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Christmastime Booty
Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2004 - 4:41 PM
Perhaps my favorite Christmastime memory is one of my parents and Keri and I living in Moscow. We lived for eight months in two roughly 10 x 20 hotel rooms in a hotel that was built for the 1980 Summer Olympics. It�s a five building complex and each building has a thousand rooms. The hotel, Izmailovo, is situated in a way that the five buildings form a wind tunnel. Through this wind tunnel you could walk from our building to the Izmailovsky Park metro station on the dark blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line and be in nearly any part of Moscow within a very short amount of time. Behind the hotel, there was a shack where they sold the foulest smelling pizza that you'd ever want to choke down. Unfortunately, much of the time it was either this pizza or pre-packaged beef stroganoff or chili dogs that were sealed and shipped to us from America. Behind it was an island that Peter the Great gave to his mother as a birthday present. In Moscow, Christmas falls on the day that much of Eastern Europe celebrates. Seventh January is the day endorsed by the Russian Orthodox Church as Christmas. The iron fist of communism had forbid the Russian people from openly celebrating Christmas for seventy years. My family had arrived in Russia on November 16 (Communism was officially through with when Boris Yeltson was democratically voted in as President that April) and a mere month and a half later, my dad and two other men, Jim and Carl, were able to organize the first "Christmas in Moscow" that Moscow had seen in nearly three generations. We rented a large cinema to hold the event in and gave away Disney licensed plush toys donated by the Dolly company, stuffed animals, American candy (vastly different from the chewy wax in paper that was your only option in Russia), Hotwheels and other toys to 1,500 orphans and provided them with popcorn to eat (many eating it for the very first time) while they watched a movie in that cinema. At this cinema called Arctica was the first Christmas tree that the theater had ever seen. It was every bit as nice as the Christmas tree that resided at the Kremlin that year and the Russians that served as our interpreters had as much fun as anyone helping to decorate the tree and spray it and the windows with snow in a can (the first time they'd ever heard of such a thing) into the early morning hours before the big event. Some of the orphans weren't able to come to the cinema. They were the cancer patients receiving treatment in a local hospital and so we brought Christmas to them. The bright lights dancing in their eyes and the smiles on their faces transcended any barrier that language attempted to impose. Laughter and a merry heart were seen everywhere. The day after the Christmas in Moscow, Russia's Minister of Welfare telephoned and wanted to see one of our coordinators. Jim thought we were in trouble. Upon arriving at the Minister's office and being ushered in to see him, the Minister told him why he'd brought him in. His secretaries had been busy all day answering calls from those that lived around the Arctica Cinema. The locals wanted to know if some Americans could come in and spread Christmas the way we had, why the Welfare Department could not. He asked Jim if we'd show him how to do such a program for the following years. Christmas came twice for me that winter even though we had very little money. I received a Russian chess set on December 25 and on 7 Janurary I got a pair of authentic Russian military binoculars (great for looking down from our 23rd floor hotel window) and some Nickelodeon Gak that my parents had asked someone to bring from the States when they came to help with our project. Combined, my presents probably cost less than $10, but I couldn�t have been happier with my presents. On Russian Christmas night, I used my binoculars to try to see the fireworks a little better. The fireworks looked a lot like ours shooting into the air, but when you were waiting for the beautiful peacock of an explosion, you realized that Russian fireworks, having been made under an economic strategy that still more closely resembled communism than the capitalism they were in the midst of morphing to, don�t explode like American fireworks, they just sort of� fizzle out. The experience of giving a gift to so many that were less fortunate than me and seeing their faces turn from Standard-Russian-Face-of-Doom Gray to Bright-Christmas-Cheer Glow (both Crayola colors, I believe) is one that I'll always carry with me; even with the lack of memory that I've become notorious for among my friends. I�ll never forget seeing Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theater or watching the changing of the guards at Lennon�s Tomb. I�ll always remember navigating the Goom � Russia�s most famous mall that seemed enormous to a twelve year old � and taking the tour through a few of the seven temples and staircases that lay under the seven onion shaped domes of St. Basil�s Cathedral. I�ll never forget standing in line for an hour and a half in below freezing temperatures to eat at Pizza Hut as we tended to do once a week or our bi-weekly tradition of getting our goat�s milk milkshakes and cheeseburgers at McDonald�s only to stand with trays in hand and listen to �Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head� in Muzak form next to a table full of people and watch them eat because every one of the tables at the very first McDonald�s in Russia (the largest McDonald�s in the world at the time it was built) was quite literally full from opening to close. I�ll never forget watching the world famous Russian Circus for the very first time (or missing it because we overslept due to jet lag on what was supposed to be our very first time.) And I'll always remember how much it hurt to hit the back of my head on the ridiculously unsafe roller coaster at Gorky Park. But my favorite part of that Christmas season was when my parents and Keri and I went out one mid-morning in subzero temperatures all bundled up from rabbit fur hat covered head to waterproof boot laden toe. We walked past the smelly pizza place, across the street, and down the bank to the moat that surrounded the island that Peter the Great had given his mother. During the winter, it got so cold that we used to watch cars drive across the moat from our 23 floor window and at times we could watch men ice fishing on its surface. On this particular morning it had a fresh layer of snow. My memory tells me it was four to six inches deep (though admittedly, my memory is not to be trusted). We walked out to the middle and my dad dragged his feet in a large circle. Then he and my mom drew lines willy-nilly going here and there. And then, they taught Keri and me how to play Fox and Geese, a game in which one person is the fox and you must catch one of the geese, but you cannot step outside of the haphazard spokes; a game of tag for the snow. It's the only time I ever remember my parents playing with me in the snow. And it's a Christmastime memory I'll treasure forever.
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