The Talk of New York

So this is Christmas?

By Bob Yampolsky

It's getting on Christmas time in New York. You can tell this from the Christmas trees lined up for sale on the sidewalk, the men in Santa suits collecting donations for charity, the Christmas displays in the storefronts. My kids have written their letters to Santa. The tree at Rockefeller Center is lit. So from the look of things, Christmas is getting on, but somehow, it does not really feel like Christmas yet this year.

To begin with, it has been oddly warm. Here we are, less than three weeks from Christmas, and it's T-shirt weather. It's very pleasant weather, to be sure, but it's not the snowy, wintry weather that most of us associate with Christmas.

Outside my window is a guy in a Santa suit, clanging a bell not in a merry way, but in an impatient, irritated way; you get the feeling that the padded Santa suit and polyester beard don't feel so comfortable in the heat.

But it's more than the weather that's wrong, of course. You see reminders of Sept. 11 everywhere. Each day the New York Times runs short sketches of people who died at the World Trade Center; these pieces are very touching, and they give faces to the statistics that are also published every day: as of Dec. 7, for example, 482 confirmed dead, 1,986 with death certificates issued at request of families and 638 missing. Little makeshift shrines remain in corners across the city: flowers, votive candles, messages from children. So sometimes it is hard to get into a ho-ho-ho mood.

Then, of course, there's a war going on, and that certainly hasn't helped the Christmas spirit, either. For one thing, there's the apprehension: Is something going to happen again? The government, after all, has issued another warning that there was a "credible threat" of another terrorist attack.

I took my son to a birthday party, and chatted with the birthday boy's father about dirty bombs going off in midtown: He is inclined to sell his apartment now, while it is still worth over a million (E25 million), and get far away from the city. I went down to Madison Square Garden, and had my body scanned with a metal detector. In passing through Penn Station I stopped at a memorial for World Trade Center victims; then I found myself thinking that this was the sort of place a terrorist might target, and I did not linger long. Needless to say, this is not a Christmas frame of mind.

What is more, this is an incongruous war. Usually in wartime, you are asked to make some sacrifice or bear some hardship for the sake of your country; say, to conserve energy, or recycle more diligently. But in this war, we are being told to act normally; the goal of terrorist attacks is to demoralize a society, so that it will lose its resolve and capitulate. So it is a critical part of the war effort to act as normally as possible.

But it feels rather incongruous to act normal now, as normal here often means self-indulgent, wasteful and frivolous. The top two hit shows on television this autumn have been a Michael Jackson concert and a Victoria's Secret lingerie fashion show. This may be, for Americans, normal, but one wonders, given the fact that there is a war going on, whether our attention is where it should be.

I wish that I could report that there has been a great outpouring of sympathy for the Afghan people, now that Christmas, the season of giving, is upon us; but I am afraid that there has been little. My kids' school collected money for Afghan kids; that is the extent that I have seen. Nor is there any peace movement to speak of, either. I went down to Union Square, which was the site of peace rallies in September, but all I saw now was one elderly couple holding up a banner for peace that few people paid attention to. Christmas has a message of peace and hope, so in this sense, too, it does not feel like Christmas at all.

The hot-selling Christmas ornaments this year are all red, white and blue; Christmas tree stands all fly the American flag. It is an odd juxtaposition, as if the Fourth of July had been superimposed upon Christmas.

In any event, those Christmas trees are starting to worry me: They're starting to pile up on the sidewalk, as no one seems to be buying. And because it's so warm I'm afraid they'll just dry up.

In terms of weather, the fall started this year on the evening of Sept. 10: There were huge thunderstorms that, as they departed, took away the hot, humid summer air. Sept. 11 was a gorgeous autumn day. The season should be changing to winter now, but the gorgeous autumn weather that ties us back to that day has somehow continued. As I said, it's very pleasant weather, but like most everyone else, I'm really hoping that it gets cold soon, and starts to feel a little more like Christmas.

Shukan ST: Dec. 21, 2001

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