“City sidewalks dressed in holiday style.”  Washington Square Park. Greenwich Village, NY.   By Paul Goldfinger © The lyric is from “Sliver Bells.”  Click to enlarge.

By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger.net

Scene:  At Wegmans–a very busy place on Dec. 23.   Snippets overheard.

Little boy says to his father. “Who’s Tiny Tim?”

Me:  I overheard this, and I thought, “Who is Tiny Tim?”  I mean, I knew the name, but who is he?

Eileen:  “He’s the poor boy in the movie A Christmas Carol.  Scrooge makes an about face and gets into the Christmas spirit.”

Me: “Oh”

In the crowded Wegman’s parking lot, a man and woman (grandparents) and a toddler are walking, the child is holding Grandpa’s hand,  and all 3 are making progress to get back to their car with the packages and ride out of town.  All 3 are wearing red and white Santa hats.  All of a sudden, the tyke drops to the ground and cries loudly.  He refuses to get up despite Grandpa tugging on his arm.  Grandma rushes over to the rescue.  Grandpa picks the kid up, but he keeps crying.  They are creating a scene.  This is the joy of grandparenthood.

Grandmother says to her granddaughter who is sitting in a shopping cart,  “They celebrate Hanukkah.”   That’s all I heard.   Wow, somebody at Wegmans said the H word.  You can buy a menorah and candles at the weg man’s store.  Eileen is a weg woman.

Looking back:   I grew up in the 1950’s in Rutherford, NJ. It’s a waspy town, a bedroom community of New York. There were many churches, 1 synagogue, no bars, and just 6 Jewish kids in my class at Rutherford High.  Christmas time was full of Christmas cheer, visuals and music. But Hanukkah was never mentioned. It made no difference; it was all fun. I actually was glad that they didn’t bring that up. We 6 understood that we were a minority in a Christian town, and that was fine.

I went caroling with my friends from the band and chorus. People tossed money to us from their windows.  We went to the garden apartments at the west end of town, near the Passaic River, where one carol could entertain maybe 20 people looking out from their second floors.  Then we went to Carl and Henry’s for ice cream sodas  (about 50 cents each. with a dab of whipped cream on top.)

A Jewish girl from my class played the virgin in the nativity reenactment in the RHS  auditorium.    I thought it was amazing that she got that job, although it was historically accurate.   I even got to date Mary  (actually it was Phyllis) once. I didn’t know if she was actually a virgin, but as far as my friends and I were concerned, they were all virgins at RHS in 1959.

Wondering about the music choices playing at Wegmans…

I may be one of a small number of shoppers who actually notices the music playing overhead in stores.  At Wegmans they are playing wall to wall Christmas music, but not any of it is a traditional carol.  It’s all pop songs  which are about romance at Christmas time:  “All I Want for Christmas is You.” and  “Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart” and “Christmas. Baby Please Come Home,”and “Christmas on the Beach For Two,” and  “All Those Christmas Clichés,” and my favorite—- “It’s a Marshmallow World” by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin from  Christmas With the Ratpack.

I miss the “First Noel,”  “Oh Come All Ye Faithful,” and all the others which I knew by heart.  I call my friend “The first Joel.”    I had two best friends–we were the Three Wild Men.

Eileen says, “This is Wegmans trying to avoid offending anybody.”

RAT PACK CHRISTMAS