Christmas?  I love Christmas!  I know, you're thinking, 'What's a good Jewish boy doing loving Christmas?'  Well, you see; it goes back to when I was a kid growing up in New York.  My Dad, who was as big a kid as me, loved all the lights and the music of the holidays.  Oh, we celebrated Hanukah, of course.  The family would all come over, and we're talking a ton of relatives, for whatever was going on.  Or we'd go over to one of the aunts or something, so we always had a good time with that.  But Dad and I, and later Nicky, would go out and take in the sights and sounds of Christmas.

It would start at Thanksgiving when we'd go down to watch the big parade.  I can remember when I was a real little kid, Dad would put me on his shoulders, and I'd wave at all the pretty girls on the floats.  One year Dad and I were even in the parade, this was when I was about nine, I guess.  The police department wanted some of the officers to dress up in old-fashioned uniforms and ride on a float.  Well, Dad volunteered and got me on too.  Boy was that fun, long and tiring, but fun.  Besides, I got to spend the whole day with my dad and the other cops.  That was a good day.

We'd go to whatever tree lightings there were; and look at all the department store displays.  Dad and I loved to go to the toy stores and play with the trains and stuff.  One year we went to see The Nutcracker Suite, the whole family.  Nick was just tiny then and slept through most of it, but I didn't.  I remember sitting there, totally enthralled by the costumes and the sets.  But what I remember most is the look on my dad's face.  He loved everything.  The music, the dancing, everything.  We all cheered when the Mouse King was vanquished and the Prince won.  I think my dad cheered the loudest.  I play that record every year.  It just isn't Christmas until I hear The Nutcracker Suite.

After Dad died and I moved out here to live with my aunt and uncle, it was kinda rough for a bit.  But my Aunt Rosie always tried to make things nice for me.  She's not Jewish, neither is my uncle now, but she'd do Hanukah for me.  She bought a Menorah; I still have that one, and made some of the traditional dishes for me.  It wasn't like at home, but she tried.  Of course, I have a bunch of other relatives out here, too, and they'd invite me over some nights, so it wasn't all that bad.  But getting back to Aunt Rosie, she loves Christmas.  After the first year I was here, and she knew I didn't mind, she did Christmas to the hilt.  There was always a huge tree, decorations everywhere, and the biggest dinner you ever saw.  Cookies, candies, all that stuff.  It's a wonder I didn’t die from a sugar overdose.

My uncle and aunt didn’t have any kids, just me, so they always went overboard buying me presents.  They'd get me traditional gifts for Hanukah, then spoil me rotten at Christmas.  Maybe that's why I'm always a bit disappointed when I don't get something really cool from those that should know better.  Those were some nice times.  Oh, I missed my parents and my brother, but things would be so busy here that I didn't have much time to think about it.  When I got older and could get there, I'd go home for the holidays, but it was never the same.  My dad being gone and all.  Now that I'm a cop, I usually work Christmas to let the guys with families have the day off.  My partner doesn’t celebrate Christmas much, so he doesn’t mind working that day.

My partner.  You know; I love the guy, but there are times I don't understand him.  Here he is, a nice Lutheran kid, brought up with all the traditions of the Christmas season and he doesn’t like it.  He can be a real Scrooge around the holidays and sometimes it really ticks me off.  He'll go on and on about how phony it all is.  How it's all so commercial and all.  Like he's trying to ruin it for me.  But I don't let him.  I decorate my car with whatever I can get away with, you know, reindeers and the like.  I even have some Stars of David that I keep on the dashboard.  Hutch can be respectful of those, but he'll make noises about the reindeer.  I put a tree up, and send out Christmas cards to my non-Jewish friends.  I don't let him get to me.

Actually, I kind of like bugging him about it.  I'll sing Rudolph and Deck the Halls just to annoy him.  I even hung some mistletoe above his desk one year.  It took him awhile before he figured out why all the women who walked by his desk had to stop and give him a kiss.  Hutch acted real mad when he found out, but I noticed he didn't rush to take it down.  He tries to hide out on Christmas when we're off duty, but I don't let him do that either.  I'll invite myself over, bringing some Christmas cake my aunt sent me or something like that.  One year I insisted he come over for dinner.  He was being nice to me that time because it wasn't long after I got shot in a foiled mob hit.  I hadn't made a big deal about it being Christmas, just that I didn't want to be alone that day.  Anyway, I had gotten Huggy to make us a big dinner and the three of us had a real great time.  Even Scrooge himself laughed a few times and wished me Merry Christmas.  I figured my plan was a complete success.

