Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Christmas in Hollywood

I love the holidays, always have.  Perhaps it's because we never really celebrated them growing up, which created a nostalgic mythology about the whole season, especially in LA. I tried to get Ma into it. I'd beg for a tree, to which she'd argue "We're Jewish for Christ's sake!" and besides, it would kill my grandmother if she ever found it. Did I really want to live with that guilt? 

"It's enough that our menorah is from Mexico," she huffed.

"Well, how 'bout a Channukah Bush? I think they do that in Israel, don't they?" Not that we celebrated Channukah, either. We usually just lit the menorah on the nights we got presents.

"Now that's absurd, Roxanne!"

One year I was so desperate to celebrate Christmas like all the other LA Jews that I cut a branch off one of the cypress trees in the backyard, put it in a vase, and decorated it with cheap Christmas tchotchkes I got at Newberry's. 

"You're dragging that fucking tinsel crap all over the house," Ma complained, which was true. 

"Yeah, but it's pretty, isn't it?" I was proud of my little tree.

"It's low class," she said, picking a piece out of her hair. "Get rid of it!"

"After Christmas. I promise! Can we go back to Newberry's and get some more orgaments?"

Ma frowned. How I knew she hated that "fucking store." But I reeeeely wanted a few more candy canes and lambs for the little cypress. "You can get more of that Almond Roca stuff that you like... Or, I know! I can get it for you for Christmas! I mean, Channukah!"

At some point she'd give in and we'd head down to Pico Blvd in the fat red and brown station wagon.  After a bit of browsing, she'd even get a little excited,  enjoy looking at all the cheap Christmas crap with me. "Look at thooooooooooooose," she'd say, pointing behind the counter. "Pretty." 

"See Ma?" I'd say, "isn't Christmas cool?" My body flooded with hope every time Ma played along with my holiday fantasy. Maybe this time. Maybe this year it will be just like it is on TV. Maybe the family will appear, the snow will miraculously fall upon us here in the desert, and Santa may come down our chimney the same way he does at Kenny's house.

Inevitably Ma's patience would run out and it would be back to the usual,  "this is just cheap crap shit and we don't celebrate Christmas and let's get out of this fucking store, I got work to do!" 

But by then I was coasting on the high of hope.  On the drive home,  I held tightly to my little bag of shiny ornaments and basked in the parade of Hollywood Holy-Jolly that never quite looked so beautiful as it did that December twilight. The SoCal palm trees proudly wore their tinsel high in the azure sky, leaning their exotic necks toward the ocean. Santa and his reindeer flew across Santa Monica Boulevard in the 75 degree sunshine while Sinatra crooned swingin' Christmas songs out of all the rolled down car windows, gridlocked, but beautifully happy. 

Even Ma swearing at the "idiots" ahead of us in traffic as we drove away from Newberry's couldn't touch me safe in my holiday dreamland. I knew we'd be back next year, maybe sooner. Someday, Ma might even say yes to everything.

...

Childhood holiday stories? Snapshots? Fantasies?