Let me just say it out loud.
I have always loved Christmas.
Phew!
Is that ever a relief!
Hey! The ceiling didn't come crashing down. No lightning. My mother didn't come back from that great sample sale in the sky screeching, "OYYYYYY VEYYYYYYY!!!!!"
It must be (gasp) okay for a Jew to love Christmas.
As a kid I always felt left out in December. All the other kids were writing their lists for mom and pop Santa, out caroling, decorating the tree. They seemed so damned giddy it made me sick.
I wondered aloud why, why, why didn't we have something to sing in public about, (unless, you count Gershwin show tunes of course).
Sure, Christmas was short compared to the eight days of Chanukah, but the thrill my schoolmates described in waking up on Christmas morning to piles of gifts and the smell of French toast just seemed infinitely better than candle lighting and Kugel.
Night after night, we circled the kitchen dinette set hoping for something grand. Night after night, my supremely eccentric mom doled out bottles of shampoo, tube socks, three-for-a-dollar underwear and other officially lousy gifts. Maybe on the fourth night, after we were practically suicidal, she'd bring out some decent gifts -- a Barbie doll, a Tonka truck -- but it was too little too late for moi. I ate so many potato pancakes on Chanukah week that I began to think the real meaning of this holiday was eight days of constipation.
Green was the color of Christmas, all right, and I was rolling in it: green, green envy. There were all those great Snoopy cartoons. Wow! Cartoons at night! What a treat for a kid, right? Think again. The second any of the Peanuts gang broke into a Christmas song, my mom flipped the channel.
"That's a Christian show!" she'd shriek, as if she'd caught us sitting on the couch devouring a pork roast. "Turn on Channel 13. Maybe there's a Chanukah special."
If there was a Chanukah special on, it consisted of a very dowdy man in a yarmulke, slowly explaining the meaning of the festival of lights in that same monotone voice my science teacher used when he wanted to send an entire class into a coma.
Couldn't somebody make Chanukah as fun as Christmas??!
Clearly there are Jewish families around the world who manage to have a whole lot more fun than my family did. I know for a fact that my brother's kids don't miss Christmas a bit, but then my brother's idea of Chanukah is a week in Disneyland.
How I love the Christmas spirit; weeks and weeks of excitement all building up to one night of champagne and then a morning chock full of goodies.
It's like a one-night stand with Santa!
But not for me (never liked big fat hairy men, anyway, or … hmm … any kind for that matter).
So here I am, ready once again to be bombarded with Christmas cards and Christmas gifts from my friends.
I'll try to keep with the Chanukah spirit and send my friends their gifts in time for the first night of Chanukah, but they'll only sit them under the *&^%# tree and open them on December 25th, anyway.
Yeahhhhh. I'll be lucky if I have a bar of scented soap to unwrap on Chanukah. Most of my gifts will come, you guessed it, just in time for Christmas.
But this year's gonna be different.
This year I'm gonna stir up some green of my own.
I feel my spirit is renewed. I will, yes, yes, yes, I will make Chanukah as fun as Christmas.
I will go to the Second Avenue Deli and buy latkes by the dozen (you don't think I'm gonna spend Chanukah peeling %$#@& potatoes do you?).
I will spin the dreidel.
I will dole out gefilte fish and guilt.
I will kvetch.
I will kvel!
I will play Klesmer music until my neighbors either call the cops or convert.
I AM YENTL; HEAR ME ROAR!!!!
Sigh.
Oh hell! I always hated eggnog, anyway. What do they put in that stuff?? It tastes like sugared down Hollandaise sauce. YEEEECH!
