Christmas in Chicago

I guess the main event, outside of waking up on the morning of the day, was coming downtown on Christmas. We used to go down that long line of department stores on State Street and visit every Santa in every one, well probably that is only the way I remember it, although I’m pretty sure we saw most of them. My parents were saints.

The other thing that made them saints was that they would take us downtown on Thanksgiving day and we would watch the whole parade (actually my parents liked parades, I remember visiting them over the holidays and if there was any parade anywhere that was on tv, it was on their tv, myself I can take them or leave them and prefer to leave them). But the main event was right at the end of the parade came Santa, and we had inherited enough of the Bohunk fish eye to want to stick around till the end to make sure that he was really coming to town.

An event we did not do was breakfast at the Walnut Room in Marshall Fields, though my older sister made a habit of taking her kids down there every Christmas. And, since we were both downtown last Tuesday we went to the Walnut Room for a late lunch, early supper.

So anyway I was eating meatloaf and she was eating some kind of salad, and these young women were walking around in like ballerina dresses with tiaras and wands, and they were having kids tell them a wish and sprinkling some kind of glitter on their heads.

My sister was telling me a story about how she and her husband went to Philadelphia last summer for the funeral of one of his sisters who had been an Episcopalian, and when communion time came along they weren’t what sure what to do so they went along with it, and then my sister discovered to her horror that instead of discreet little shot glasses of wine they were passing around a chalice and everybody was taking a swig out of the same germy cup and she said no thanks, she was a Unitarian, though she did eat a wafer. “Oh no, no blood for me, but I’ll have a bite or two of the body.”

Well just an amusing story, and too let you know we aren’t very religious, my sister is a Unitarian who only goes to church on Christmas, and not even every Christmas, and I am of course an atheist, so we don’t have much truck with fairies which is what those young women were, my sister knew because she used to take her kids there.

Still when one of them, having run out of little kids, dropped by our table, wanting to get along with everybody, like my sister did in that Episcopalian church, we let the fairy give my sister a wish, and I made one about the Cubs and then I looked down and our little fairy was carrying this bejeweled half-open purse, which she was discreetly shoving at me so that I could see that it was stuffed with crumpled up with dollar bills like a stripper’s G-string. Shit. Fuck. Had to give her a dollar and another one for my sister’s wish. Shit. Fuck. And I didn’t even get a swig of the blood or a bite of the body or one of those chaste little kisses on the cheek like the strippers give. Probably won’t even get my wish either.

Looking back at those last three paragraphs, they are not very Christmasy are they? I wrote them actually in a letter to somebody else and I thought I’d try to recycle them. Maybe the point is what are these fairies, who are a little like strippers with that buck thing, but worse in a way because strippers don’t pretend to promise you something that isn’t there, doing in a room devoted to Christmas, except it’s not the Jesus Christmas, it’s the Santa Christmas, but then are the two so far apart, what with Santa not getting you anything if you are naughty and not nice.

Have I ever sent you my Christmas story? I’ll send it by email because it is a little short of that Santa spirit and I want to hide it from the eyes of all the children who read this blog to learn life lessons on what reasonable discussion looks like.

Speaking of naughty and nice, what did your deist god of nature think about your hunting bears and raccoons? Oh I suppose you might have been intending to eat the bear, but it seems like a lot more work than a deer and probably the meat is not that good. Some people eat raccoons I know, but again an awful lot of work for not a whole lot of meat.