Movie & Chinese

Of Christmas traditions, movie and Chinese restaurant are latecomers, perhaps now too much of a calendar cliche nearing the end of its run.  I'm not a movie devotee, though I like last year's West Side Story reprise and this year's The Fablemans, both Spielberg creations of high visual quality.  One a classic story, the other perhaps a little too autobiographical.  The experience of going to the cinema has changed, in some ways for the better, in some ways a deterioration.  I remember something of an auditorium with a lot of people.  You paid your ticket, picked any open seat, watched a few previews of upcoming films and a few ads to induce you to purchase something of high markup from the snack bar, then waited for the feature, or for those of us old enough to remember, a cartoon or Three Stooges short movie before the feature.

It's much more stage now.  Far fewer people, multiplex format that gives a choice of smaller theaters with different movies playing at staggered times.  The seats are reserved.  Our row and the one behind us was filled, most of the theater was unoccupied.  Seats resembled high-end living room loungers that fully reclined, with a tray in front for the snacks.  Endless previews, no short feature introduction, and seating much more spread out.  Certainly better acoustics.  Lobby and snack bar empty.  No functioning ticket office.  Everyone reserves and prints their tickets from their devices.  In effect, you go to see what is on the screen, not to be among your classmates and neighbors as in days of yore.  People have good lounging recliners at home, reasonably big flat screens though not on the scale of the cinema or with comparable acoustics, microwaves that make decent pop-corn, two liter soda bottles with ice cubes in the freezer.  If being among friends or crowds doesn't add to the experience as it once did, then home viewing has a lot of advantages.  The marketplace may be expressing that personal preference for a lot of people, as the relative reduction in the number of fellow Jews who went out this freezing Christmas may indicate.

Chinese restaurants seem less plentiful than they once were.  The Covid-19 pandemic may have inflicted a mortal wound to some.  A few have become more Asian than dedicated American adaptation of Chinese.  Most are now small storefront takeout.  Ambience once required Oriental waiters, probably hard to find as the younger generation excels in STEM which draws many to some very lucrative opportunities that their parent's businesses could not match.  And restaurant staffing expenses have gone up, as has the price of food.  Our default Chinese restaurant must have had staffing limitations, as they shifted to takeout only this Christmas weekend.  Poor experience at a more upscale place last year.  I really didn't want to extend to more upscale Eastern Asian.  Indochina and Japan and Korea just aren't what Jews seek on Christmas.  We settled for a buffet around the corner, once cheap, now less so.  Once a Jewish destination on Christmas.  This year a mixture of many ethnicities, all looking for a place that's open primarily.  Wide variety of options, none excel.  Not all that hungry.  The real Chinese restaurant on Christmas really isn't that of dabbling from a buffet, a good deal of which I could make at home.  It is selecting something vegetarian that I would never make at home for lack of ingredients and patience.  One selection by my wife, one by me, a big bowl of rice, some tea in a pot with small porcelain cups that have no ear to grasp.  Some offer cocktails or beer from China.  And a Beckoning Cat at the front register, even though that really may be of Japanese origin.  Buffet just isn't really the Jewish Christmas cuisine or experience.  This may be my last year to seek it out

The real Christmas experience for Jewish doctors like me really isn't movies and Chinese.  It's being on call.  Giving colleagues special family time.  Reassuring patients in the hospital, if not making key decisions while services are less than full scale.  Bantering with nurses, cafeteria attendants, and housekeepers who would rather be home celebrating Christmas but either lack seniority or have empty households, yielding the special day to colleagues who have children or more plentiful extended families.  Petting the antler wearing German Shepherds that make security rounds with the hospital's Constables.  That's a much better Christmas experience than anything a Spielberg extravaganza or Wing Wah can offer.

Twas the Day Before Christmas

Without elaborating an opinion, more places seem to be shutting down this year.  Most of the stores close at about 6PM.  By then shabbos will have already commenced.  Nothing open tomorrow except gas stations, places for medical urgencies, and  first responders.  A day of rest, maybe respite.  Churches open.  Synagogues too, as the legal holiday coincides with our weekly observance of shabbos.

Have enough gas.  Need mini-challot, so off to Shop-Rite this morning.  Ingredients for cheesecake on sale, so get that too and make the cake in a few days.  But for the most part, let the year count down, some projects completed, others to continue, others to be abandoned.

Merry Christmas

As the Jewish physician in the group, Christmas was my assigned holiday on call for most of my career.  More recently as the hospital's only endocrinologist, I let it lapse to a legal holiday, took the day off unless it was part of an extended weekend, then saw in-patients that day.  Now retired, it's movies and Chinese as is our ethnic tradition.

   

     

Combining Festivals

Hanukkah has arrived, roughly its usual time on the American calendar, always its usual time on the Hebrew Calendar.  Opened our first of eight gifts, mine being an eyeglass holder to keep behind my bed to keep my glasses from falling behind the bed.  My wife, a cat aficionado, got a cat doll that can be warmed in the microwave and hugged.  We lit candles, greeted each other mostly electronically, took the Delaware Democrats to task in cyberspace for posting a shabbos menorah with seven branches instead of the traditional Hanukkiah with nine.  They updated their image. 

