A Very Gatsby Christmas
So this is Christmas?
I basically had two Christmas traditions and they both involved Chinese food. The first really developed because of Orange Garden, Chicago’s oldest Chinese restaurant and the place with the neon sign is the oldest in the city. It is truly my idea of perfection and I am pretty sure that going there as a young kid helped ruin every restaurant experience after because nothing was as good as going there. Even though it was opened in 1932, pre-dating me by over 50 years, I don’t think it looked so old in my memories. That is, Chicago had a lot of places that blended together with it when I was a kid. My childhood memories of the city look a little bit more like the 1981 Michael Mann film Thief. So the first time I went there I recall more neon, more flashing lights, remnants of Art Deco’s domination on popular architecture reflecting off the snow. Mind you, Orange Garden wasn’t always my family’s spot for what’s known as “Jewish Christmas,” but the one time we went there was enough to cement it in my mind as heaven. So when I was in my late-teens and 20s, I made it a tradition to go there for the holiday myself. It was quiet. It was nice. I remember the waiters wore bowties. The egg rolls were delicious.
When I moved to New York City, I found myself on my own for Christmas eight years in a row. No big deal, I always said. I just made new traditions, usually going to a kosher Chinese spot or No Pork Halal Kitchen. Then I’d go home and watch a few movies, usually ones I’d seen before. Almost always “Christmas movies” that only get that designation because of the time they took place in. The short list of movies includes Metropolitan, Eyes Wide Shut, Bell, Book and Candle and the one that squeaks onto the list, All That Heaven Allows. Although there is some Christmas in this film, trying to pass it off as a true holiday film is difficult. And yet, I go back to it every few years and marvel at what a beautiful movie it is. That, and how Rock Hudson nails every single look in the film, from the old Pendleton plaids to the buffalo plaid jacket.
I bring up all of this to say that 1. You should watch All That Heaven Allows this Christmas. I don’t want to tell you what to do, and if you’re in the “Die Hard is the best Christmas movie” camp then I’d probably say skip it. But while I’m eating my No Pork Halal fried rice this year, it will probably be on. And 2. The perfect buffalo plaid jacket has always eluded me, I think because of this film, but also because growing up in the aforementioned time and place of Chicago in the 1980s, I have these weird memories of Fulton Market with my grandfather to get supplies for the hot dog place he owned for a bit. I remember seeing the guys that worked there all looking bad ass in these kinds of coats, their blood-soaked aprons hanging below their waists, lots of Bears hats and Mike Ditka mustaches to be seen. I guess you had to be there to truly appreciate it.
That’s not to say I haven’t tried. Every single one I’ve ever purchased, save for a Levi’s buffalo plaid packer jacket I got on sale a few years back, I purchased vintage. But I’ve never found the one. Maybe that’s one of the things I’ll put on my list for 2021. Seeking out and finding my perfect buffalo plaid jacket so I can do some Douglas Sirk cosplay next year.
All I want for Christmas is this Rolex ashtray
(Via superchillandcool420)
A very cheesy thing
When I was 20 or so and going through a particularly rough patch, I did my first rereading of The Great Gatsby. Yes, it’s a very melodramatic young person thing to do, but, well, I was young and melodramatic and maybe sometimes I still feel that way. Yet there was something that stuck out to me. One particular part. I think you know the one I’m talking about.
Gatsby is one of those books. You usually read it in high school and it goes in and out of fashion. For a few years everybody loves it, and then for a few years you notice the popular sentiment tends to turn on it. I understand the reasons why for both, and I won’t argue for either of them since plenty of people have done that already.
What I will say is that I opened the book up for the first time in a few years yesterday and went right to the passage that starts with:
“One of my most vivid memories is of coming back west from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening with a few Chicago friends already caught up into their own holiday gayeties to bid them a hasty goodbye.”
Eventually getting to this:
“When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour before we melted indistinguishably into it again.
That’s my middle-west—not the wheat or prairies or the lost Swede towns but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family’s name.”
I’ve always think about that passage, and I know I’m not the only one. Susan Choi wrote about it a few years back and summed up something I’ve always felt as a Midwesterner who made his way east:
“On a language level, I have a purely visceral reaction this passage. I feel this rush of emotion that I can't really explain but it's tied to homecoming, and travel. I'm from the Midwest, from Indiana, and maybe that's part of it — this passage in some way connects to my desire to romanticize what I consider to be a pretty unromantic place of origin.”
Of course, I romanticize where I’m from all the time, so that I can’t relate to. But the rush of emotion I get from reading that part, yeah, same. Seeing people one last time before the holidays start. Saying good-bye and I’ll see you again. It’s wild how much I missed that this year. That feeling of knowing we’ll meet again very soon.
This year I picked out my old paperback copy of Gatsby with Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s eyes looking back at me because I wanted to scan over that part of the book a few times. It made me think of all the people and place and things I missed this year and how by this time in 2021, I’d really like to be able to say I made up for as much lost time as possible.
Anyway, that is all to say I hope you enjoy this Christmas no matter how you spend it.