It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Well, now it is looking a lot like Christmas. According to someone with some authority, it seems that we have had 10 inches of snow in the past twenty-four hours! I’d suspect that there were also some serious winds because the lower ledge of my windows are encrusted with frozen snow. It is yet early in the morning but I suspect that soon the snow blowers will start up and the quiet and peace of the morning will end. But now the dark is complete, except, of course, for the light in this room.
     As a Jew I had little association with Christmas except for the annual visit to my mother’s sister’s house where we would celebrate my grandparent’s anniversary. The rumor was that they married on Christmas Day but lately I have had my doubts: maybe they just wanted to celebrate Christmas. We did exchange presents . . . though I don’t recall a tree. But as an adult it became custom to go out Christmas Eve for Chinese food . . . Questioned by an ignorant Lindsey Graham during her confirmation hearing about her whereabouts on a certain Christmas Eve, she assumed the question was serious and she began to offer a legal response when he interrupted her and said, no, he just wanted to know what she was doing on Christmas Eve. And she responded, “Well, like all good Jews I was out at a Chinese restaurant.” We might have known then that Lindsey wasn’t all he was cracked up to be, and during the Trump reign he confirmed my low opinion of him.
     And as for my family, on Christmas day we joined with all other good Jews and headed to the first showing at the local movie theater, and sometimes we even stayed for a double feature! But now, the pandemic has made these excursions perilous, and I am loath to venture out. The movie theater has always been my happy place. These past few years I have not been able to go to the movies, but today, following the first significant snowfall of the season, we intend to visit the movie theater for the first showing of The French Dispatch. It is not Christmas, but it is getting to look a lot like Christmas. We will wear our N95 masks and try and sit far away from everyone else who, too, attempts to distance themselves from others.
     Christmas is yet two weeks hence. We had a homemade vegetable pot pie for dinner last evening.