Bring Out Your Dead

My wife and I like to complain that we "didn't get the memo."

Like the time we went vacationing in this supposed winter wonderland in the completely wrong season. Or like when we go to stores that, by all rights and signage, ought to be opened and are, in fact, quite closed, with no further or apparent explanation. Or like when everybody seems to be doing one thing, and we seem to be accidentally doing another. This happens to us a lot. I'd say that not only are we not getting the memos, but maybe somebody is deliberately hiding said memos from us, but then you might start to think I'm paranoid or something crazy like that.

By the way, stop Googling me and putting pigeon shit in my Brita.

Anyway, as I was walking one of my dogs early yesterday evening, I noticed something quite odd happening on my charming little block-long street, and I was confused for a bit, and then it hit me.

The Christians must have gotten a memo.

The memo, I believe, must have said something like:

"MEMORANDUM:

To All Christians,

Today, Saturday, January the 8th, is the day ordained for lawful curbside disposal of any and all trees relating/pertaining to the Christian holiday known as 'Christmas' or, colloquially, as 'X-mas.'

You are hereby and forthwith directed to commence today, at your earliest convenience, the act of Swiffering/vacuuming pine needles from your living room floor and depositing all Christmas trees outside of your house.

If you are widowed, elderly, obese, or otherwise infirmed, please utilize the traditionally Jewish tactic known as 'guilt' to convince your offspring and/or more physically fit relatives/friends to assist you in the endeavor of removing your Christmas tree from your home.

Depending upon the size and girth of your tree, said act should be accomplished with relative ease utilizing two able-bodied Christian persons and one bedsheet, one able-bodied Christian person on either end of the bed sheet, with the tree in the middle, like a dead body. The body of Christ, if you will.

If your tree is not removed to the curb by sundown (4:52pm, EST) you will be obliged to tithe an extra 10% for each of the ensuing Sundays, with a 2% increase per week, until such time as your tree is removed from your home. There will be inspections.

For those Christians in more rural portions of the country who may be in possession of a wood-chipper, please feel free to eviscerate the holy bejesus out your Christmas tree to your heart's content on this date.

Sincerely,
The Christians United Memorandum (it's an accident that this spells "C.U.M.") Corp, LLC."

Seriously, though. I actually watched as my neighbor and her daughter carried out their Christmas tree inside a blanket. They looked like two WWI-era ambulance corpsmen, carrying a wounded comrade across the frozen fields of France. Our street was littered with tree carcasses yesterday.

It was kind of sad, in a way. The finality of it. There they were, lying on the ground like freshly slain victims, left there to rot. No longer the center of attention in the living room. No longer adorned with sentimentality and glow. No more star or angel. Reduced to what they were before: just ordinary fucking trees, now more of a burden than anything-- a lift-with-your-knees problem. A disposal and waste management headache.

Goodbye, Christmas. I trust you'll be back next year. For the Christians, of course-- but for us curious, semitic onlookers, too.

I was at least relieved that, finally, a memo went out that we weren't supposed to get.

Oh, Christmas Tree

Yesterday morning I found myself sitting on a high stool, coffee resting in front of me on a smooth, deep-brown counter, staring out of the plate-glass window of a Starbucks, like so many before me. I marveled at how boring staring out of the window at a Starbucks in suburban Philadelphia is compared to staring out of the window at a Starbucks in Soho, as I had once done before, a while ago. At 8:46am, my eyes followed a bright yellow Volkswagen New Beetle as it doodled its way past Starbucks. I smiled and pulled out my cellphone.

"You just passed me."

"I know," she said, rattled and nonplussed all at the same time, "because the goddamn fu-shuh-fu-shuh map said it was on the left and, of course, it was on the right! But you're watching out for me-- how fun! I'll be right there."

I don't have many friends, and the ones I do have are unlikely at best. Julie is in her mid-sixties, and I met her through-- where else?-- doing Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. Her long "brown" hair and youthful face have allowed her to continue to believably play the ingenue ("Depends on how far away the audience is from me," she says with a crinkly grin) for more years than practical. She's directed me in three of the seven operettas I've done, and I'm proud to call her my friend. She came to meet me ostensibly to discuss administrative matters of our society, but, as usual, we cheerfully digressed. Because that's what friends do. It's much easier to talk business with business associates.

Somehow, we got to talking about Christmas. "I hate Christmas, and I hate myself for hating Christmas," she said, staring listlessly out of window at the traffic and the sky. A lot of people hate Christmas, in that she's no different from lots of other people. They hate the rabid consumerism, the "Simply Havin' a Wonderful Christmastime" stupid song, they hate the tinsel and the marketing and the Hallmark and the expectations. Julie hates Christmas because it's right around the time she lost her son.

"We lost him on January 4th. I had convinced my husband to go away, to Las Vegas, of all places, for Christmas and, while we were gone, the kids decided to decorate the house for us-- they pulled everything out-- every wreath, every light, and they put everything where it had gone for years, everything in its place. And, when we came home from our trip, it was so beautiful. And then, when our son died, I thought to myself, 'Oh, my God-- if only there was a picture of him setting up the house...' And, wouldn't you know it, after the funeral, an old, dear friend from Cape Cod gave me a picture of him decorating the tree, you can barely see his head poking out from around the side."

