jewge

I don’t hate Christmas, I just hate the lead up to it. Growing up Jewish, albeit by the skin of my teeth, Christmastime was a constant reminder of what I was not. The other kids got excited about Santa Claus and talked about their Christmas trees, while annually quizzing us, the few Jewish kids, about our bizarre customs – we lit the menorah, said prayers and opened one present a night, but we might as well have been sacrificing goats and shouting at the moon. We were the others.

Every store, every commercial, every "Merry Christmas!" was a reminder that I was not part of the frosted, sparkling, eggnog-soaked majority, and this was long before there was any solace in being different. With so much of the season geared towards consumerism, I just felt like I was getting screwed out of the whole game. There was nothing Hannukah about G.I. Joe and Luke Skywalker.

When my mother explained to me that there was no such thing as Santa Claus (probably a little too early), I promptly told my even younger friend, Jonathan, who was understandably crushed. I guess I though bringing someone else down would make me feel better. It didn’t.

For my family, Christmas was a quiet, still day, marked by a couple of presents from our Christian relatives. Once I could drive, my friend Mark and I always wound up cruising around looking for open stores or restaurants and noting the empty roads.

One Christmas we went with our Jewish youth group to St. Elizabeth’s (a huge mental institution in Washington, DC) to hand out Christmas presents to the patients. Our group leader, Moishe, made a disturbingly convincing Santa and we did our best to spread the Christmas spirit to a terrified and confused group of schizophrenics and manic depressives. The gifts had been carefully chosen by the staff: slippers for the barefoot man, a tiny dress for the grown woman with a doll.

Right before we left, the group took a bunch of pictures for some sort of Jewish community newsletter. One patient, a young woman that talked in a little girl’s voice, insisted on being in all the pictures and kept excitedly asking "Santa" questions, her eyes lit up like a kid that still believed. When a member of the staff kindly suggested that she let us take one picture alone, she flipped out. "Fuck you, Santa! You ain’t shit!" she screamed at Moishe, now talking like a very angry adult. I couldn’t blame her – the pressure of the season seems to bring out the worst in everyone.

Over the years my Christmas envy has waned – now I just hate the oppressiveness of the decoration and ambiance. Take, for example, the monstrous, automated twin winter wonderland displays (pictured above) at either end of the lobby of the building I work in. Perhaps someone complained about last year’s elfapalooza, because this year’s stationary floats, while equally gaudy, are decidedly non-denominational (making them even more ridiculous). Just miniature ice skating, twirling and frolicking little people – a mini, Siberian Cirque du Soleil, complete with flashing lights and carousels. The poor security guards were blurry-eyed by day two.

And then there’s Christmas music. Every year around this time it starts simmering in the background – peculiar at first, then familiar, then frightening. Kind of like regaining consciousness after passing out on a hardwood floor. Anyone who has ever worked in a retail establishment (I spent three years in Urban Outfitters and still have flashbacks) knows what I’m talking about. You don’t know what hell is until you’re nursing a hangover staring at a line of pissed-off holiday shoppers while Bruce Springsteen tells everyone again and again (as if we could ever forget) that SAAAAAANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN at a volume that could wake the dead.

The themed Christmas albums are the worst: A Reggae Christmas, Christmas Blues, The Slightly out of Tune Children’s Choir Christmas. I’m convinced that no one actually enjoys Christmas music, they just like the memories it conjures up. Like if part of the Christmas Season involved little elves that ran up to people in the streets and pinched them – people would get excited when they saw the first elf of the season and start walking with a little extra hop in their step, instead of noticing that it hurts to be pinched.

Every year Julia gets upset with me for not "getting excited" about Christmas. And while I freely admit that, having married into a large Catholic family, there are many things I enjoy about Christmas (the incredible food, the annual poker game, receiving a year’s supply of razor blades and breath mints in a huge red sock), it is virtually impossible for me to get into the Christmas spirit. I’m just too late in the game. It’d be like living your whole life in Boston and then moving to New York in your late twenties and becoming a Yankees fan.

This has been a hot topic as of late, since Julia has openly expressed her fear that I won’t get the future child excited enough for Christmas (as if there isn’t enough hype already). I’m no scrooge (jewge?) – we can do the whole tree thing, and I’ll promise to keep my cynicism to myself, but please, god, no music.