I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas by Lewis Black

Author:Lewis Black
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Christmas & Advent, Humor, Form, General, Religion, Essays, Holidays, Christmas, American wit and humor
ISBN: 9781594487750
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2010-11-02T23:13:40.740668+00:00

CHRISTMAS DAY, 1:00 P.M.

Away in a Manger, No Crib for a Bed—Are You Kidding Me?

Since practically every cabdriver in New York seems to have little or no interest in the baby Jesus—yes, I surveyed them; do you think I make this kind of shit up?—the streets on Christmas Day are choked with empty cabs. For God’s sake, they should have bid against each other to see who drives me. There’s no one on the streets but smiling Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists, Jews, atheists, agnostics, Satanists and Wiccans, free from any form of persecution from the Christian masses, who are huddled around their holiday tree, knocking back the eggnog and listening to Bing Crosby sing “White Christmas.”

I grab a cab and head to the Upper West Side, to the apartment of my close friends Willie and Jenny. The Upper West Side has become one of the grand bastions of child-raising on the entire island of Manhattan. People who don’t live here believe it’s impossible to raise rational, well-adjusted, non-Satanic children in New York City. That somehow this place is a world filled with pederasts, pornographers, exhibitionists, drug addicts, drunks, hookers, and pimps. Bingo! Of course it is. And so is every small town in America. The fact is, they are a very small part of the eight million people who live in the city I call home—some of whom, I admit, are very odd. And while there are all sorts of criminal types here, we also have a lot of policemen—more than 35,000, in fact. So the people who think you can’t safely raise a normal kid here don’t know what they’re talking about. These are the same people who think it’s the greatest city on earth, and that it’s a nice place to visit, but they wouldn’t want to live here. They are crybabies.

Besides, who the fuck determined the ideal place to raise a child anyway? Having a lawn isn’t a requirement. It might be nice, I admit—I loved being raised in suburban Maryland—but look at what happened to me. An expanse of well-manicured lawn didn’t make me the sane individual who writes this deathless prose that you’re reading right now. And a lawn certainly doesn’t assure a safe environment. Where better for a poisonous snake to lie in wait for you? And, for God’s sake, if we believe the newspaper headlines or the bloviating talking heads on TV, the suburbs are a heavenly green play-ground for sexual predators.

In my opinion, you can raise children anywhere. ANYWHERE! Don’t believe me? Then flip through the pages of a National Geographic. Billions—BILLIONS!—of parents raise their children all over the world, in places where there are lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) and there’s nary a lawn chair or Water Weasel in sight. They raise children in boats floating on water. They even raise children in Los Angeles, the only place where you can hear the sound of the void—because there is no fucking “there” there. (Gertrude Stein said that about Oakland. She’d agree with me on this if she were alive today.

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