A friend was going to the Rockefeller tree lighting and asked me to come along. Why not, I figure. I’m in New York, this is a New York thing, sure, lets check it out.
Once I got there I remembered: David, you are a Jew, you hate Christmas. I was pretty bahumbugged out the rest of the performance.
Goyim people amaze me. They sat and watched Sheryl Crow, Rod Stewart, the Goo Goo Dolls and other over-the-hill acts for over two hours to see a freak’n tree light up. I managed to have fun watching the news tickers whiz by around Radio City Music Hall.
I’ve never really had the Christmas spirit I guess. So sue me. It’s a routine time of year for me. I have to sit and watch bad Christmas TV programing which follows a regular pattern: Is there going to be a Christmas this year Johnny? Yes, person Y will save Christmas in a hilarious and heart-warming manner. After a month of hearing Merry Christmas’s’s’s’s I order Chinese food on the big day and watch a movie. I wonder what I’ll rent this year?
The way I see it, I have better things to do than get caught up in the Christmas spirit. Am I glad I went, yes. Being the only Jew in a crowd of several thousand crazy Goys is an eye-opening experience. Would I do it again, probably not.
Since I am trying to keep a writer’s perspective on this blog, I suppose there was more to this experience than just feeling like the Grinch. It’s important to check these things out and try to understand the spirit that people get caught up in. It’s not as strong or illogical Michael Jackson mania, but it goes along those lines (in my opinion). Christmas grabs people at an emotional level which inexplicably makes them act a certain way — luckily it tends to manifest in nice behavior — which they normally would not behave in. To me this warrents an investigation. Yes, a serious inquiry into the origins of the Christmas spirit in this country and the illogical consequences it yields, deserves a serious query. But not by me, I can’t stand to hear another Christmas song for a few years.