Last year, he was really in a funk about the season.  Of course, he'd not had a good year, with one thing and another, so I didn't pay much attention to his attitude.  He kept going on about euphoric sentimentalism, or some such nonsense, but I knew he really didn't mean it.  I figured it was all an act on his part, holding to his principles and all.  But he did upset me when the gift under the tree at his little brother's place turned out to be a certificate that said a tree had been planted in my name.  I was hoping for a new caboose for my train set.  Of course, I'd given him kind of a gag gift myself, but still.  We all had a good laugh about it, but I was a little hurt.

But you know what that big dope did?  After we left Kiko's, (I was driving), he asked me to come up to his place for a beer.  Well, we hadn't had any earlier, with the kids there, so it sounded good to me.  He's still acting all Scroogey and I'm still a bit miffed, so we're not talking much.  We get to the door and when he opens it, he gestures for me to go first.  The place is dark by this time, so I flip on the light switch.  The tree I brought over earlier lights up, I hear the stereo click on, and there's this funny sound coming from the direction of the tree.  Well, Blondie had hooked up both the tree and the stereo to his lights somehow.  I never knew Hutch could do anything like that, he's not very mechanically minded, ya know.  I go over to the tree and underneath it on the table is this train track set up in a circle and going round and round is a locomotive and the prettiest caboose I'd ever seen.

I was so surprised I was speechless.  Somehow, he'd snuck one of my engines out of my place & some extra track I have.  Then he bought that great caboose and set this whole thing up.  Just for me.  I could have hugged the guy.  Actually, I think I did.  But you know what was really special?  Yeah, the train was really cool, and I loved it, but the thing that was so, I don't know, sweet I guess, was what was playing on the stereo.  It was The Nutcracker Suite.

I'm going to have to find him a really good present this year.

*******

Christmas?  I really hate Christmas.  Well, maybe *hate* is too strong a word.  Maybe deplore is better.  Now don't get me wrong.  It's not the concept of why we have Christmas I don't like; it's all the hype that goes with it.  Everybody going around, being all nice to one another when you know any other time they'd treat you like dirt.  And people are so crazy at Christmas.  Do you know that there are more violent crimes and more suicides at Christmas than any other time of the year?  Proves something, doesn’t it?

I'm not exactly sure when I started feeling this way.  When I was a kid, we always had good Christmases.  When my grandfather was still alive, we'd go out to the farm and spend most of the holiday there.  We'd build snowmen; there'd be a hayride, all that kind of thing.  The church my grandfather belonged to always had a big concert every year.  When my sister and I were a little older, we would sing in the choir.  I liked that.  On Christmas day, all the relatives would come over for the dinner.  The aunts would all bring something, Granddad would cook a huge turkey, and we kids would drink hot chocolate and eat candy until we were sick.  Those were fun times.

My grandfather is the one who gave me my first guitar.  He knew how much I liked to sing and that I was taking piano lessons.  Granddad said that piano was all well and good, but it was awfully hard to sit around a campfire and play one.  He taught me how to play Silent Night on that guitar.  Even now, all these years later, I get a funny feeling when I hear that song done on a guitar, the way it was meant to be played.

I guess it all started to bother me when I was in my late teens.  Granddad was gone by then, the farm taken over by one of my uncles.  We spent the holidays in town, going to parties and concerts put on by professionals.  I don't know, but somehow it just wasn't the same.  Everything felt kind of phony.  Everyone smiling, dressed in expensive clothes, showing off their possessions and missing the whole reason behind Christmas.  Even the charities seemed fake.  Big splashy ads, begging for money.  Made you wonder where it all went.  By the time I moved out to California, the whole thing just didn't have any appeal to me.  And after my marriage fell apart, it all seemed incredibly pointless.  Van liked all that flash.  The parties, fancy clothes and all.  Just one more reason why we broke up.  I wouldn't bother with Christmas at all if it weren't for my partner.

My partner.  My partner is a big kid.  He loves Christmas and everything about it.  I could never figure out why this guy who never made any secret of being proud of being Jewish, would love this holiday so much.  It wasn't until I spent a Christmas day at his aunt's place that I figured it out.  Aunt Rosie celebrates Christmas with everything she has.  The house is packed with friends and relations, Christian and non, it doesn't matter.  Everyone is welcome at Rosie's.  Because I was her 'little David's' friend, I was welcomed like some long lost son, petted and fawned over.  Actually, it made me feel rather good.  It wasn't long after my divorce and I was feeling especially unloved.  Aunt Rosie really has a way of making you feel that someone loves you.  Sort of like her nephew.  Even now, I still get a gift every year from her.  Just because I'm Starsky's friend.

Of course, Starsk has told me stories about his childhood in New York and I know about his Dad and all.  But it still makes me wonder at times, why he loves it all so much.  He's not bothered by the crass commercialism, rather he embraces it.  He loves the color, the tinsel.  Sings the silly Christmas songs, you know, Frosty the Snowman type stuff.  Decorates his damn car, for Pete's sake.  I mean, really.  But, that's all part of my partner, I guess.  You have to take the bad along with the good.  And if getting all stupid at Christmas makes him happy, I guess I can deal with that.  I just don't have to pretend to like it.