Hanukkah, while festive in its own right with its own special traditions and foods, does not always occur in isolation.  The movability of the Hebrew and American dates and Hebrew leap years comprising a full month every seven of nineteen years, sometimes the Hanukkah season changes.  It can rarely coincide with Thanksgiving, more frequently coincide one of the eight days with Christmas and nearly always merged into the Christmas season.  This year I got a special overlap, with my wife's birthday falling on the First Day, as mine sometimes does during Pesach.

Thanksgiving and birthdays derive from our public calendar, one a fixed date the other with a small amount of variability so this birthday and Thanksgiving are always not far from each other.  I have become the Grand Chef for both and seem to derive my own measure of pleasure from the menu planning to the execution to the cleanup.  Postponed the potato latkes until later in the Hanukkah festival, substituting as the starch shlishkas, a gnocchi-like pasta shaped as a nugget, one of the treats offered to me by my Hungarian maternal grandmother and now propagated, though via a yiddish cookbook recipe.  And we had roast duck, a very rare treat of limited availability.  Royal nuisance to make, again dependent on a classic preparation method from an encyclopedic cookbook, but worthy of a special occasion.  And an almond torte known as torta del re, this one from an Italian Kosher cookbook, another special occasion item, though with readily available ingredients and with modern cooking appliances not very difficult to make. 

So two occasions overlap, a birthday and Hanukkah, neither in competition with the other, unlike the secular festivals which sometimes do undermine each other.  All are special, even Christmas which was celebrated by my taking medical call each year as part of a specialty group and now going out for Chinese like the rest of the Jewish community that day.  We can now proceed with the rest of our Hanukkah for its own sake.

Hanukkah Gifts

It has always been my desire to complete gift buying before the Christmas rush.  After marrying into my family, I quickly adopted my in-law's tradition of one small gift for each member of the household with each Hanukkah candle and a single gift, also of relatively nominal value. for each first degree relative.  That left me with a short list, father, later step-mother, two siblings and I absorbed an edible for my wife's aunt.  As a newlywed, the only one living a distance from home turf, I would putter around Harvard Square and downtown Boston, for just the right book or kitchen gadget from the small stores that lined either Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge or the very large but suitable Woolworth's, z"l where I could always count on something with my wife's first name.  My last year, Massachusetts, or at least Boston, allowed the stores to stay open on Sundays between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the hospital of my residency allowed all employees, including the residents to designate a floating holiday as "Christmas Shopping Day." which all of did.  That meant I could not beat Black Friday and Hanukkah usually falls a couple of weeks before Christmas leaving some scramble.  Yet even though I had only a few individuals, it may have been my best time during the year to think about multiple people and diverse interests at the same time.  Birthday's seemed a little easier, one person at a time and a more liberal budget.  Later some relocation on my part and my father's part, a couple of children, then attrition of the list which is now my own household and far-off offspring.  Fewer people to tease out interests and personalities but the principles have endured.  I could shop on-line but not at that budget.  The small stores, even along Harvard Square, have given way to mega-chains that give a huge variety and a favorable price, but it is not as easy to find something that shouts that's the essence of my son or daughter. 

Still, I reached my quota, eight for wife, four for each child, before Thanksgiving this year, hastened slightly by wanting my daughter to carry her gifts across the country when she visits us.  Restrained by budget as always, but also now restrained by the TSA to avoid anything sharp or liquid. 

Black Friday and beyond will soon arrive, Hanukkah itself ten days or so later.  Gift wrapping has its own challenge, as does shipping, but even there, firms like Staples or MailBoxes Etc have made that easy enough.  Concentrate on being festive.

Winter Holidays

Hanukkah has come and gone, Christmas has come and gone, New Years as a denouement.  My son and wife got extended breaks from their usual activities, I got a brief but welcome reduction in my activities as well.  The office slowed down, leaving me with some catch-up opportunity, perhaps even a little get-ahead opportunity.  I did some cleaning and organizing at home.  My commitments to the synagogue still linger but most of that has been winding down.

I feel better than I did in the fall.  Better rested, less frazzled, perhaps a little impatient with people as I gave myself a two week prescription holiday.  My mind seems a little sharper, my posts on www.sermo.com a little more thoughtfully constructed, particularly the non-medical comments.

With just a few days until the conclusion of the current calendar year, I've not fully outlined my intentions for the next six months but they seem to be taking shape.  There is a tension between thinking big and thinking realistically doable.  I do not know which is better.  Creation of Me Time each month with a day trip somewhere within 100 miles is doable.  Disseminating my blog to thousands is probably not, at least as a personal project.  Having a joint research project with U of Penn might fall somewhere in between.

Taking Shabbos Off

Even when Christmas comes on shabbos, the Jewish doctors take weekend call, as I have done every year since starting practice in 1990 and all years but one since my internship.  This weekend, the legal holiday was Christmas Eve, a Friday, when I went to the relatively quiet hospital, saw a couple of new consults, rounded on a dozen more and drove home for a quiet shabbos dinner at services at Beth Emeth that failed to materialize.  Their intermarriage situation may be more profound than I realized.  Logistically it makes most sense for me to take Saturday call from home, which I did, then round and see new consults on Sunday, which is how I usually have been handling the weekends at Mercy.  Only one consult came through, no other calls.  It was my original intent to do nothing.  Instead, I caught up on decluttering, moving a few loads of papers to the recycling bin, putting away most of my clothing, creating a PsychoPath in the bedroom.  I did not go to services.  The Rabbi would wonder if one of the Jewish doctors showed up.