I always had mixed feelings about the most wonderful time of the year. As a kid I was always grateful for two weeks without school. I was also glad that December would always have that Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon on TV at night. But even though I had a childhood I can’t rightly complain too much about it was always a bummer to discover every Christmas morning that Santa Claus skipped the Jewish kid’s house. After being inundated with Santa Claus propaganda for a month it was always disappointing to not even get a lump of coal.
But fortunately I grew up in Miami.
Not because of all the other Jews. At my particular elementary school I was only one of two in my grade. It’s because everyone down here whatever their religion is alienated from a traditional Christmas. We’ve all heard Bing Crosby croon a thousand times about “dreaming for a white Christmas Just like the ones I used to know where the treetops glisten and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow.”
Nobody down here could relate to that. You could make a joke that some drug dealing nose candy aficionados got to play in the snow, but that wouldn’t be appropriate. Not today. It’s Baby Jesus’s birthday.
While we might be enjoying the finest weather in the country right now, you can’t help but feel left out by the snowman making, hot cocoa drinking, driveway shoveling of our friends further north. But we’re in this together Miami. We’ll adorn our palm tress with Christmas lights, we’ll sweat when stepping outside in an ugly Christmas sweater and we’ll dip our toes in the ocean and decide at 75 degrees the water is too cold. May your day be merry and bright.
Even if none of our Christmases will be white.
