I
LOVE Christmas and have since the days stores didn't decorate for the
holiday until Thanksgiving weekend when Santa appeared magically all
over town and the Salvation Army went out in force and didn't take credit cards and the men stood by
their big, black kettles ringing bells. It was back in the days when
there were Christmas, not holiday, trees and people gleefully yelled
"Merry Christmas", not "Happy Holidays".

I
remember 63 years ago sneaking out to my front yard where we had a
tall, huge fir tree and decorating it with balls and silver strips and
my mother lamenting, & quote; "What will the neighbors think?" and I
didn't care. We lived on Bogart Avenue, between Lydig and Pelham Parkway, the dividing line between the Sharks and the Jets--for those
who don't get the reference it separated the Jews from the Italians and
our block was made up of both.

I
didn't think of it as a religious holiday but as a time for peace
towards all men. Way back then--in the ice age--you didn't hear songs
like "Jingle Bells"  until Thanksgiving weekend, certainly not in
October as a theme song for a cruise line. The celebration of the
Christmas feeling started when you heard Nat King Cole sing, "Chestnuts
roasting on an open fire..." from The Christmas Song or Judy Garland's
sweet, sad voice sang "Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas" and, of
course, wherever you went you heard Der Bingle (Bing Crosby) sing "White
Christmas".

Christmas
wasn't a religious time for a Jewish boy in New York but a time of cold
weather, snow flurries, people running here to there with a smile on
their face and everyone carrying wrapped packages with bows and ribbons.
Of course I had an unfair advantage over my Italian friends because I,
also, got to celebrate Chanakah where children were given geldt (money)
and went to the houses (apartments) of their grandparents who had
immigrated from Russia and England and were surrounded by very large
families and ate and ate and ate, because that is what Jews did on
holidays, though I was to learn so did Greeks, Italians, Filipinos,
Germans, etc.

Again, it wasn't the
religion of the holiday that attracted me to attend Christmas midnight
mass at St. Patrick's cathedral but the pageantry, the voices of the
choir ringing out and the sound of the Latin language, again this was
many years ago, echoing through the cathedral. I must confess--hey, it's
a Catholic church--that years later, in the 60s, Ronnie, Joe and I use
to go for 'camp' reasons--to see Cardinal Spellman all dressed up in his
finery, his red robes looking like a gown and, we thought, in all
probability, hiding his red, ruby slippers.

None
of this is meant, or said, in disrespect of the Christmas holiday and
its true meaning but looking at an aspect of it that was open to all
children who had imagination and loved to see their world almost become
magical for 4 weeks--not like now where by the time the holiday comes
around you are ready to scream if you hear one more Christmas song
because you have been hearing them since October when you started
getting the catalogs and the stores were decorated with wreaths and
holly even before Halloween.

NEXT, PART
2, A MAGICAL TIME/PLACE NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN AND SHOULD BE EXPERIENCED
BY EVERYONE AT LEAST ONCE--A MERRY, MERRY CHRISTMAS!