Christmas Colleges and University Christmases
Dec 24th, 2008 by GCR Editor
What’s the best Christmas college? I have no idea what that might mean, but for holiday amusement, what does Google have to say?
There isn’t a single obvious way to search for the answer—we could try the words Christmas college or college Christmas, or the phrases “Christmas college” or “college Christmas”—and whichever one we try there will be a lot of irrelevant results that will have to be filtered out. But you’re not taking the idea of ranking Christmas colleges seriously, are you? This is just for fun.
If we try the phrase “college Christmas” on google.com, with a clean browser as always, and from a U.S. location, we get these interesting holiday items at the top of the list (after it has been appropriately passed through my complex edu-neuro filter):
- St. Olaf College Christmas Festival
- Concordia College Christmas Concert
- Regis College Christmas Concert
Google really does pretty well here. The Christmas festival at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, is indeed nationally known and annually broadcast, and the St. Olaf College Choir has produced many recordings. The Concordia College concert, also in Minnesota, and the Regis College concert, in Massachusetts, look like fine events too. If there’s such as thing as “the best college Christmas,” these would certainly be near the top of anyone’s list.
What if we search for the best “Christmas college” instead. Here’s what we get:
- The Christmas College Society of Cambridge University
- A notice that Trocaire College in Buffalo, New York, is closed on Christmas
- The “Blues Christmas” fundraising program from the University of Utah
Well, #2 and #3 are rather odd. But the top-ranking item is quite nice: an organization that provides care, feeding, and holiday cheer to Cambridge University students—many of them international students—staying on campus in their college residences over the holidays. That certainly belongs at the top of any Christmas college list as far as I’m concerned!