The Christmas Kid Read Free Page A

feel like he had a home. But Lev was in his room when we got there, and he was crying. Barney asked me to talk to him.
    “Go ’way,” Lev said, turning his back on me, sobbing into his pillow.
    “What’s the matter, Lev?”
    “Go ’way, go ’way.”
    “You don’t like turkey, Lev?” I said.
    He whirled around, full of anger. “Too much! Is too much! All food, food, food. Too much!”
    I was a kid then, but looking into the eyes of a boy who had survived a death camp, even I understood.
V
    After Thanksgiving, the Christmas season began. Down on Fifth Avenue, store windows magically filled with toys and train sets and red stockings. Christmas banners stretched across the downtown streets, painted with the slogans of Christmas, about peace on earth and good will toward men. Christmas music played from the loudspeakers, and there were Salvation Army bands outside Abraham & Straus and men selling chestnuts and rummies dressed in Santa Claus costumes, ringing little bells. We took Lev with us as we wandered these streets, and he was full of amazement and wonder.
    “But what is?” he said. “What is they mean, Christmas?”
    “Hey, Lev, fig- get it,” Ralphie Boy said. “You’re a Jew. Christmas is for Catlicks.”
    “Explain, please.”
    A theological discussion of extraordinary complexity then took place. Was Santa Claus a saint? Did they have Christmas bells in the stable in Bethlehem, and who made them? Did Joseph and Mary put stockings over the mantelpiece, and was there a mantelpiece in that stable? How come the Three Wise Men didn’t come on reindeer instead of camels, and, by the way, where did they come from? If Jesus was the son of God, why didn’t God just show up in person? It got even worse as we roamed around. But Lev stayed with it, almost burning with intensity, as if torn between the images in those store windows and the fact that he was a Jew.
    “Why is not for Jews?” he said.
    “Because Jesus was a Catlick, Lev,” Ralphie Boy explained.
    “No, he wasn’t,” my brother, Tommy, said. “Jesus was a Jew.”
    “Come on, ” Ralphie Boy said. “Stop kiddin’ around.”
    “I ain’t kiddin’,” Tommy said. “Jesus was a Jew. So was his mother and father.”
    “That’s right,” I said. “You could look it up.”
    “Well, when did he become a Catlick? After he died? ”
    “How do I know?” Tommy said. “All I know is, while he was here on earth he was a Jew.”
    “Ridiculous!” Ralphie Boy said.
    If Lev had any doubts about the essential craziness of the goyim, they were not resolved by this version of the Council of Trent.
VI
    Then Barney Augstein got sick and was taken to Methodist Hospital. There were whispered conversations about what was wrong with him, and then plans were made by Bridget and my mother and Charlie Flanagan. Bridget moved into Barney’s house, and my mother and Tommy and I came over every night to help Lev with his homework, and the women decided they could give a Christmas party anyway. They would combine Hanukkah and Christmas, get a Christmas tree, hang pictures of Santa Claus around the house, but leave out all the mangers and statues of Jesus. Barney was part of the planning; he called each night from the hospital and talked to Lev and then Bridget, and later Bridget would talk to my mother.
    “He wants to get the lad everything,” Bridget would say. “Train sets, and chemistry sets, and a big easel so he can paint. A camera. A radio. And I have to keep stopping him, because he’s gonna spoil that kid rotten.”
    Then on December 19, the first snowfall arrived in the city. Lev was in our house and we took him up to the roof and we stood there while the snow fell on the pigeon coops and the backyards, and obscured the skyline and the harbor, and clung to the trees, all of it pure and white and blinding. We scooped a handful from the roof of our pigeon coop, explained to Lev that it was “good packing,” and started dropping snowballs into the