My family puts up a traditional Christmas tree. Well, not that traditional. A truly traditional Christmas tree would be paraded through town and then set on fire. But Christmas is a festive time of year, a time when our shared pagan heritage is proudly on display, albeit via the yoke of Christianity. And, godless as… Read more »
The holidays, as we collectively call them, start in earnest while we are still recovering from Halloween and preparing for Thanksgiving. Once Thanksgiving is over, all bets are off and we are surrounded by the Christmas season until we crawl back to work on January 2nd to the grim realities of our winter lives. Holiday… Read more »
New York both captivates and repels its citizens with its constant hustle, and New Yorkers have to be reminded to stop and enjoy being a tourist in their own city. The holidays are a time of year when it’s easy to be such a local tourist. While the holidays brings hordes of maddening crowds that… Read more »
Among the many holiday traditions that we go through are finding the fine balance between indulging in all the requisite holiday traditions with children while not creating a burning hatred of the holidays within yourself. Considering that I live in one of the largest urban centers of the known universe, I am very much averse… Read more »
Last year I was waiting for a bus on Main Street in Flushing when the guy on line next to me began complaining. “You see that snowflake, right there,” he said to the woman he was with, referencing a large snowflake make of lights suspended over the heavily-trafficked street. “That represents everything wrong with society… Read more »
New York City is largely spared the horrors of Black Friday shopping brawls. A security guard was trampled to death a few years ago in Valley Stream, Long Island, right outside of Queens, but within the five boroughs we have a better history of crowd control. And few of our poor people have cars. There’s… Read more »
The holidays are a time when many of us are reluctantly pushed into public places to go through the motions about being happy about the holidays. Sometimes the very happiness of the holidays are mocking and angering. Sometimes the very image of others’ happiness is a slap in the face, and the holidays give other… Read more »
The endless salvos in the American cultural war normally give me a headache and are usually beneath the dignity of comment. But the latest jeremiad against a Fox News host about the race of Santa Claus was informative. Megyn Kelly, on her program The Kelly File, remarked that Santa Claus is white. (She mentioned that… Read more »
There are several great Christmas traditions that I refuse to surrender despite being a jaded, cynical atheist. I still give gifts to family and friends, I still buy a real Christmas tree and decorate it, and still I watch Bad Santa every year. If you have not seen it, do so; you won’t be sorry…. Read more »
One of the best things about living in a city like New York is leaving it. —Carrie Bradshaw (Season 1, Episode 3— “Bay of Married Pigs”) My husband and I are leaving New York for the holidays, renting a car and driving to Elkton, VA to spend Christmas with my brother-in-law and his family on… Read more »
