Christmas in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn
"From this high midtown hall, undecked with
boughs, unfortified with mistletoe, we send forth our tinselled greetings as of
old, to friends, to readers, to strangers of many conditions in many places.
Merry Christmas to uncertified accountants, to tellers who have made a mistake
in addition, to girls who have made a mistake in judgment, to grounded airline
passengers, and to all those who can't eat clams! We greet with particular
warmth people who wake and smell smoke. To captains of river boats on snowy mornings
we send an answering toot at this holiday time. Merry Christmas to
intellectuals and other despised minorities! Merry Christmas to the musicians
of Muzak and men whose shoes don't fit! Greetings of the season to unemployed
actors and the blacklisted everywhere who suffer for sins uncommitted; a holly
thorn in the thumb of compilers of lists! Greetings to wives who can't find
their glasses and to poets who can't find their rhymes! Merry Christmas to the
unloved, the misunderstood, the overweight. Joy to the authors of books whose
titles begin with the word "How" (as though they knew!). Greetings to
people with a ringing in their ears; greetings to growers of gourds, to
shearers of sheep, and to makers of change in the lonely underground booths!
Merry Christmas to old men asleep in libraries! Merry Christmas to people who
can't stay in the same room with a cat! We greet, too, the boarders in boarding
houses on 25 December, the duennas in Central Park in fair weather and foul, and
young lovers who got nothing in the mail. Merry Christmas to people who plant
trees in city streets; merry Christmas to people who save prairie chickens from
extinction! Greetings of a purely mechanical sort to machines that think--plus
a sprig of artificial holly. Joyous Yule to Cadillac owners whose conduct is
unworthy of their car! Merry Christmas to the defeated, the forgotten, the
inept; joy to all dandiprats and bunglers! We send, most particularly and most
hopefully, our greetings and our prayers to soldiers and guardsmen on land and
sea and in the air--the young men doing the hardest things at the hardest time
of life. To all such, Merry Christmas, blessings, and good luck! We greet the
Secretaries-designate, the President-elect; Merry Christmas to our new leaders,
peace on earth, good will, and good management! Merry Christmas to couples
unhappy in doorways! Merry Christmas to all who think they are in love but
aren't sure! Greetings to people waiting for trains that will take them in the
wrong direction, to people doing up a bundle and the string is too short, to
children with sleds and no snow! We greet ministers who can't think of a moral,
gagmen who can't think of a joke. Greetings, too, to the inhabitants of other
planets; see you soon! And last, we greet all skaters on small natural ponds at
the edge of woods toward the end of afternoon. Merry Christmas, skaters! Ring,
steel! Grow red, sky! Die down, wind! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good
morrow!"
--E.B. White, 12/20/52
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