First Snow

Christmas. A word that strikes fear in the hearts of men.

When I was a kid, the official start of the Christmas season came with a familiar trip down Second Avenue (on the bus) on a day rather like today. My mother was always irrevocably moved by the first New York City snowfall. It didn't happen often, and the snow never stuck around for longer than eight minutes, but it would be on a day like today after I got home from school that we two intrepid souls would venture downtown and engage in the Manhattan Christmas tree buying ritual.

My mother is about five foot three...in a hat. A wee person. I was young, 5,6,7...not much taller. The snow would begin to fall and my mother would wax on about its beauty, winsomely winding a woolen scarf about my neck. Then she'd dig around for her snow boots and her weird, fluffy winter hat. She'd whistle "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" in the elevator downstairs. And together, arm in arm, we would set off into the city's first snow to buy a Christmas tree.

The blissful holiday magic, however, sort of ended there. Usually about the time we got to the bus stop.

My mother was the sort of New Yorker who disdained cabs. Cabs were an extravagance. The subway. The bus. These were the legitimate modes of transport. She usually walked everywhere, but with a six year old in tow she conceded to a bus ride down to Hell's Kitchen. It was cold, I remember. Northeastern winter cold. Her whistling would quiet and I would begin my overtures as to how cold my feet were. But it was Christmastime.

I don't know why all the Christmas trees in New York were sold on 23rd Street but they were so there we would travel with our fellow Midtown dwellers, like we had seen a star or something. We had come to this place, by foot, by bus, by pachyderm, to haggle for the best deal on a live Fraser Fir. And it had to be a Fraser Fir. None of those other trees that lost their needles (!). No, no it was going to be a real live Fraser Fir and she was absolutely not going to pay full price for it and $50... you've got to be kidding and where did you think you were, Westchester? To watch my mother work a tree lot was a thing of beauty.

As a kid, wandering these makeshift evergreen dealerships was like walking through a sidewalk forest circus. They'd go on for blocks, populated by the most wonderful assortment of unsavories trying to sell you one thing or another; a Rolex, a dime bag, a Cabbage Patch Kid. More often than not, wearing a Santa had and sucking on a cigar. I would always stand next to the 14 or 18 foot trees, trying desperately hard to convince her that our apartment was, in fact, as big as The Met. "Yes, yes it will too fit, Mommy!!", lamenting the fact that our measly 8 foot ceilings were going to ruin Christmas. Pouting often ensued.

But finally, as the pretty snow had given way to miserably windy, raw cold, my mother and the tree-dealer would settle on a price not insulting to either of them. The tree man would "tie it up" for free, which is the evergreen equivalent of trussing a turkey. And then, deal done, tree gotten, my tiny mother and I would begin to drag that Fraser Fir the twenty-odd blocks back to our apartment.

This is where the Holiday fun really started.

I was a kid. I wasn't used to being out late in the cold on a school night. (That's my best excuse for ridiculous Holiday behavior). Three blocks into it, I'd start in about how I was so cold I was going to sit down and die of cold to which my mother would respond how she'd hate to leave me on the sidewalk for all the crazy people, but she would if I didn't stop complaining. Not receiving the appropriate response, I would start in on how we'd passed two bus stops already and how the bus was the warmest place ever and that I would personally convince the bus driver to let us have a tree on the bus. My mother would remind me how mean New York City bus drivers were and how our tree was so big the bus wouldn't even stop. Hopeless, desperate, and thinking about nothing but hot chocolate I would start in about how if she really loved me she would get a cab and how other kid's Mom's didn't have weird hang ups about cabs, especially at night when it was so cold with a tree and everything......

It was usually about this point when she would throw up her hands in exhaustion. Flushed and freezing, she'd remind me how Santa was watching to which I'd smart-off something about his reindeer at least having fur coats. At wits end, she'd finally give in and make me sit on the Christmas tree a few feet back from the street (because cabs WILL NOT stop for anyone with a Christmas tree, kid or no kid, snow or no snow), swallow her pride and hail a taxi. After several pulling away with mention of the word "Tree", eventually a kind-hearted cabbie would take pity on us. I would, of course, do my absolute best to look desperate and in need of warm chocolaty beverages. The cabbie would tie the tree to the roof and all the money my poor mother had saved in the haggling would be spent on the tip for the driver who helped drag the tree inside.

Every year. It happened like that every year.

Christmas is not about trees or presents or lights or dinner parties. Its not about Jesus or wise men for that matter either. It is about memory.

This day, (some may say arbitrary, some may not) happens at the end of every year where the memories of all the year's past days sort of culminate. It is impossible to escape. It is burned into our collective knowing. Christian, non-Christian, consumer, non-consumer. Where were we last year? It's a benchmark. It isn't as desperate as New Year's Eve. Too much of our childhoods were tangled up in its ribbons, for good or bad. The remembering is deeper. There is more hope in it. Hope in memory.

December 25th is three days after the shortest day of the year. In the darkest part, where the light is weakest, it is a mark of a quiet beginning.

Evergreen.