The holidays are one of the most stressful times of the year. For some reason, everyone is bent out of shape about whether people wish them "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas". Why does it matter?

First of all, I will never understand why people are frustrated by being wished happy holidays instead of a Merry Christmas. Some Christians have a really hard time accepting the fact that other religions and holidays exist, and that the person who was doing the wishing was only covering all the bases. Basically, "Happy Holidays" is politically correct; therefore, there is nothing wrong with the term.

There is also nothing wrong with wishing being wished "Merry Christmas". Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, the wisher is only hoping you have a happy December 25. This year it is especially acceptable to say "Merry Christmas" because Hanukkah has been over since December 5.

Let's not forget about Kwanzaa. It's taught in grade schools, but how many people do you actually know celebrate the holiday? Probably close to none. Only 1.25 percent of America's African-American population celebrates Kwanzaa. Is it worth wishing someone "Happy Holidays" after Hanukkah just because Kwanzaa still hasn't begun? Nope.

In conclusion, either phrase is alright to use, and neither should be considered offensive. Most of the time, people just need something to complain about.

Never in my life have I been creative. I was the kid who didn't have an imagination; most of the games I played were based off of something I'd seen before. In fourth grade, my favorite subject was writing because prompts were always provided. Now, I'd rather write an essay on a topic I'm not interested in than a narrative on an interest of mine. I can take an idea and run with it, but I can't come up with anything on my own. I even find poetry difficult, as structured as it can be. Poets who write within boundaries, e.g. Shakespeare, are incredible because they can express their ideas in a certain amount of syllables with a certain rhyme scheme.

One thing I'm extremely baffled by is the amount of notes (times a post has been featured on a blog) screenshots of unoriginal, unstructured poetry get on Tumblr.

For example:


And:
 

For one: neither of these poems are original. I'm sure just about everyone has thought about whether or not suicide is ethical and how much they care/don't care about old partners. Also, neither poems have any structure. It's as if the author literally wrote down their thoughts exactly as they were being processed in his/her mind. It doesn't seem like any actual work went into these poems, so should they even be referred to as "works"? Are unoriginal lack-of-work works still art? Should they be referred to as art just because they are widely-popular? I guess it's in the "eye of the beholder".

My eye says these poems suck.

Because I'm feeling lazy, I've decided to get a little off-topic with my blog. Considering we've had little-to-no guidance and zero feedback on our other posts, I believe I deserve to pick a non-English-related topic this time. Here are my thoughts on body image:

Ninety-one percent of women surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting at some point in their life. Along with the culture shock of leaving home, many college freshmen are afraid of the "freshman fifteen", a weight gain caused by unhealthy eating and lifestyle choices in their first year. What's so terrifying about a little extra weight? More than half of that ninety-one percent would not be pushed over the line of healthy American vs. obese American if she gained fifteen pounds. A little extra weight is threatening because our world is never too slow to remind us that we could always weigh a little bit less.

The pressure to be thin is placed on children from a very young age. Obesity is an issue in America, and it needs to be prevented and rectified; however, at some point, the pressure becomes too much for impressionable children to handle. Preteens fast for days or weeks, making dieting a social trend. Most people who have been through the seventh grade have experienced the influence friends can have on their body image and how they feel about themselves. You can only remind your friends that they're "not fat" about twenty times before you begin to think that you are just as "fat" as they are.

But here's my message: look past it.

Stop caring what everyone else thinks. The social trend should be to love your body, no matter what size, shape, color, or gender you are. No one is ever going to be exactly the same, and that's okay. Accepting that you are the way you are will allow you to gain a confidence and a mindset that you have never had before (take this from personal experience). Stop telling yourself that you love celery and running if you don't love celery and running. Be proud of the fact that you love ice cream, and that's why your don't fit into your friends' clothes. You are not your friends.

It's undeniable: when you step into a Disney theme park, your entire attitude changes. After months of planning and a day of traveling, your hard work has paid off, and you've finally arrived.  Maybe you're so excited to be there because it brings back memories of your early Disney visits, and you can't wait to reminisce. If it's your first visit, you've probably heard adventure stories, and you can't wait to experience it all yourself! Either way, you've escaped the stress of real life, and you're in the "Happiest Place on Earth"; how could you be anything other than happy?

