Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [91]
I passed several hospitals and entertained fleeting sad thoughts about pain, unknown to me, behind their windows. I thought how much better a time I was having than the patients inside. I thought how strange it was that we could be so close and yet so remote in spirit from one another.
Several communities had kiosks set up as you entered town, with signs saying: TOURIST INFORMATION. It has been my experience that the booths that offer tourist information are usually closed.
I was having a wonderful time enjoying America from the cockpit of my Tiger. It all looked like a cover on an old Saturday Evening Post. I suppose someone else, driving in the other direction, looked at this old guy in his green sports car and fitted me in as part of the Norman Rockwell look, too.
I don’t remember what the article was about that earned me $3,500. But the times I’ve had with the Tiger have been worth far, far more.
Christmas Trees
The people who think Christmas is too commercial are the people who find something wrong with everything. They say, for instance, that store decorations and Christmas trees in shopping areas are just a trick of business.
Well, I’m not inclined to think of them that way, and if there are people whose first thought of Christmas is money, that’s too bad for them, not for the rest of us.
If a store that spends money to decorate its windows has commerce in mind, it doesn’t ruin my Christmas. If I pay nine cents more for a pair of gloves from one of the good stores that spent that much decorating its windows to attract me inside to buy them, I’m pleased with that arrangement. It was good for their gross and my Christmas spirit. I stay away from the places that pretend they’re saving me money by looking drab.
I like Christmas above any time of the year. It turns gray winter into bright colors and the world with it.
I like the lights and the crowds of people who are not sad at all. They’re hurrying to do something for someone because they love them and want to please them and want to be loved and pleased in return.
In New York City, the big, lighted Christmas trees put up along Park Avenue for three weeks every year produce one of the great sights on earth.
There is a kind of glory to a lighted Christmas tree. It can give you the feeling that everything is not low and rotten and dishonest, but that people are good and capable of being elated just at the thought of being alive this year.
When I’m looking at a well-decorated Christmas tree, no amount of adverse experience can convince me that people are anything but good. If people were bad, they wouldn’t go to all that trouble to display that much affection for each other and the world they live in.
Christmas Trees 199
The Christmas tree is a symbol of love, not money. There’s a kind of glory to them when they’re all lit up that exceeds anything all the money in the world could buy.
The trees in our homes do not look like the ones in public places and they ought not to. They look more the way we look, and we are all different. They reflect our personalities, and if someone is able to read palms or tea leaves and know what a person is like, they ought to be able to tell a great deal about a family by studying the Christmas tree it puts up in the living room.
Christmas trees should be real trees except where fire laws prohibit them from being real. It is better if they are fir or balsam, but Scotch pines are pretty, often more symmetrical and sometimes cheaper.
Nothing that is blue, gold, silver, pink or any color other than green is a Christmas tree.
A lot of people are ignoring the Christmas tree tradition, but just to review it, it goes like this:
You put up the Christmas tree Christmas Eve. You do not put it up three weeks in advance or three days in advance.
If you have young children, you put them to bed first.
As the children get older, you let them help decorate the tree.