A Good, Old-Fashioned, Jewish Christmas

FULL DISCLOSURE: AS I WROTE THIS, I WAS LISTENING TO BOB DYLAN SING “HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS” OFF HIS NEW CHRISTMAS ALBUM: CHRISTMAS IN THE HEART (WHICH I ASSURE YOU IS A REAL THING).

As you can probably tell, this is going to be different. For starters, I feel as though I must preface this post by saying that I’m not a religious person—and it’s my parents fault. I never went to church, both my Mom and my Dad found “Church” to be creepy and hypocritical. They were right, and I don’t blame them for keeping both myself and my sister away from Organized Religion.

Both my parents believe in the basic tenant of “God will be cool as long as you live a good life.” Christians will say (and have told me when I’ve repeated this) that unfortunately that isn’t good enough. In fact, I had one spit-frothing-Christian once shout at me that “your good works are dirt in the eyes of the Lord.”

Well shit. Here I was NOT killing this spit-frothing-asshole because I didn’t want to piss-off God…and he was telling me that it didn’t matter. Jesus said “I am the way” to which I reply “That’s your opinion.” I wasn’t raised with that as a core belief, and many people I know who WERE turned out to be assholes (some of them spit-frothing). Ever the antagonist, I feel that if that really is how God is, I want no part of Him.

But I think that’s a lot of bullshit. After all, if you’re not raised with religion…God hates you? You go straight to Hell if you’re born in China (where Christianity is a no-no)? That’s a billion people going to Hell because of Geography? I think not.

And like I said, if God really would damn say, the Indians of pre-Columbus America to fiery damnation simply because they were born in an era where GOOD CHRISTIANS were unable to reach them...well then I don’t want to hang with God.

So growing up my life was pretty religion-free, but my Dad works for Hallmark so we were VERY big on holidays. Holidays are good. They bring people together, they stimulate the economy. They…uh…give us time off from work and/or school?

Christmas was one of those holidays where I was excited about the PRESENTS but leery of the “trappings” of Christmas (the “reason for the season” if you will). I don’t need to tell you that every TRUE Christian knows that Christmas is a holiday co-opted from the Pagans. And that Jesus was NOT born on the 25th of December. Basically, Christmas is just an excuse for a party. Now, I’m always cool with parties….except when they depress the hell out of me.

And that’s what Christmas has degenerated into. To be brief: Christmas depresses me because I don’t have enough money to buy the people I love the things I feel they deserve. It depresses me because I always spend too much money. It depresses me because the gifts I get are crappy, thus making me feel ungrateful. It depresses me because it makes me yearn for childhood, when Christmas was wonderful and magical.

When it was ALCOHOL-free Egg Nogg and fuzzy slipper. Back when Santa was real, and I didn’t have to think about SATAN (and how 90% of this country thinks I’m going to hell because of a parenting choice).

So this year I’m “Skipping Christmas” (to reference a bad John Grisham novel, oh wait—they’re all bad…never mind).

I’m going to have a GOOD, OLD-FASHIONED Jewish Christmas. Now, before I tell you what that is and what that means (it’s fucking wonderful kids) I feel that I need to address my parents:

“Mom, Dad. I love you both and I know you’re disappointed that I’m not coming home this year. I’m sure a part of you (just a part, a small part because you’re both really cool) thinks that this has something to do with me marrying a Jewish girl. And you’re right; it DOES have something to do with it. But you see, just because you’re BORN into one thing doesn’t mean that you weren’t really MEANT for something else. I love you, and I’m coming home for Cousin Jimmy’s (I’m sorry “James”) holiday party this weekend…but I’m not coming home for Christmas. I’m having a GOOD, OLD-FASHIONED Jewish Christmas here in St. Louis.”

Okay. I feel like they might still blame my wife on some level, but there’s nothing I can do about that. When I say a “Jewish Christmas” I bet a lot of you are thinking “Ebenezer Scrooge.” Well nothing could be further from the truth! You see, much like me, the Jews of the World don’t really dig on Christmas either. And on this day, 90% of the US “disappears” into lame family parties and long, snore-ous sermons/services.

The heavens part, and so do the crowds!

“But Jason,” I hear you say, “nothing is open on Christmas Day!”

Ah, there you are incorrect my friend. There are two things that are open SPECIFICALLY for Jewish Christmas: the movies and Chinese restaurants. Apparently, as my wife has explained to me, Jews get up early…go to the movies (more than one show! *squeal*) then gorge themselves on crab-rangoon.

Sign me the fuck-up. Sorry Jesus, but you lost me at “movies” and “crab-rangoon.” So that’s what I’m doing. I’m going OUT on CHRISTMAS with my wife to see a crap load of movies and eat chow mein.

“Joy to the World.”

A Lesson In Hate: The California Pizza Kitchen Incident

Growing up white, and in the suburbs, one tends to miss out on a few things. Like racism and discrimination. In school you learn about Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, but these topics are presented in a “Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away…” type narrative that misleads the young and impressionable into thinking that ethnic and religious groups now blend seamlessly together.

I think there were four of five black kids in my High School class. I don’t know the exact figures, but it was abysmally low. So much for desegregation. Once I started working and went off to college I met all sorts of people (read: “Not Whitey”). People with diverse backgrounds that all told me the same thing—shit in this country hasn’t changed very much since Dr. King first had his famous “dream.”

As a young person (who looks a bit like a drug mule), I have faced some…shall we say “extra scrutiny” in shopping malls and at the airport. But nothing like some of the stories I’ve been told by friends not lucky enough to be born “white.” Recently I was chatting with a guy who told me about how he caught a prospective employer throwing away his application TWO SECONDS AFTER HE TURNED IT IN.