Disney World is at the front of my mind lately with two upcoming trips in 2014: one with my family and family friends in April, and another in May with my senior class. I've been to the Disney theme parks in Orlando, Florida four times so far, and it seems at times that Disney is all I can think about. Why do I (and other frequent Disney visitors) love it so much? What makes the Walt Disney Parks so special? Much credit is due to the cast members and characters who make every person's visit worth while. They play an important part when it comes to making their guests feel the "Magic of Disney", mainly because of the way they speak and act.

"Cast members", in Disney terms, are employees of The Walt Disney Company who work as customer associates in the parks. They're the ones who give tours, work registers, answer questions, help guests onto rides, and park strollers. Cast members speak kindly and are helpful; they're constant reminders that you're not in an ordinary theme park. Cast members who work in the ride department have specific uniforms to match the ride they help operate, and they're always in character. For example, cast members who work in the "Twilight Zone Tower of Terror" ride in Disney's Hollywood Studios wear bellboy outfits and act like they really work in a hotel, saying things like, "Your rooms are ready!" when you're preparing to board the elevator ride. Cast members who work in the "Haunted Mansion" ride in Magic Kingdom have stoic expressions and talk monotonously, as if they are zombies or ghosts. Cast members placed in Epcot's World Showcase are usually from and talk with accents corresponding to the "country" they work in. Being rung up by a cast member who speaks with a French accent in a gift shop in "France" adds to the illusion that you are actually in the city of Paris.

The Disney characters you see in the parks also add to the illusion. The characters' dialect and what they say (or how they act) make them seem like they've jumped right out of your VHS tapes. When you tell Ariel from The Little Mermaid where you're from, she'll ask, "Is that a far swim?" Peter Pan can't comprehend why you've grown so old, Cinderella thinks you've traveled by pumpkin, and most of the princesses would like to know if you've found your prince yet. What the characters say makes them seem more genuine and real (A+ to the Disney employees who know their stuff!).

To sums things up, it's clear that Disney knows how to attract visitors. With a whopping 126 million guests in the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts last year, they are the largest amusement park corporation in the world in order of annual attendance. Visitors love Disney parks because cast members make them feel at home, and because their favorite characters are exactly how they'd imagine them to be and more. Without the cast members' polite language or the characters' spot-on phrases and word choices, Disney parks wouldn't be as charming and "magical" as they are today.

For the past few weeks, I've been carrying around a hard copy of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. When someone says, "Oh, you're reading Gone Girl?", I usually respond with an explanation: my mom was reading it for her book club, I found out my favorite director is working on the movie, so I decided to pick it up. You can judge a person on what they read in their spare time, and I don't want everyone to think that all I read is contemporary fiction novels. But how do we choose what we read? I believe that popularity, exposure, and recommendation are three of the most influential aspects.

It seems whenever a saga's first movie is in production, its series of novels becomes increasingly popular. If you've ever read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, or 50 Shades of Grey by E. L. James, I guarantee you didn't discover it yourself. You probably heard about the movie(s), and decided to dive into the books. When everyone else around you is indulging themselves in the newest fad, you feel the need to indulge too to stay on top of what's popular.

Your interests may be centered around what you enjoyed growing up, just as you may have similar morals in adulthood that you were raised with through your childhood. If you grew up watching a lot of Scooby-Doo, maybe you read some mystery novels. If you're Irish, maybe you like reading about immigration in the 1800s. Et cetera, et cetera.

When you have a lot in common with a person, you take their opinion very seriously. If your best friend recommends you a novel, you'll probably look into it, even if it doesn't interest you. In Parks and Recreation, a comedy television series, Leslie Knope, a perky, mid-level bureaucrat in the parks department of fictional Pawnee, Indiana, writes a book on everything there is to know about her town. In order for her book to be a best-seller in Pawnee, Joan Callamezzo, Pawnee's "literary-tastemaker"  and host of Pawnee Today, has to recommend it by putting it in her book club. This is parallel to how today's media influences our choices of reading material in the real world. If a novel is recommended on a talk show, or is deemed a New York Times Bestseller, most people are more inclined to read it.

