I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas - Lewis Black [11]
But—and this is very important—Christmas trees in Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, or any warm climate always seem a bit weird to me—the veritable tits on a bull. Somehow they just don’t belong. I suppose it works if you’re raised in that climate, but for me, seeing a Christmas tree in sunny weather only makes me pine for winter. And as much as I hate winter—let me count the fucking ways—I’d rather experience it than pine for it.
I’ve got to admit, though, that during the times in my life when I’ve lived with people who had to have a Christmas tree, my Jewish upbringing left me ambivalent about it. My parents didn’t go for Chanukah with a Christmas tree. No way. And I never understood the whole idea behind that combination. You do one holiday or the other, not both. Together they have no meaning. It’s like drinking Red Bull and vodka together. As I learned the hard way, whatever comes out of your mouth is loud and stupid.
To me, a tree during Chanukah was an interloper. I may like the way Christmas trees look when I drive by houses and see them in people’s living rooms, with their twinkling lights aglow, I just don’t want one. If ever I was stupid enough to put one up at my place, I know it would stand there, taunting me, saying: “What are you doing here, Jewboy?! This is my house. Jews don’t have Christmas trees. Why don’t you go to the temple and find a menorah to hang out with?” I don’t need that kind of aggravation from a conifer.
There is one tree, though, that doesn’t inspire any good feelings in me. In fact, it inspires rage. It’s the tree that somebody—I still don’t know who—puts up just after Thanksgiving at Rockefeller Center, right in the aorta of New York City. It makes me insane every year because it creates a bottleneck of epic proportions. Every artery of movement around it is clogged with too many people and too many cars, desperate to be in its presence. It’s as if Jesus had set up shop on the skating rink below the tree and was doing a few heavenly triple lutzes to the delight of the masses.
Look, I live in New York. I have work to do here. I have people to see. I have to get around. I don’t need this vast parade of humanity mowing me down to see a huge overdecorated Christmas tree, especially when I am actually at home for only a few weeks a year.
But nobody cares. Instead, each and every year the geniuses at Rockefeller Center cut down a tree, drive it into midtown, doll it up, and plunge it like a stake right into the heart of the city.
It isn’t New Yorkers who go to see the tree. Noooooooooooo. It’s tourists, out-of-towners from every corner of the United States and the world, from every imaginable place where they see fucking trees every fucking day of their lives. In their desperate need to see yet another tree, they make the life of this New Yorker impossible.
And here’s the worst part of the whole thing. They come to New York in droves to see the same tree that they saw Al Roker light on television. It’s the same fucking tree! These idiots already saw it from the comfort of their living rooms, where their own trees are twinkling. And if they think that weeks later Al Roker will still be standing next to that tree, waiting to greet them, they’re fucking delusional. He’s probably got a life.
If I had any guts I’d take a chain saw to the tree. But I’m sure it would be seen as a terrorist act. More likely I’d lose a hand in the process. So I’ll have to be wilier. I’ll have to use my brains instead. I think we should get the tree out of Manhattan and put it in the Bronx, Brooklyn, or Queens. People want to see a tree so bad, let them chase it, the fuckers. Staten Island would be a perfect spot. Let’s see if they can find it among thousands of other trees.
Is the tree you have in your living room not enough for you? Then do a better job of decorating it and you won’t need to put one up on the sidewalks I need to