Movies, Won Ton Soup, and December 25th

 Inevitably, December 25th will come around. And on that day, year after year, all good Jews ask themselves, “So, what should we do today?” The answer may vary slightly, but let’s be honest here, there’s not much to pick from on 12/25. The stores are closed, so shopping is out of the question. Can’t go to work because that’s closed, and not much has been accomplished since Thanksgiving anyway. Watch TV? Well, it would be an option if it weren’t for the fact that White Christmas is showing on every channel except for the ones that are re-broadcasting It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, and Rudolph. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed these movies – classics actually. Rudolph is my personal favorite! But, after 40 plus years, I can probably recite the lines in the films by heart. So, let’s review our options - no TV, no shopping, and no work.

What’s a Jew to do? Well, in my family December 25 is our annual movie and Chinese food day. Usually, my nephew Jeremy and I go to an early movie, the earlier the better. Our rational is that gentiles are either sleeping or still unwrapping hundreds of thousands of gifts that the fat man in the red suit so generously left for them. As a child I always wondered how he knew NOT to drop of gifts at my house. Was there a mark on the door similar to the one on Passover where the angel of death passed over our first born boys and took the Egyptian tots instead? Is this some sort of pay back? You took our kids so now you get no toys! Oh, what a child’s mind can conjure up.

Anyway, I digress. So, Jeremy and I have been going to an early movie for the past 12 years. I think it started out as a Chanukah gift to him and his sister, Jordan. Jeremy would usually take weeks to carefully select the movie because this was an important annual event that could not be taken lightly. The kids are now young adults, but still the process is as deliberate and as research intensive as it was when Jeremy was 8 years old. There are reviews to read and previews to consider. We’ve gone from Hook and Men in Tights to The Green Mile and a Beautiful Mind. We’ve seen so many great films (and some mediocre ones), but we always had the December 25th experience. We have sometimes been the only people in the theater (when we go to a theater located in a primarily gentile neighborhood) and sometimes crowded in line with hundreds of other lost Jews who had the same idea (go figure).

After the movie, whether a drama or a comedy, the day is always followed up by a trip to Hunan Manor in Silver Spring. Our favorite waitress, Winnie, welcomes us with a big smile and a bowl of fantastic vegetable steamed dumplings. She knows us and knows our culinary needs. Although many of our Christian friends and neighbors are eating turkey and ham and Figgie pudding-like meals, Jeremy and I share non-traif and very non-December 25th dishes such as vegetarian General Tso’s Chicken and Hunan Bean Curd. Ironically, the restaurant’s decorations are Christmas-like, but the Chinese food and all of the Jewish clientele serve to make this a very pluralistic experience. After we read our fortune cookies, we head home with our bellies full and hearts warmed with yet another successful December 25th outing.