Description

We had such success with our 2020 Holiday Music Challenge—success both in supporting a good cause close to our hearts and finding a way to commemorate the season during unprecedented® times—that we thought we’d come back for 2022 with another Holiday Challenge!

This year, we are supporting music education, a cause intimately bound up with the very existence of Overthinking It: We all met each other playing in a college marching band. And for a variety of reasons we detailed on our recent podcast, we feel like it’s time to give music students and music ensembles a boost. We are doing a little research to identify a deserving and effective organization, so the specific charity we will support is not determined. Our finalists include the Save the Music Foundation, which you’ve probably heard of, and Hungry for Music, which provides instruments to students. (We’ll update this space when we have it settled!)

Playing music, especially in ensemble, is good for kids and good for society. And these budding musicians will give us all the fodder for Overthinking in decades to come. In a season that actually is its own genre of music, it’s a perfect way for us to give back.

Here’s what you do

Join your smart, funny friends from the Internet and make a contribution to support music education here. Give generously.

Overthinking It will cover credit card processing fees and pool individual contributions into one (hopefully) large donation.

And that’s not all. Overthinking It will match the combined gifts 1:1 (up to $1000) to double the effect of our community’s support.

And here’s what Santa will bring you

For every $25 the Overthinking It community contributes, we will listen to one (1) cheesy Christmas album and write or podcast about it. And then, closer to the holiday, we will invite all of our contributors to a magical Holiday videoconference where we’ll actually make the donation online, roast some chestnuts, and sing some Yuletide carols.

And we’re not going to make it easy on ourselves — it’s not going to be all classics like Bing Crosby and David Bowie singing “The Little Drummer Boy.” We’ll spin the Mannheim Steamroller. We’ll spin the William Shatner. We’ll venture out into the most experimental of noise collectives and come back to tell you the tale. You can read and hear all about it on Overthinking It, and you can support the next generation of musicians who will make holiday music just as good—or, let’s all hope, better!

If together you contribute $250, that’s ten holiday songs. If the community makes it to $500, that’s twenty. God help us if we raise $1,000 (which we’ll double to $2000) — we’re going to have to quit our jobs and do nothing but listen to Holly Dolly Christmas (which we won’t mind; Dolly Parton is a national treasure) until it’s time to ring in 2023.

Thank you for your generosity. And Happy Holidays!