I’m guessing the main answer to Eli’s question about why American Jews traditionally eat Chinese food on Christmas is fairly prosaic. The Chinese, being non-Christian, kept their restaurants open Christmas day, whereas most other restaurants were closed.
But there’s another side to the Jewish Christmas tradition that Eli fails to mention. Before or after stuffing ourselves full of Chinese food, we would go to the movies, where the lines would be short, even for the hottest films of the season. But alas, no more.
True story: My first Christmas divorced after a decade-plus relationship with my Irish Catholic ex-wife, I decided to re-embrace my Jewish heritage and go to the movies, the hottest ticket being that for the first installment of the Lord of Rings trilogy, playing at the Cinerama. But I arrive about a half-hour before a noonish matinee to discover they are sold out for every show, and had been for days.
I turn away from the ticket window toward the line of eager ticket holders stretching around the block, many of them dressed as their favorite Tolkien characters, and in my despair I rhetorically ask: “Don’t you goyim have anything better to do on Christmas than go to the fucking movies?” To which an enragingly cheerful hobbit steps forward and offers: “Gee, that’s not the Christmas spirit.”
“I’ll tell you what,” I tell the hobbit in genuine anger as I step toward him and his furry, ticket-holding friends, “You don’t honor the way my people celebrate this holiday, and I won’t honor yours.”
I ended up seeing fucking Oceans 11 at a theater in Southcenter. Couldn’t think of a more depressing way to spend my first Christmas divorced.
So yeah… the question remains: Don’t you goyim have anything better to do on Christmas than go to the fucking movies? And if I decide to get some Chinese food, will you be forcing me to stand in line there too?
Wait, this is a Jew thing?
When I lived in Boston many moons ago, my blue-blooded Beacon-Hill Mayflower-family type friends all went out to the movies on Christmas day. Well, the younger-ish ones, at any rate.
I’m thinking our Goldy might be getting about 95% of his cultural awareness from television dramas.
Tough shit, Goldy.
You can stuff your righteous sense of entitlement right up your purulent ass for all I care.
I have a holiday tradition of drinking a bottle of Manischewitz and eating ham, but one year Christmas Eve was concurrent with Hanukkah so when I went to the grocery store to pick up a bottle the Kikes had already bought it all. Goddam you people!
When I was a teenager I worked at a movie theater, and let me tell you, when Godfather III opened up on Christmas Day 1990, it was PACKED. Our 1200-seat main theater was sold out for every show by some time in the early afternoon. And I didn’t live in an area with many Jews. When I started working there, they warned us that we would be expected to work on holidays, since those are some of the busiest days of the year, so this had been going on for some time. Thanksgiving, too. You know what were really slow days? Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.
I didn’t know about it before I started working there, because my family always just went to church and then stayed at home on Christmas. But apparently a lot of people take the time to go see movies.
Hah. Try being Muslim. We usually spent the day cleaning when I was growing up.
Shanghai Garden is packed at 4pm, and it was filled with non-Jews. What is wrong with you people? Get your own damned holidays.
Driving from Portland to Seattle today, we pulled off I-5 in Centralia te see if any place was open for lunch. “There has simply got to be a Chinese restaurant open in this town.” And there was! Peking Garden, about a half mile east of the freeway at Exit 82. Nothing special, really, but hot, tasty, and big-ass portions, too. Any other day it’s a two-star Chinese joint, but on Christmas it’s four-stars.