The return of Christmas cheer

Heaven, I'm in heaven
And the cares that hung around me through the week
Seem to vanish like a gambler's lucky streak
When we're out together dancing cheek to cheek
—Irving Berlin, “Cheek to Cheek”

Work, work and more work, right through the weekend again. But this time should be cake. My year-end vacation is in sight. After next Wednesday I’m off till the 3rd of ’05. Aw, yeah.

And I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here, in the best city on earth at Christmas. The weather’s colder, more December-like now, and the city’s dancing with its denizens like Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers. Just like it must have felt during the Depression, to see Fred and Ginger on the big screen, dancing to a Gershwin or Berlin standard as though the times were but a bad dream, that’s how it feels today walking the streets of Manhattan. I’m not being senti- mental; it’s just the way it is in the big town during the holidays.

New Yorkers get a little slower and lighter in step this time of year; there’s so much to savor. Slick art deco lobbies ornamented with festoons of pine. A Salvation Army band, sounding like a New Orleans funeral, joyous and mindful. Balconies on high-rise buildings, draped with white and multicolored lights. An old homeless man pushing a shopping cart and wearing a Santa hat. The crowds, of shoppers, tourists, theatergoers and office-party revelers, their high-spiritedness a contagion to the most grizzled of us working stiffs. But lots of smiles, even from those under the 50-hour harness.

Not that I was feeling this festive all week. I threw my back out on Tuesday. Let it be said, men are crybabies when it comes to their ailments. On Wednesday, while stuffing envelopes with cash for the super, the parking attendants, the postman, the laundry workers and my barber, my nagging backache had me thinking more like old Ebenezer Scrooge, denigrating the season as a “poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!''

Then on Thursday I received a Christmas card from my ex-girlfriend. “It is in giving that we receive,” the cover quoted Francis of Assisi. Not exactly a visit by the Three Spirits of Christmas. But it did make me feel a little better.

Okay, I thought, looking over the stuffed envelopes. So here’s something for Marco the super, even though I had to wait 3 weeks for him to send someone to repair my leaky shower. Here’s something for the parking attendants, even though they had to send my car into the body shop to repair a dent they caused, and then had to recharge my battery after leaving the key in the ignition. Here’s something for the workers at the Laundromat Café, where a towel and several socks have gone missing. And here’s something for Steve my barber, for his talents in making the same haircut look a little different each time.

Like I said, I was feeling better, but not exactly beatific, like Francis, or blissful, like a redeemed Scrooge. That feeling only came Friday morning, after sleeping on a heating pad on loan from my ex-girlfriend. One night on that and suddenly my back wasn’t so disagreeable. Suddenly it was okay to recognize the people in my life who get it right most of the time. Give Scrooge his Three Spirits, give Francis his visions, lend me a heating pad, and all is well with the world.

Men are crybabies over their aches and pains, and I’m no exception, especially when they flare while the rest of the city is dancing.