Have Yourselves a Very Goofy Christmas

As confirmed Jews, Goof family Christmas traditions are a bit thin.  We do have the fond memory of several Christmases seeing the segments of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and then meeting for sushi.  Traditionally Jews eat Chinese on Christmas, but we aren't Orthodox so our tradition allows some flexibility.  As we sat down, my father - as is his custom (not a Jewish thing, just him) - took a handkerchief and honked his brains out - alerting the his family, the wait-staff, and much of the East Coast that he was now prepared to eat.

"It's the Horn of Gondor!" I yelled.

Holiday memories...

Goofs of Christmas Past
But we do have a few other memories, most notably my efforts to educate the little Goofs about this holiday that 90% of the people in the country celebrate.  It has been an uphill struggle since so much of what easily accessible pop culture produces about Christmas is so profoundly dreadful - including an animated musical based on the song, "Grandma Got Run Over a by Reindeer" (which includes the worst Christmas song, and possibly the worst song ever.

Our Christmas memories are most about movies from the Alvin and the Chipmunks to the Chronicles of Narnia.

And once in a while, I get a slight sense of something deeply spiritual in the air.

Ghosts of Christmas Presents
But really, during Christmas I think of China.

Cheap toys have changed childhood.  For the most part I am jealous of kids today, but I am not sure these cheap toys are not a Manchurian plot to further the American spiral into decadence by lowering our already weak ability to defer gratification and making us dumber.

However, if our leadership were clever, they would turn this Chinese plot on it head by adopting my Nobel-nominated Show and Tell stimulus plan to turn the American economy around.

Ghosts of Christmas Future
I have DVR'd It's a Wonderful Life and plan to watch it with the little Goofs tomorrow.  There will be many questions, but it is a cultural touchstone and they should be familiar with it.  I watched a few minutes tonight - I had forgotten how sweet it is, how easily it tugs at our emotions.

That being said, I expect the little Goofs to just wonder how people survived before the invention of color, "Is that what things looked like when Bubbe and Pop were little?"