— Oy to the world —
(Sequined yarmulkes from Brucha Yarmulka)
Last night's WYG had everything from tiny talliths to surreptitious Christmas tree smuggling. As a goy, I found it very educational and a nice change of pace from all the Santa fanaticism we're bombarded with this time o' year. Big ups to all the performers (Susie Felber, Dan Fishback, Martha Garvey [www.myfatdogbook.com and www.myfatcatbook.com], Joshua M. Bernstein, Annie Karni, Matthew Loren Cohen, and Richard Jeffrey Rothstein). And in our monthly drawing for door prizes three lucky audience members walked away with Hannukah cookies, a stuffed Dreidl toy thingy, and Hannukah finger puppets. And we had something of a milestone too -- unbeknownst to him beforehand, the adorable Matthew Loren Cohen became the 100th act to grace the WYSIWYG Talent Show stage!
A Jewriffic blast was had by all!
Some tasty linkage for y'all:
* The delightful Richard Jeffrey Rothstein has kindly allowed us to post his story here on ye olde WYSIblog! It appears after the jump.
* If you missed the show, you missed Matthew Loren Cohen's slideshow -- but here's a taste!
* Joshua M. Bernstein's squirm-inducing tale of adolescent pseudo-circumcision is online here!
* The full-length version of the story Martha Garvey excerpted last night is online here!
* Susie Felber's rundown of the evening is here, and one of the stories she told has been published on Black Table.
Other mentions:
* Aaron's wrap-up/thoughts on Anne Frankenstein are here.
* Chris's rundown is here, as well as at the NYC Metblogs site.
As always, if I find more linkage, I'll post it here so check back. Thanks to all who performed and attended!
Read on for Richard's story from last night!
OY TANNENBAUM, OY TANNENBAUM
By Richard Jeffrey Rothstein, copyright 2005.
Perhaps the most psychologically damaging aspect of my childhood Jewish Christmas was the simple fact that my sister and I took it seriously while our parents were just keeping up with the Joneses. My sister and I looked forward to this holiday with even more excitement than our Christian neighbors because it was the one time of the year when my father behaved well, at least for a few hours. I grew up in a Jewish Mafia family with alcoholism and child abuse…things that didn’t exist in Jewish families. So Christmas, which also didn’t exist in Jewish families, fit right in. Christmas was just another of our dark family secrets.
I realize that it's difficult from today's perspective to imagine a world, especially in "Jewlicious" York City, in which many Jews felt the need to hide their heritage and "pass" for non-Jews. Many even changed their names for that express purpose. Prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act a Jew could still legally be denied employment or housing. In some parts of the country, the sign outside the hotel or restaurant would read “no coloreds, no Jews, no dogs.” In places like LA and New York, the discrimination was more insidious. Other excuses were found, lies were told, doors were locked at surprising times.
Many Jews simply didn't mention that they were Jewish unless it was absolutely necessary. If you weren’t asked, you didn’t tell, which is obviously a time honored American tradition.
Some went so far as to convert, but it rarely stuck. It was cosmetic. And in the end they usually got bored and couldn’t deal with the upkeep.
My family was most Jewish when it came to a misguided version of pride. We didn’t work or go to school on Jewish holidays, but that was the extent of our worship. In fact, we usually observed Yom Kippur at Freehold Raceway.
But as far as the goyim were concerned, we were observant. After all, we weren't going to give them the satisfaction of knowing that we thought "our" religion was basically as meaningless as their own.
Within this environment, celebrating Christmas was strangely logical. From my parents' point of view, Christmas was an American holiday and we were Americans. Christians gave it their spin, we gave it ours. But mostly Christmas was about getting good stuff and this was something that we clearly did much better than the Goyim. In fact, gift-giving was a Jewish art form as either a clever bribe or an act of absolution. Christians knew nothing of this, as evidenced by the fact that some Christians were even known to pass off handmade crafts as gifts. Appalling.
You couldn’t leave a price tag or sew a prestigious label on a handmade decoupage box. In fact, my mother would often accidentally leave tags on gifts in order to confirm the value of the purchase and to ensure equal if not superior compensation. Cheating was also acceptable. My mother would sew Saks labels into sweaters purchased at heavy discount on the Lower East Side. My grandmothers, of course, were on to this trick and would say something like, "Oh, Fran (my mother), I love the sweater but you bought it at Saks? You paid retail? I saw the same sweater on Orchard Street for only $9.95. Why don't you return it to Saks, give me the money and I'll go and buy three for what you paid."