Last year, he did something so nice that it really surprised me.  I'd been feeling especially low, and was making his life miserable.  I knew it, but just couldn't stop.  Anyway, the last couple of days before Christmas were pretty hairy and I almost forgot to get his present.  I had gotten him one of those trees planted in the park things as sort of a joke earlier on but was planning on a really good present.  If it hadn't been for some begging on my part, I wouldn't have gotten that caboose he wanted for his train.  But the store manager was really nice about it and let me sneak in five minutes before he closed Christmas Eve.  I set the whole thing up at my place for after we went to Kiko's and his Mom's for dinner.  It was a nice day, Molly and Kiko both had fun, and everything turned out well.  But that's another story.  When Kiko handed my partner that gift box, Starsky's face lit up brighter than the tree.  I felt rather mean, because he really thought it was something to do with that caboose he'd been hinting about.  Even though he laughed the whole thing off, I knew he was hurt.

Well, anyway, I had the train all set up at my place and when he saw that thing, he was so happy.  He gave me a big hug and smiled so hard I thought he was going to hurt himself.  He played with the train for a bit, then we sat down to have a couple of drinks and watch some TV.  That's when he says he's got to go down to the car.  Tells me that he'd forgotten that he had some cookies and stuff that Aunt Rosie had sent him.  So off he goes.  I don't think much of it, because I knew that he did have some goodies stashed away in that car.

He was gone for a few minutes, then I hear him tromping back up the stairs.  In he comes with this big box.  I know it can't be cookies, because not even Aunt Rosie would send him that many.  He plunks it down in front of me, grinning like a fool.  I look at this thing and realize that it's a present, done up in Santa Claus paper with my name on it.  I give him that look, you know the one, but he just smiles and tells me to open it.  So I carefully take off the paper, which I know bugs him, he's a shredder, and after folding up the paper opened the box.

On top, there's a card with a big snowman on it.  Reminded me of my childhood in Minnesota, which was the point I think.  Inside the card, my sentimental partner has written:  'To Hutch, the best friend a guy could ask for.  Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah and a Great New Year.  Love Starsky.'

Well, that made me feel lower than a snake's belly, after the way I'd been treating him for the last couple of weeks.  But that's my partner.  Puts up with all my crap and still loves me regardless.  Anyway, under some tissue paper, I find that he's wrapped up a whole bunch of stuff in more of that Santa paper.  There must have been a half-dozen packages.  The first one I open is some sheet music, really old.  All classical stuff that he knows I like but don’t have much of.  The second package is a gift certificate from my favorite health food store.  Even through he gives me grief about my diet; he can be nice about it at times.  The next one is a book that I've been wanting to get, but it had to be special ordered and I never quite got around to doing it.  A couple more packages are actually from his aunt, cookies, and such and one is a present from his Mom, a really nice shirt.  Which I figure will end up in his closet before spring.

But the last present was the best.  This one was wrapped up in really pretty paper, all silver and blue.  Inside was a beautiful wooden picture frame, looked like an antique.  And in the frame was a picture of my Granddad's farmhouse taken one Christmas.  It had been blown up so that you could see all the detail.  The lit tree in the parlour window, the candles glowing in all the others.  The wreath on the door, even the icicles hanging from the eaves.  There's a huge snowman in the front yard near the steps up to the porch and on the porch are my parents, my sister, Granddad, and me.  I remembered that year.  It was the last year we had Christmas at the farm.  Next summer, my grandfather died and we never had another Christmas like that one.  I'd never seen this picture before, but I remembered when it taken by one of my uncles.

Well, I'm sitting there trying not to cry because it brought back the feelings about Christmas that I used to have as a kid.  I looked up at my partner, who's sitting there munching cookies and trying not to notice my damp eyes.  When I asked him where he'd gotten the picture, he tells me that he'd written my mom for one of me at Christmas.  She'd sent him the negative of this one and he'd gotten it professionally enlarged.  Said he found the frame and the sheet music at an auction sale and knew that I'd like them.  I asked him why he wanted a picture of me at Christmas and he said that he wanted me to remember a time when I knew what Christmas was all about.  That he wanted me to remember the good stuff and ignore the bad.

Well, that made me think.  I guess he wanted me to feel about Christmas the way he does.  Because it makes him happy and all my goofy, sentimental, wonderful partner wants in this world is for me to be happy too.  I guess you couldn't ask for a better present than that.  To have someone who loves you so much that all they want for you and from you is that you're happy.

I'm really going to have to think hard about a good present for him this year.

Oh, by the way.  Merry Christmas from both of us.  From the Scrooge and the Kid.
 
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