, ornament, cookie, and stocking decoration stations, as well as our very own student DJ providing Christmas music for the event.  It was a blast and I think the kids really enjoyed the opportunity to share their work with the Scranton community, and we had a surprisingly high turn out for a cold Friday in December!  

The other major Christmas events at work included a Christmas toy drive, at which any of the families who have children in our programs throughout the year are invited to come to a massive toy giveaway and select presents to wrap for their kids that Christmas.  It was an absolutely enormous undertaking, just to give you an idea of how many toys were given away, here's just one section of the "toy store" we had set up:

But I'd be lying if I said that any of these events were my favorite part of work during the month of December, no, my favorite event was definitely the theater kid's performances of the Michael Jackson Review.  I had the chance to work with these kids for about three months leading up to the performances, and as the musical director of a primarily music-driven show, I was probably more nervous about how it would go than the kids at times!  But the performances were fantastic, a really great way to give the kids a sense of great accomplishment as we packed the house of our small auditorium for both night's performances.  Here are a couple of the highlight moments from the show:

Malakhi in his "Billie Jean" leather jacket

The girls performing "I want you back" and "The Love you Save"

The whole cast at the end of "You are not Alone"

The little ones and their performance of ABC

The youngest member of the cast performed two big numbers in the show, this was "Rockin' Robin"

Three of our all-star girls performing "Ben"

Our biggest mash-up was a song combining parts of "Billie Jean",
"Dirty Diana",  "The way you make me feel" and "Beat it"

The finale with the kids singing "Heal the World" ...and our
very literal representation of this concept.

 Finally, I had the chance to leave the Scranton area for a short time in December with a visit to NYC for Father Peter's annual Christmas party at the New York Public Library.  It was so good to see some friends from school and the event was certainly a different atmosphere than our simplistic lifestyle back in Scranton.  All in all, though, it was a great little break from work and a reminder of some of the many different ways in which people celebrate the holiday season.  Of course, no trip to a 'Nova event is complete without getting to see some of my great friends, Madeline Reynolds and Sarah Loveland, who both attended the event as well.

So that about wraps up December in a quick few paragraphs.  It was definitely a great way to end 2012, and I'm almost caught up to present 2013-status!!!! Thanks for reading, I'll be back with one more post to update the New Year shortly!

God Bless,
Tom