It was the Christmas season of 1953. December, 1953. I was nine-years-old, in Mrs. Lobel’s 4th Grade class at P.S. 177 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. I was happy about the coming vacation. Though Jewish, how could I not be affected by the joyousness, the warmth, the colors, the expectation? I especially liked, liked very much, the  music. I loved the rich melodies of the carols,  the clever and funny lyrics of the popular songs. I loved going to P.S. 177’s school’s assembly, listening and singing along. The teacher in charge of the music, a prim and stout Miss Nelson, did make an attempt at balance. It was a feeble attempt. How could you balance “Silent Night” with a song about some randomly spinning dreidels? (I didn’t know then what I know now: so many of the popular Xmas songs were written by Tin Pan Alley Jews. Go know & go figure!) What I was increasingly aware of was, in my nine-year-old way: there was no aesthetic/visceral contest between the holiday music of the Goyim and OUR music. Goyim win! Oy . . .

 

     I lived with my Aunt Lilly & Uncle Irving. I shared my feelings with my Aunt. To my surprise, she listened. I knew she couldn’t do anything about the music, so I focused on the Xmas Tree. We didn’t do the menorah. We had no source of holiday light. When I sensed that she was, surprisingly, sympathetic, I stepped up my campaign about getting a tree. To my astonishment, she began to work on my Uncle. One cold and dreary winter day, I was throwing a bag of garbage down the chute when he hurriedly came upstairs to our small first-floor apartment holding on to something under his winter coat. (He wore a cloth coat. It was called, if memory serves - and  it increasingly doesn’t  -  a Suburban. Made out of cloth, often a tweed - it was bulky and inadequate for the Winter’s cold, but that was what men and boys wore.) As I watched him climb, it was obvious that he was having difficulty navigating the stairs.. He had come home from another hard - and dangerous - day at a dry cleaning plant. He had come home with Something.

 

     He rang the bell repeatedly and rapidly.l  My Aunt, who had been in the kitchen, ran to the door. Huh? My Aunt never ran - for anything. He hurriedly entered Apartment I-D. I followed.  She slammed the door closed. Huh? I was initially confused, but soon stunned when he opened his coat revealing a tiny Xmas Tree. It wasn’t real, but its branches were full of beautiful dark green needles threaded with tiny tubes of liquid lights. G2DF! (Gorgeous-to-die-for!) Without saying a word he walked straight to the kitchen and plugged in the miniature, perfectly proportioned, tree. The lights immediately came on, bubbling colors of the Holiday declared themselves. Not the colors of Chanukah - the colors of Christmas. A Jewish boy in Brooklyn was ecstatic! 

 

     Alles went well, felt good. I stared endlessly at the tree, had my meals as close as I could get to it. We bonded. I was grateful to my Guardians.  However, there was one catch: my Aunt swore me to secrecy. I could not tell my friends in the building, 1502 West 5th Street on the corner of Avenue O. G-d forbid that a Jewish neighbor discovered our transgression! I was good with that; my secret, my special secret - transgressive, shocking and fun. My Xmas Tree! Yes!

 

     “But Man plans & G-d laughs.”

 

     Our apartment was small, too small for three people. When you entered, the “hallway” began. It was about three feet long, a yard. Then off to the left was a doorless room. It could have/should have been made into a sort of living room with, perhaps, a Castro sofa convertible. It should have slept no more than two, but when my Mother died in ‘49 and my father disappeared,  my Aunt & Uncle took me back to their place. They placed my childhood crib against a wall, opposite their full-sized bed. Essentially, they made minimal changes and warehoused me. Not a good nor healthy arrangement. The rest of I-D consisted of what was essentially a foyer. As you walked towards the kitchen, it broadened just a bit, then narrowed at the bathroom to the left. A few feet further on there was a deadend at the kitchen table. A small table, stove and refrigerator. That was where I lived for about 10 years. Oy . . . (Now I suspect that this submarine-like geography intensified my need and love for The Tree. We were both small. We were friends.)

 

     A few days after getting The Tree and being charged with the Secret, there was the proverbial Knock-on-the Door - a neighbor. Not just any neighbor. It was Marie McCauley! It was an extraordinary event for any neighbor to knock or to ring our bell. My Aunt, who I later realized was in the early stages of severe agoraphobia, did not invite people in. She increasingly lived with the “shades pulled down”. And even if she wanted to invite someone in, where would they sit? On the small couch in the foyer? .(Years later, when they were both coming home from hospital after a long stay, I had to clean up the apartment to make room for the necessary health-equipment. Alone, I sat down on the  couch. And it turned to dust. Dust! (Move over, Dickens, you great writer and antisemite!) 

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     Marie McCauley was not Jewish. She was decidedly Catholic. She sent her overprotected lovely daughter to St. Athanasius' school on Bay Parkway. The family attended church. It was a familial scandal when her son returned from the brutal Korean “police action” and married a pretty woman who was Greek Orthodox. Oy. And she was the only non-Jewish neighbor in the building. And she wasn’t even Italian. (My neighborhood was essentially peopled by two groups - Italian & Jewish. The Italians owned the small private homes und Der Juden inhabited the apartment houses.) (The McCauley’s were good/solid Irish Catholics. I liked them. Perhaps the MCauley family  is the origin for my lifelong affection and attraction to things Irish, the Irish punim, the music, the a gleam-in-the eye wit.  Indeed, I have always regretted choosing English literature over Irish literature years later at Brooklyn College. ) So Marie walking down the stairs from the 2nd floor was a Big Deal. Huh?

 

     My Aunt (with trepidation): “Who is it?”

 

     Marie (calmly): “Marie.”

 

     My Aunt (panicked): “Just a minute!” 

 

     The thing of it was that the Xmas tree was plugged in and, as was its wont, gloriously proclaiming itself with its bubbling colors. It would have been so easy to silence it; pull the plug. But, instead, my Aunt ran, grabbed a thin white sheet and hurriedly draped it over the Tree. Then she ran back to the door and opened it.

 

    I think she was hoping that Marie would stay in the hallway, but Marie, a large lady, just walked past the threshold. (Unlike Dracula, she did not wait for an invitation.) So there was Marie, there was my Aunt, facing each other.. And at the end of the foyer there was the Xmas tree.

 

      Marie took a step inside. She wanted to borrow something, but stopped short when she looked in the “distance”. There, on the kitchen table, was a covered impressionistic tiny Xmas Tree underneath a white covering loudly stuttering its existence. An inexplicable and bizarre  apparition.

 

     Marie stared, her eyes opened wide, but didn’t ask. My Aunt didn’t explain. She again ran into the kitchen, got what Marie had come for, handed it to her, and closed the door behind her.

                                                                                   

     Now I was observing all this. Though I was only nine, I found it all very interesting and very amusing. The Weissman’s had been discovered! It would have been bad enough to be discovered by a fellow member of the Tribe. But by  goyim? Oy vey . . . As far as I know I don’t think Marie spread the word, divulged our secret. And that was good. And after Xmas, when my Uncle asked me if he could take The Tree and give it to Jimmy, a close friend and the owner of a Greek diner near the dry cleaning plant, I readily and happily said yes. I had known from the getgo that our relationship was destined to be temporary, intense but temporary. For one Holiday season there was color and warmth in Apartment I-D. Yay! What I didn’t know was that in about a month my Aunt would have to go to Memorial Sloan Kettering for her second mastectomy in eleven years, that I would be taken out of Class 4-1, deposited at my Grandmother’s and I would have to talk my Uncle out of suicide. But those are other stories.

 

     I had had my Xmas Tree. The Tree and I.