I looked at her, studied every little line around her eyes, and I thought about how many tears had traced those lines in the fourteen years since her son was killed in an automobile wreck, as the pine needles had started to litter her carpet.

"That tree is still on my back porch. Every year, I drag my ass to unpack the decorations and I decorate the house-- I do it for my husband-- but we haven't had a Christmas tree in the living room for fourteen years. I just can't do it. And a friend of mine a couple years ago was at the house and he said, 'Do you still have that fucking tree on your porch?' And I'll get rid of it-- some day. Some day I'll do it, but I'm just not ready yet."

She glanced up at me and she grasped onto my arm.

"God, I'm so sorry for unloading on you, honey. But, I just-- I don't know. I wish that I could make an, I don't know, an appointment, to cry and scream and say, 'AAAAH! FUCK YOU, CHRISTMAS! I HATE YOU!' and just get it all out of my system, you know, wear black for a day, and then just get on with it. But I wear black too much anyway. I'm just so Goddamn mad that, you know, it wasn't bad enough that my son got taken away from me, but Christmas did, too. And then I think about everyone else who's ever lost a son-- a car accident, disease, war... I don't know."

I don't know, either, I thought. I was going to say it, but it would have sounded stupid, and I probably would have started to cry if I had opened my mouth.

"And I think about the people you work with, too," Julie said, "people who want to kill themselves, and I just can't imagine that. Even after what happened, I can't understand it-- not wanting to be here anymore. I mean-- the sky is still blue. Warm water in the shower feels so good. There's music and people to love-- I just don't understand it."

There is music and people to love. The sky is still blue. The water in the shower is still warm. And my sixty-something-year-old friend sits with me at the Starbucks counter, is late in her New Beetle, and her backpack is a moose. And one day, I know, there will be a tree again. And the star will shine, and it will make her cry, and it will be very, very beautiful.

Merry Christmas.

Innocent Until Proven Jewish

As we attempted to dig my wife's Honda Fit out from 18 inches of snow on Sunday, our neighbor, Thomas, was just arriving, sailing his Chevy Trailblazer into his pristinely-trailblazered parking spot. He exited the car with a couple of white plastic bags and made some genial, unhelpful comments about shoveling and snow and winter in general.

"How was your holiday?" he asked.

And I answered, "Fine. Thanks. It was quiet, which is just how we like it." As opposed, I guess, to a particularly loud Hanukkah, though I don't exactly know what that would sound like-- a load of tanked-up, kinky-haired frat boys shouting the dreidel song in a slurry, discordant cacophany while pounding Manichewitz wine out of red plastic cups and peeing in our bushes.

I turned away from Thomas and drove my shovel deep into the snow, sending, I hoped, the unmistakable signal that I was finished talking to him, and done being P.J.

Presumed Jewish.

Though I don't want to be perceived as a whiny Jew, being a minority isn't easy. As I looked at the Asian guy waddling down our alley, offering to share his bag of Halite with anybody who needed it, I thought, would Thomas approach him and say, "Hey, did you enjoy yourself some Chop Suey last night?" Why is it that some people think it's okay to make assumptions about a person's religious affiliation?

And, by that same token-- why does it bother me so much?

I know I've blogged about this before-- I'm too lazy to sift through the archives to be absolutely sure, though (if you want to, go right ahead) and I don't really know what it is about the fact that people who don't know me just assume that I'm Jewish. It's not as if I'm particularly ashamed of being Jewish. I'm much more ashamed of the fact that I have toenail fungus and that, when I was in middle school I used to get hard looking at the models in the Wintersilks catalogue.

I guess it's just the presumptuous, ballsy attitude one takes when making assumptions about someone else that pisses me off. I would never wish someone a Happy Ripened Ovary Day unless I was sure they were ardent tomato worshippers.

Even if you're right-- don't assume. Because it's embarrassing if you're wrong, and it's offensive if you're right. Or wrong.

A few days ago, there was a thread on http://www.20sb.net/ that asked the question, "Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays--Which Do You Say?" Well, I don't see really how you can in good faith go up to somebody you really don't know and wish them a "Merry Christmas" or a "Happy Hanukkah" for that matter, if you don't know that's what they celebrate-- that this is their faith. How are you acting in any sort of benevolent holiday spirit by making a judgment about someone else's beliefs? Maybe if they're wearing a green and red goddamn snowflake sweater with Blitzen's ass on the back and a red flickering light where his hemmhroids are, and they've got a crucifix around their neck the size of a windshield wiper and Jesus Air sneakers, fine, maybe you're safe wishing that person a "Merry Christmas." But, you know what-- maybe they just have eccentric taste in clothing and personal adornment items.

This holiday season-- play it safe. Wear a condom. And sunscreen. And shoulder pads. And don't make assumptions.