So, this "Jewish" family celebrated Christmas, our own customized version. No to church, Jesus, and Silent Night. Yes to Christmas stockings, FAO Schwarz and some jazzy Peggy Lee rendition of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.
The women, my mother, grandmothers and sister would dress in red and green festive fabrics with holly patterns, little sprigs of Christmassy something in their hair. The men in white shirts and ties. And we would convene on Christmas morning around the second biggest Christmas tree in New York (after Rock Center) but more tastefully decorated.
And at Christmas dinner, while the gentiles were eating canned hams and aerosol cheese, we would dine on Goose and Caviar.
But, and this is a very big but, all of this was done behind closed doors and pulled drapes. We were never to talk about it. If asked about my new bike, the answer was Hanukkah (which we never celebrated.) I was told to lie but lying was OK when you were talking to gentiles.
Of course, the centerpiece of our Christmas was the same centerpiece of the Christian Christmas, the Tree. Late at night, my father would drive into the depths of New Jersey. It had to be at least three towns away from the city so that he wouldn’t be recognized.
He would then purchase, steal or chop down a tree regaling us with some amusing Christmas tall story about his tree-acquiring adventure while the tree itself, carefully wrapped in a large burlap tarp, remained in the back of our station wagon until 2 or 3 in the morning. Under cover of night, Daddy would rouse me from my bed and we would sneak the tree into the house…whispering, on tip toes, like little Yiddisha elves, sneaking the tree into our home while the evil little gentiles were asleep in their beds with visions of sugar plum fairies dancing in their mediocre heads.
The decorations. Oy, the decorations. Decorations like you would only see on an NBC Christmas special. That was because the decorations actually came from the same place that supplied NBC. They guy who owned the prop house was “in debt” to my father.
These steroid-sized candy canes, ornaments and mechanical elves were designed to register on an 11-inch black & white screen. So you can’t really imagine what they looked like in our living room unless you’re a student of Gulliver’s Travels.
And this was all set up in the dead of night which really fucked with our heads. After all, this was an event that was the most exciting and safe day of the year. And it was a dirty secret….very mixed signals.
My father always behaved wonderfully on Christmas. I suspect this was because his obsession with out-doing gentiles with his second biggest tree in New York included laughing children tearing into mountains of shiny toys with joy and anticipation on their faces. It was a great photo op and was not to be ruined with tears, cursing and dislocated shoulders.
The joy would end abruptly on the evening of Christmas day after our grandparents had left and I was told to "clean up the mess."
My sister would retreat to the safety of her room, head spinning, not knowing which toy or which doll to tackle first. My parents would disappear into their bedroom for a rare episode of sex that was somewhat enjoyable for my father. After all, my mother had just been showered with an avalanche of Dior, Shalimar, Tiffany and whatever else might have fallen off the back of some truck. She was gushing and too emotionally overwhelmed by her booty to resist my father's advances.
And I would began dismembering the tree, slowing feeding it into our fireplace. I always felt that the pine-smelling bonfire gave us away to the neighbors, but you didn’t argue with Dad, especially during a ceasefire.
And then came the epilogue. This would occur two days after Christmas when my father would end his brief whiskey holiday, resume his normal pattern, find evidence that I had missed a few pine needles and then beat the crap out of me and destroy about half of my Christmas presents.
Fortunately, at a very early age, I had learned the trick of leaving stuff that I didn't much care about within easy reach of raging daddy, hiding the good stuff in the back of my closet.
Soon after my 14th birthday, I lost interest in Christmas. I now had three younger sisters and I was old enough to be entirely responsible for assembling and wrapping everything, including my own gifts -- so the holiday was now an assembly line with only one worker, me. I think this is where I developed my disgust for instruction manuals and why I still don't know how to use all the features on my Moto and my pocket PC. I just can't bring myself to read those fucking manuals. I see a manual and I see EZ Bake Ovens and I freeze.
However, Christmas Trees still feels like a safe zone. As an adult, I’m often tempted to buy and decorate one during stressful times, like around April 15.
So? Do I still set up a Jewish Christmas Tree? Of course not. Jews don't do things like that.
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