Student Stories: Barton Christmas
Barton Christmas
Class of 2021
Major: Secondary Education & History
For senior Secondary Education and History major Barton Christmas, his time as a Curb Scholar for Vanderbilt’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy has allowed him to become the author of both his own story and of his soon-to-be debut novel. Originally from only a couple hours north of Nashville, proximity to campus was not what initially drew the Paducah, Kentucky resident to Vanderbilt. Growing up in Paducah, nicknamed “Quilt City, USA,” Christmas was fortunate to be introduced to the arts and creativity at a young age through the performing and visual arts community in his hometown. In fact, Christmas grew up following the footsteps of his father in the balloon animal business. As Christmas began applying to universities, it was the work of the Curb Center that initially caught his eye and led him to apply to the Curb Scholars program as a balloon artist.
“I didn’t know if they needed a balloon artist…” Christmas excitedly explained. “…But another thing that I really like about Curb, in addition to the stipend, was that I knew I would have people rooting for me. I would have support to do my creative, weird stuff.”
Each year, the Curb Scholars program accepts a cohort of undergraduates with the goal of developing “creative leaders through resources and mentoring for projects which apply creative and entrepreneurial methodologies to problems, challenges, and opportunities on campus and beyond.” Christmas’s acceptance into the Curb Scholars program fueled his creativity and provided him with the support, inspiration, and community he needed to thrive at Vanderbilt.
Through this program, Christmas has been able to explore a variety of his interests, such as stand-up comedy, street performance, arts advocacy, and his latest endeavor, writing a novel. Christmas even credits the Curb Scholars program and former assistant director of the Curb Center and senior lecturer of English, Elizabeth Meadows, with saving his college career.
“During my sophomore year, I was in this place where I was ready to drop out and be a stand-up comedian, whether that was a good idea or not. An invite to have coffee with Elizabeth Meadows was probably the main reason I didn’t drop out of college,” Christmas explains. “I think professors know and want what’s good for us, and they understand that a Vanderbilt degree is going to be helpful for a lot of the work we want to do.”
Little did he know that his decision to stay in college would one day lead to him venturing to the U.S. capital during his junior year with Professor Meadows and the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities and having the opportunity to meet with congressional representatives and advocate for support of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). An act as simple as having coffee with a faculty member showed Christmas that he could still pursue his creative interests while receiving a world-class education and making a difference for others.
As for his novel, Barton explains that he had previously begun writing a political satire during his sophomore year with goals of eventually staging it as a play. However, he never felt fully satisfied with the final product and realized that a book could ultimately provide the best platform for his story. With the support of the Curb Center, Christmas has spent the past year writing and editing his science fiction novel Boanérges as part of his Curb legacy project with a goal of publishing in the near future. Describing it as “Percy Jackson meets The Mandalorian,” Christmas explains that the book has been a labor of love in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and hopes it will provide his readers with an opportunity to escape our current reality.
“I was thinking about what the pieces of art were that came out of the Spanish Flu and The Great Depression. What really helped people?” he states. “And I was re-reading The Hobbit, and I don’t know if people think about this, but The Hobbit was a Depression-era book.”
As Christmas looks to graduation and his remaining days at Vanderbilt, he has one last creative piece left to complete as part of his legacy project: Project Closure. This project is a way for Christmas and his peers to have a chance to say goodbye to the university and community that has meant so much to them.
“…Seniors from my class and from the class of 2020 are able to submit short, one-minute commencement videos of themselves saying what college has meant to them, what they’re gonna miss about Vandy. You can submit senior quotes, senior wills, things of that nature,” he explains. “And it’s a place for students to have an open seat to say, ‘This is how I feel, right?’ This is a place to figure out how to say goodbye.”
When asked if he has any last words of wisdom for other students who might be considering their own creative projects, Christmas encourages students to look at the world around them for inspiration.
“If you are looking for creative projects, look at the news. Look at the headline in the news that shocks you the most…,” he says. “Take the medium you’re best at, and put those things together.”