Is there a more essentialised image than Christmas in New York? Rockin' around the Rockefeller tree, the couple ice skating romantically around Central Park, and the department store Santa who really is old Saint Nick...
If I could produce an ‘Essentialised New York Christmas Movie’, it would re-run on cable channels every holiday season, and go a
little something like this:
Our story begins with the shaking of an Empire State Building snow globe, zooming into the real life New York setting. You're part of a white, middle class, nuclear family (poor kids from the Ghetto tend to ask Santa for simple things like dinner, which test audiences find to be a real downer). Like a bumbling idiot, your dad (dressed in a painfully embarrassing Rudolf turtleneck) is incapable of stringing up twinkle lights without obtaining some *hilarious* injury. He's in an ongoing feud with the competitive next door neighbours, who make it their life's ambition to outdo your holiday decorations. Somewhere along the way there's a kiss under the mistletoe, a cringeworthy modern spin to traditional carols, and of course, waking up to a white Christmas.
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| Choose your own adventure: You can be Cindy-Lou or Kevin in the 'Essentialised New York Christmas Movie' |
It's up to you, an adorable (yet annoying to everyone watching at home) child, to make the neighbours realise that rampant commercialism is ruining the holiday. After recognising the error in their ways, a snowstorm causes the power to go out. Together you sing carols around the piano by the warmth of an open fire, reminding the audience of the true meaning of Christmas.
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| The film will be directed by the Christopher Columbus that didn't kill any Indians |
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I almost forgot! This is the dog that you get for Christmas. Only
its important to remember that the holidays aren't about
presents. (You can say this convincingly since you got what you always wanted)!
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This essentialist New York Christmas is problematic in many ways. For starters, my mum is too stressed every year trying to live up to the standards set by the 'do-it-all' mum in the movies, that she forgets the whole “true meaning of Christmas” part. Meanwhile, I wake up to 40 degree heat, dreaming of a white Christmas. (New Yorkers probably feel the same, considering it rarely snows in December). Finally, after begging to go to the indoor rink (which feels a little less romantic than Central Park), I'm skating one minute and the next "I’m lyin on the cold hard ground". Taylor Swift really prepared me for this— Unlike New York Christmas movies.
Xx
