Newspaper memories at Christmas

     Ah, Christmas memories. Crouched in the back of a CPD squad car cruising through Englewood. Diners crowded into a busy River North Thai restaurant. The great rose window of the Rose of Sharon Community Baptist Church, backlit by flame.
     Not your average Christmas memories. Then again, I am not your average Christmas celebrant. In fact, I've never observed the holiday in my life. Never woke up and scampered downstairs to see what Santa left me. Never lived in a house with a tree. Not once. I'm a Jew. We don't do Christmas.
     Okay, not generally. Some Jews do. They figure, the holiday is secular enough, why not join the party? Why miss out on fun, even if it's somebody else's fun? And I don't judge them.
     Okay, maybe I judge them a little. Cookies and carols are one thing. But a tree? Really? A "Hanukkah bush"? It's like wearing a medal for a battle you didn't fight in.
     What I have done, quite religiously, is work on Christmas. This year, needing to blow off a week of vacation or else lose it — and never losing vacation is close to holy writ for me — I deliberately took off the week of the 15th, so as to be back now, to lighten the load for my colleagues who have presents to wrap and mistle to toe and whatever else it is must be done to commemorate Jesus's birth.
     When I started at the Sun-Times, I'd work the night shift at Christmas, 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., grumbling mightily, trying to hide the fact that being in the newsroom on Christmas was begin italgreatend ital. You got paid double-time. There were platters of cookies and cold cuts. Not many people around. Often a bottle tucked somewhere. I remember sitting at the slot — the U-shaped central news desk — with ... thinking hard ... Jim Merriner, maybe? Silently sipping bourbon in white styrofoam coffee cups. Listening to the police scanner crackle at midnight.
     Being me, I tried to take advantage of the opportunity, wondering: who else works Christmas? I spent Christmas eve, 1986, riding around Englewood in the back of a police cruiser with a pair of rookies. Writing the story gave me a lot of respect for police officers — I was scared, running up the stairway of a pitch black six-flat, and I was with two cops.
     Another Christmas I visited Asian restaurants and interviewed Jews — and Muslims — happily chowing down. One said that eating Chinese food on Christmas is a Jewish tradition. Prompting a rabbi to phone me a couple days later to express outrage that I had somehow maligned Jewish traditions. I said something along the lines of "Rabbi, don't you see that you complaining is a worse insult to Judaism than the thing you're complaining about?" Leading to further complaints, meetings and apologies, teaching me a valuable lesson: save candor for people you respect.

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