THE MOMENT when I first became conscious of the feeling of complete happiness relates to Christmas–which is weird, because I’m Jewish. I was 10 years old, and I was walking through Times Square on a cold December day in 1971. (I was an old-fashioned New York City kid, a kind that no longer exists–my parents and I felt entirely comfortable with the notion of a boy walking alone through sketchy neighborhoods.)
It was about 4 in the afternoon, so the light was already dimming into what Saul Bellow called “December brown.” The foot traffic on Broadway was intense–people bustling about, carrying bags with presents in them. And yet it was cheerful and welcoming, even though Times Square in 1971 was a grimy and depressing place. Men with makeshift ovens cooked chestnuts while sidewalk Santas rang their bells for the Salvation Army.
The many huge movie marquees cast their unearthly glow. Between 47th and 48th streets, there was a novelty shop and game room with a gigantic sign reading “FASCINATION.” Over the loudspeaker outside Fascination, which was intended to draw you into its menagerie of Skee-Ball games and pinball machines, came one of the most bizarre songs ever recorded–the one of dogs barking “Jingle Bells.”
I walked east on 49th street and stopped by the Rockefeller Center ice-skating rink, watching people making beautiful patterns under the shadow of that colossal Christmas tree. And then I went another block east and stood in front of the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue, which showed a Christmas scene out of Edith Wharton–a New York family at the turn of the 20th century delighting in the Yuletide.
Though I was a little boy alone in Big Manhattan, and though this holiday wasn’t and isn’t my holiday, I had the feeling Dr. Seuss attributes to the Grinch when he hears the residents of Whoville singing carols even though he has stolen all their Christmas presents–my heart seemed to be growing in my chest with happiness and love.
So I have extraordinarily sentimental feelings about Christmas, perhaps more so than some people who actually celebrate it. After all, I have no memories of the nightmare of finding a disappointing tree at the last minute, the hell of untangling that old string of Christmas lights, squabbles over who gets to put the angel on the top, bad eggnog you have to drink with a smile, and dinner table tension from a family gathering where smoldering bad feelings threaten to ignite into a conflagration at any moment.
What I know about Christmas I learned from popular culture, from “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Meet Me in St. Louis” and “The Holly and the Ivy” and that incredible made-for-TV tearjerker “The Gathering,” wherein bad father and bad husband Ed Asner learns he is about to die and reunites his wayward family for a New England Christmas so picturesque that even thinking about it brings tears to my eyes.
I must confess I’ve never read Charles Dickens’s tale of Scrooge, but I have seen at least 15 filmed versions of it–and they all get me, even the peculiar “Odd Couple” episode where the very Jewish Oscar is Scrooge and the equally Jewish Felix (played by Tony Randall, né Leonard Rosenberg) is the Ghost of Christmas Past. (If I had to pick a favorite “Christmas Carol,” it would have to be the animated one starring Mr. Magoo as Ebenezer.)
I have a special place in my heart reserved for the Santa Claus movies–actually, for most images of Santa, including the Norelco commercial where St. Nick rides an electric shaver down from the North Pole. This, too, I attribute to my ignorance of the real-world experience of being taken as a child to sit on Santa’s lap, which I am sure would have terrified me. But who could have been terrified by genial old Edmund Gwenn, who doesn’t just bring presents but finds a bitter divorcée a husband and an overly sophisticated little Manhattan girl a proper house in the suburbs?
There’s a brand-new Christmas movie out called “Elf,” with the brilliant comedian Will Ferrell as a North Pole native who comes to live in New York. When he explains with intense good cheer how he traveled past the forest of twirly-whirly gumdrops and then through the Lincoln Tunnel, the cynical New Yorkers think he’s crazy. But they also think he’s wonderful. The delightful “Elf” was written by a man named David Berenbaum. I think it’s safe to assume David Berenbaum is at least partly Jewish. Thus he joins a long and honorable tradition of American Jews contributing mightily to the secular trappings of the holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus.
It was a man named Israel, after all, who wrote “White Christmas”–Israel Baline, better known as Irving Berlin. When I stood watching the skaters in the Rockefeller Center rink 32 years ago, Izzy Baline’s Christmas song was the melody to which they magically twirled.
–JOHN PODHORETZ