What happened was, he turned it to a secretary then left—on his way to his car he thought of something he wanted to add to application. So he goes inside and asks for his application back. The lady says she can’t find it, which is strange because he just gave it to her. So he goes and sits down in the lobby, and while he nervously staring at his shoes—he sees his application TORN IN HALF sitting atop the secretary’s trashcan.

If this happened to me I’d think “Gee, they must really not like the looks of me,” it’s different when you’re black. Whereas I would have gotten really pissed, this guy just shrugged and took it in stride—he said he was “used to it.” To me that’s the worst part of the story. Whereas I would have been filled with rage, this poor guy just shrugged and took it in stride—because it was normal for him.

I think that blatant sort of discrimination/racism is tough to fight—but what’s tougher is the more passive forms of hate. There is application-ripping, bed-sheet-wearing hate…but there is also a more nefarious, subtle bit of hate. Hate/hate-speech is ingrained in American life and can sometimes slip past even the most sensitive liberal-hippies.

In High School the “cool” way to put a person, idea, or thing down was to call it “gay.” It got to the point where even I was saying it. Without even thinking about it I would proclaim my hatred for Geometry by saying, “Geometry is gay.”

No. Geometry is fucking difficult, boring, and utterly useless to me…but it’s not going around sleeping with like-sexed schools of math. Does that even make any sense? No, no it does not. You can’t even try to use reason on the sentence “Geometry is gay.” It defies reason.

So I’ve lived a charmed life being the same color as a loaf of Wonder Bread. But as I grew older and began mixing with other types of people I witnessed a few instances of discrimination.

I speak of course about the infamous “California Pizza Kitchen Incident.”

My wife Leah is white like me, but unlike me she’s Jewish. Before meeting her, all I knew about Jews I gleaned from Jerry Seinfeld and SHINDLER’S LIST. The only Jewish person I’d ever really met was this mousy-girl that sat adjacent to me in a community college composition class. Leah being Jewish didn’t and does not bother me. But it has opened up my eyes to a few things…

“The California Pizza Kitchen Incident”

One time, Leah and I went to California Pizza Kitchen—which by the way is a fucking awful pizza place. I don’t want to totally derail myself here, but I feel like I need to let the world know that though his story occurred at California Pizza Kitchen, I think it’s terrible and I don’t normally eat there.

Interlude: California Pizza Kitchen Sucks

My reasoning is this: Pizza is an eastern thing. Chicago. New York. Those places are “back East,” where Pizza SHOULD come from. The only way that California is “back East” is if you somehow circumnavigate the globe, so that by going East you end up going West…

Look, the Earth is round. I wish I could explain all that better…but I fucking flunked geometry (twice) so I have only a rudimentary understanding of globes and such. Anyway, California isn’t known for FANTASTIC piazza.

California Pizza Kitchen also sucks because it’s one of those restaurants that try to take a “low-brow” or “everyman” food item and make it “high-brow” and a “pinkies-out” kind of dinning experience. Look, when I eat pizza, I want either an animatronic bear (singing about how good the pizza is) OR I want paper napkins. CPK has neither of these things—therefore it sucks.

End of Interlude

So Leah drags me to this place, and everything is going as good as it can go (in a pizza place with no singing bear or paper napkins), when we finish our meal and we get the check. Like most young people, Leah pays with a debit card. Our waiter, a young twenty-something who looks like he stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue (not that I look at those), has been polite and done a decent enough job waiting on us.

After he runs Leah’s debit card he gives her that little leather booklet-thing they give you in fancy (“pinkies-out”) restaurants that holds the credit slip. She opens it and asks for a pen (so she can finish paying).

Our waiter reaches into his kangaroo apron/pouch and pulls out a pen and hands it to her says (of the pen):

“Sure, here you go…just don’t Jew it.”

Then he turns and walks away.

Leah looks at me and I look at Leah. A few seconds tick by, then we both kinda ask each other at the same time—“Did he just say what I think he just said?”

As a gentile, I didn’t even fucking understand what that was supposed to me. My immediate reaction wasn’t so much “I want to punch this guy’s lights out,” so much as ask him what he hell he meant by that. Was he referring to her tipping?

Leah didn’t think so; she thought he meant stealing his pen.

Not used to these hurtful/embarrassing situations, I looked to Leah for what to do. She decided to leave a nasty note on the receipt. What else could we do? It wasn’t like we were going to walk up to they guy and ask what he meant by his anti-Semitic slur. I mean, I couldn’t ask a question like that. Not without tearing out his throat with my bare hands.

I’m just not built that way.

So we left a note (and I’m sure Leah tipped him, though it was a really small tip).

End of "The California Pizza Kitchen Incident"

The weird part was, a few days (weeks?) later this douche-bag contacted Leah on Facebook and tried to apologize (which tells me he probably didn’t mean anything by it). He tried to pass his comments off as a misunderstanding, and that he just didn’t want her to steal his pen.

This guy went to Fontbonne University (a school out here in St. Louis) and his Facebook page made me wish I had punched him. Of course he had SHINDLER’S LIST down as one of his favorite movies…which Leah thinks he added to appear like less of a d-bag.

What’s messed up is, this guy might have just been honestly misheard by Leah and myself. Maybe he didn’t say “Jew” maybe he said something else. Maybe this guy truly does LOVE JEWS and was just using “jew” in a pejorative fashion in the same way that I used to use “gay” in High School.

The sad part is, we just don’t know.

We all have these negative attitudes and prejudices inside us—and I think one of the lasting legacy’s of hate is that people see it sometimes when it might not actually be there.