Christmas Eve is generally a lonely event for me. During the rest of the year, using a delicate combination of cunning, forethought, antibiotics and make-up, I can hide with admirable success my large nose, my overbearing mother, my frail immune system and all else that publicly marks me as a Jew. But, come the yuletide (what exactly is yuletide, anyways?), sitting in the middle of an empty movie theatre, watching, no doubt, a bad movie about the wacky antics of a rebel raindeer and burping up the rancid smells of those last four potstickers that I really knew I shouldn't have had, my Jewishness takes on a weight that not even beer or Woody Allen can unload. It becomes something beyond my strange dietary restrictions and chest hair and self-depricating wit, beyond all those things I can hide or somehow sublimate into a secular and therefore more socially acceptible form. It becomes calendrical--which is a pretty big deal for me as I still have trouble remembering which are the months with only thirty days.
So imagine my joy when, on Christmas Eve, after the obligatory Chinese feast, the boys of Moishe House DC and their distinguished guests marched down to Dupont Circle to join 1,496 other calendrical rebels in a violent and revolutionary celebration of difference, or, as others might call it, a sort-of cool dance party in a big club. And imagine my joy, too, when I noticed that all of my fellow revelers were, like me, genetically disinclined to obey beats and rythms, everyone coasting awkwardly about with lowered but happy heads like at middle school dances where the girls hop up and down and the boys drink punch. Yes! Such joy! A thousand and a half Jews waging war against Christmas with overpriced well drinks and rap music and bad judgement! The People of the Book marking their difference from the world, on the day during which they are most different, by acting just like everyone else. Yes! Joy! Drinks! Dance!
I can't wait untiil next year.
Adam in DC
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