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.”

Squashing the Rebellion

I feel old at night. During the day, my body lets me do whatever I want, and usually without complaint. Kneeling down, bending over, picking things up: my body has learned it must do these things in the course of each day to keep the two of us from, say, starving. Every once in a while my knees will snap at me for trying to pick up a piece of paper, or my shoulder will pop with cruel laughter as I sit at my desk stretching. These little bumps in the road I can ignore.

At night, though, everything changes.

My legs give me no trouble, really. It’s my eyes and back that try hardest to ruin me, along with any number of other parts that lie in wait, ready for the revolt that we are all certain is one day coming. When it does, my body’s components will simply abandon their respective duties, and I will end up in a heap on a floor or a sidewalk, maybe lying draped like a blanket over my desk or slumped raggedly behind the wheel of my car.

After about eight-thirty or nine, my back starts to slack off. Usually I find myself slouched over like a hunchback at that time, and I have to constantly remind my erector spinae muscles not to give up just yet. It’s like giving a motivational speech to a crowd of sick, homeless women whose children have just been taken outside and shot. It doesn’t really work.

Depending on where I’m at and how well the talks are going between my back and me, a person might look and see an emboldened twenty-something man, chest forward and back arrow-straight; or, somewhere else — and more often than not — another person might think of me as a marionette, standing tall and slumping forward, back and forth again and again as if in the hands of a toddler.

To compound matters, my eyes start in with their issues not long after my back does.

“We’ve been working all day,” they seem to say. “We just need a break. These working conditions are atrocious. We might as well be working in Somalia, for God’s sake.”

I try to ignore them, and mostly things work out fine; they go back to doing their job, the insurrection stalled for another day, and all I have to worry about is not looking like I’m having back spasms.

Things like these usually happen at the movies, especially when it’s a late one or, when one is enticing enough, a midnight show.

When I go to late movies, I should know by now that I need a break sometime before seven o’clock. If I try to force myself through, my body starts to fail me. It’ll warn me with a yawn like a look that says, “Don’t push your luck, mister.” At the theater, to ward off sleep, I step up to the concessions counter and arm myself with an array of sugars and caffeine. To the worker, some sixteen-year-old kid who’s forced to wear puffy white shirts and caps stolen straight from a 1940s bellboy service, my order must appear intended for a small cluster of friends, but in actuality it’s all for me.

I force whoever is seeing the movie with me to carry a box of chocolate-covered mints, a soda cup the size of a football, and a licorice bag, while I cart around my gummy worms and a box of last-resort super sour candies in one hand. The other one, holding up a plastic cup of frozen coffee topped with whipped cream, shouts, “Screw you, man! This cup is freezing.”

As we leave the counter, I look at my compatriot and say, as if reassuring them, “Don’t worry. We can share.” This is a lie.

In the time between our arrival and the dimming of the lights, I occupy myself with conversation. There’s no topic I won’t talk about, from the state of poverty in the United States to vaginal discharge. It’s all fair game. And if I don’t know anything factual to share I’ll make something up. Anything to keep me awake. With the candy boxes and bags built up around me like a fortress, I feel safe against the world, but then I realize, often just as the lights reduce to orange embers in the ceiling and along the walls, that the threat comes not from without, but from within.

I feel a yawn begin to rise.

It is then that I start to gorge.

The people around me must hate me, then, as the previews are reduced to simple moving pictures against the din of ripping cardboard and tearing, crumpling plastic. The slurp of an empty frozen coffee drowns out an actress’s tagline for the newest romantic comedy, and women throughout the theater ponder just how valuable their purses would be as weapons to hurl in my direction. All I can think about, though, is that my body will give up — will, in fact, turn on me and start to sabotage everything it and I have gone through in order to buy our ticket, that little ten-dollar scrap of paper now crumpled in my pocket.

The coffee gone, I turn to the soda, and as the previews give way to the feature, I catch glimpses of men, now joining in on the beams of hatred pointed solely at me, silently pummeling fists into open palms. They aren't throwing anything, which I count as a plus, but as I weigh that against the idea that maybe they're saving their anger for outside the theater, my bladder speaks up, in a threatening voice pulled straight from a horror film: “Remember me?”

Throughout the years, I have worn holes in my shoes from the incessant kicking of seats before me, crossing and uncrossing my legs. Finally, at a lull in the movie, I stand up and make my way to the bathroom. As I stand there relieving myself, the thought does not escape me that if it really wanted to, my body could leave me right here, like a dead vagrant at the base of a urine-stained toilet. My eyes and back and the rest of them don’t say anything, and that’s the most unsettling part. I hurry to finish, and my fingers zip up so quickly that I feel sharp metal teeth where I least care to feel such things. I threaten my hands with scalding hot water, but in the end I back down, knowing that it’ll only cause strife between me and my skin, who claims to be a pacifist but really just doesn't give two shits in a woods about what goes on with the rest of us.

Back in the theater, I make my way to my seat. From that moment, I can last approximately twenty minutes before things start up again; my eyes will grow heavy, my back will slouch. Against my will I’ll sink back into the chair cushions. And when I wake up ten or fifteen minutes later I realize that they have won. The rebellion has overthrown me for now. So, I settle into my defeat, trying not to listen to the cheers and jubilation that come from each of my body’s parts, no longer paying attention to the movie but instead shifting in my little mound of empty boxes and used cups, an ousted king in a crumbling cardboard castle. Yawning, I begin a dream of redemption and reclamation, hearing my voice, as if from an increasing distance, whispering, Next time. Next time. Next time.