Next time you pick up your favorite novel to read for the fourth time, consider why you like it so much. You might learn something about yourself.

I work at one of the busiest Wawa markets that exist, frequently as a cashier, repeating the same polite greetings with the same half-smile hundreds of times in a single shift. By the seventh hour, I feel like a robot: "Hi, how are you today?" And, "Would you like a bag?" Don't forget, "Have a great day!" For the past few weeks, Wawa has been collecting donations for the JDRF, and it's my job to ask if customers would like to donate. I get a huge variety of responses, but the most popular decline is, "No, but thank you so much!" I've been turning this response over in my head for awhile now. I want to say to the customer, "Why are you thanking me? I'm asking to take hard-earned money right out of your pocket." It seems like having manners is more important than making sense sometimes.

From a young age, we're taught by our elders how to act politely in a social environment. Simple manners such as saying "please" and "thank you" are reflexes by the time we enter early education. We might not have known why we said thank you when given something, but we knew the consequences if we didn't. Were we ever taught what "thank you" really means? We hear and speak those words so often, they aren't even words anymore, such as when you say "vegetable" thirty times out loud and it becomes just a sound without a meaning.

After doing some research, I learned that the phrase "thank you" was originally "I thank you." According to dictionary.com, the word "thank" means to express gratitude or appreciation. I suppose we understand the phrase at some point, but using "thank you" is still a social standard and a reflex. Why are you considered rude if you give a smile instead of uttering words that are just sounds without meaning?

The use of social standards such as saying "please" and "thank you" show that you're a normal, polite American who functions in society. What do you think about the person in line at Wawa ahead of you who doesn't offer a greeting, simply mutters the brand of cigarettes he wants, and leaves without another word? He's shady. If you don't use your manners, the public questions what type of person you are. Social standards make our world run smoothly. Although they are seemingly outdated and weird responses, they're an essential part of our culture.

Recently, I've noticed many people discussing their favorite police procedural TV series, such as Criminal Minds and CSI. This type of conversation is repetitive and constant, and there is always someone who mentions how these shows have a negative impact on society by giving bad ideas to viewers. Most episodes of police procedural shows are based on actual crimes, and they aren't the original ideas of the writers anyway. There have been 108 billion people to live on our planet, and I'm left with one question: how many of our ideas are actually original?

Chuck Palahniuk is most famous for his novel Fight Club (1996), the story of an insomniac who meets an enigmatic man named Tyler Durden. Together, Durden and the unnamed protagonist create an underground fighting club for the use of psychotherapy. In the afterword of Fight Club, written nearly a decade after the novel's first release, Palahniuk explains the impact the novel and film ("Fight Club", 1999) have on his every day life. He admits that his friends' life experiences influenced the book, such as the real stories of  "Mike splicing porno into family movies" (215) and "Geoff pissing in soup as a banquet waiter" (215). A friend of Palahniuk's once worried, like Criminal Minds viewers, that such stories would evoke the reader to copycat. Palanhiuk insisted that he and his friends were "just blue-collar nobodies living in Oregon with public school educations" (215), and that there was nothing they came up with that "a million people weren't already doing" (215). Palanhiuk proves this to be true when he writes about a man pulling him aside, explaining how he was a waiter at a five-star restaurant, and loved how Palanhiuk depicted waiters spoiling food. Before Fight Club was even published, he and other servers had spoiled the food of celebrities.

Yesterday, a candidate running for Sterling's student council president mentioned that he had a unique new idea to make pep-rallies more exciting: surprising the school with one at the end of the day. I responded by recalling a teacher who made the same recommendation to me at the end of last year. The candidate thought that just because it was the first time he thought of this plan, it was completely modern and original, but it wasn't.

You may think you have a fresh, never-before-seen idea for a project, novel, or show, but in reality, it's already been done before. Every sentence you've ever spoken has been spoken before, every action you've ever taken has been taken before, and every idea you've ever come up with has been thought of by someone else. Murderers will always dump bodies in lakes, pep-rally ideas will always be recycled, and like Palanhiuk states in his afterword, "Waiters will always pee in the soup" (217).