There Goes the Neighborhood
My parents have had a Christmas village for years now.
Dad gets all the supplies from storage and carefully unwraps The General Store, Post Office, and Unoffensive White People.
Snow covered trees sway in the background while carolers softly sing among the delightfully upper middle-class ice skaters.
Between Thanksgiving and New Year's, Main Street comes alive again in my parent's living room. Traditional Christian families walk the town square in peace, Santa isn't mugged by meth addicts, and The First Metropolitan Bank denies loans to minorities without a worry in the world.
I've always looked at the homogeneous community and wondered aloud, "Where are the brown and black faces?"
"This reminds us of our youth," Dad would say. "And this is what it looked like back in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the 1950s."
Ahh, yes. Let's glorify a time when segregation was legal, women could only get laid lying down and people listened to Elvis Presley - on purpose.
However, when we arrived home this past Thursday, Mom and Dad gathered my boys around the table and Dad asked,
"Notice anything different?"
Took us a minute.
The boys pointed to the ornate building with blue stars in the windows.
"That's new," Youngest said.
"Right!" Dad exclaimed. "We added a Heeb House!"
Oh good Lord.
"It's a synagogue, Grandpa," Oldest said.
"Wow," I said. "This is really great how you continue to reach out and include us in your yearly traditions. Makes this little village that much nicer, too. Maybe next year you'll add a mosque."
"Don't get ridiculous," Dad said.
Couple days later, my niece came over and demanded to know,
"Where am I? I don't see anyone who looks like me."
She is part-Hispanic.
And she has a point.
Can't wait until the gay/liberal/vegan/hippie/atheist relatives arrive and demand to see their representation in the Old Time Christmas Village.
Right now, several of both are thinking, "I hope she's not talking about me."
I am.
And come on. The Irish pub doesn't have a single Irish drunk.
My blood relatives can do better than that.
Pretty soon, this village is gonna rock.
posted by kate @ 2:41 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Hanukkah Harry will be so pleased!
You know, you could always encourage your children to do what I did. My grandmother had one of these Christmas villages and I loved the thing. I loved it so much that I decided, when I was four, everyone looked so drab and unhappy. I had just gotten a set of markers (who gives permanent markers to a four year old? Clearly, they were asking for trouble) and one day, when my Grandmother wasn't looking, I pulled them out and went to town. So not only were there black and brown people, but there were yellow and red and some with skin tones only James T. Kirk would find attractive. My Grandmother was furious at me for about three days until she liked her village the best of all her friends because it looked far more, her word, "festive".
God, even then, the signs were there if you cared to look for them.
I think its great your parents reached out and added the mosque. It shows they are progressing.
I think you should do some "xmas shopping" and add to the community....some different races and a couple of guys walking hand and hand. :)
A heeb house. Jolly good show. When do a quartet of mop tops start performing in the village square, serenading the main street populous with yeah-yeah-yeahs?
Hmmm, on second thought? They could use a Chubby Checker figurine to promote diversity and the twist.
How about a same sex couple with some children? haha, that would chap somebody...or someone in drag? Even better!!!
This makes me want to make a village of my own (even though i hate xmas) and put some really strange and different people in it. BTW...Sneak in a rainbow flag somewhere in there Kate...
"They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk:
Why you ain't,
Where you is,
What he drive,
Where he stay,
Where he work,
Who you be...
And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.
And then I heard the father talk.
Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.
In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.
People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around.
The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.
These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids. $500 sneakers for what?!?
And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics?
I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.
Where were you when he was 2??
Where were you when he was 12??
Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol??
And where is the father?? Or who is his father?
People putting their clothes on backward: Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong?
People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something?
Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up?
Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?
What part of Africa did this come from??
We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa .
With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.
Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem.
We have got to take the neighborhood back.
People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now.
We have millionaire football players who cannot read.
We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We, as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us.
We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.
We cannot blame the white people any longer."
- Bill Cosby
Isn't it about time you headed back to Colorado?
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