My Dear Friends,

This chapter is our penultimate in the journey of our Christmas Pilgrimage Top 10s, or as our dear friend Cold Drink aptly named it, our ADVENTure. We’ve been to many stores together. We embarked with an exclamation by examining some beautiful Christopher Radko ornaments. We continued with less urbane boutiques and emporiums, calling on Walmart, Hallmark, World Market, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Hobby Lobby, Target, Lowe’s, and J.C. Penney’s. We weren’t too proud also to include Macy’s, Williams Sonoma, and Dillard’s.

The steps along our path included learning how best to decorate Christmas trees, light an outdoor tree, and perfect bead ornaments. We recounted our favorite gifts of Christmases past and parks and outdoor art installations, and codified the best Christmas songs and movies. We shared our best Christmas cookie recipes, discussed our favorite breads, weighed some Domino’s pizzas, and we even toured Lakeside’s food court.

The outward journey has also been an inward journey. We unearthed history together. Our minds and spirits, I hope, warmed and remain warm to the story of Christ’s birth. Although grossly overstated by some, we uncovered a few pagan traditions that live on in our Christmas celebrations. We discovered St. Nicholas and the path history took that molded him into Santa Claus. New Orleans is the birthplace of black Santa -- who knew? No one before our journey.

We discovered how Christmas transformed from an uncelebrated day in Puritan America to a private, religious holiday in the nation’s first century, to a religious public national holiday. The last decade has seen the possibility of it becoming a solely public national celebration, as efforts to push religion out of the public sphere have intensified. It has remained since the middle of the nineteenth century a commercial boon. Families, thankfully, are spending less on Christmas now than over the last three decades. In the late 80s and 90s, the average family spent $750-$1000, or 3% of its income, on Christmas. Today, the number is $900, or about 1.5% of annual income.

INTERLUDE: Silent Night

TulaneLSU’s Top 10 Decorations Roosevelt Hotel gift shop

10. Fleur-de-lis ornament

Isn’t it a lovely cloisonné enamel ornament? The style, developed by the Egyptians, reached its zenith with Russia, scion to Bynzantian culture, and particularly, the House of Fabergé. NOMA has one of America’s greatest Fabergé egg collections, and if you can afford entry, there are still quite the number on display on the second floor.

The style of this ornament is so wonderful, it allows me to overlook the symbol on it. I have never been a fan of the fleur-de-lis as it smacks of both imperial France and the Crusades. In post-Katrina New Orleans it represents the absence of taste and a professional football team. I own no clothing nor decorations with a fleur-de-lis. But if I were to break my abstention, it would be with this ball.

9. Cross ornament

While it does not have the detail of Radko -- whose does? -- this ornament is a nice symbol of the hope of Christmas. I realize that I nearly launched into a 2000 word essay about prom night at the Roosevelt, but I may have to save that story for another time.

8. New Orleans ornament

I like the random frivolity of this ornament. St. Louis Cathedral, the Superdome, One Shell Square, Place St. Charles, and Plaza Tower. I polled all the shoppers in the Roosevelt gift shop to see if they were locals there for the day or tourists from elsewhere. All save two were tourists. What better way for tourists to remember New Orleans than an ornament showcasing Plaza Tower, the modern marvel that has sat vacant for 17 years due to mold and asbestos? It has sold three or four times in the last decade for less than most Prairieville five bedrooms. While it may have started the highrise boom of 1960s New Orleans, its time has long passed. I say give the building a five year warning: renovate or raze. In the meantime, put a figure of it in your Christmas tree. Christmas tree -- the secularists are coming for it next. In the next ten years expect a strong push to make it the holiday tree.

7. Holy family pottery

Sometimes you need inspiration. Sometimes that inspiration is found in nature or a beautiful cathedral or a museum. Sometimes it’s found with quiet time in seclusion. Other times it’s found at The Golden Corral.

Today, my friend dropped me off at the GC because he said he didn’t want to “watch me take stupid pictures of my food.” So I ate alone. Eating alone doesn’t bother me that much; it never has. In high school, most of my meals were alone, so I grew accustomed to public meals seated at a table for one. Eating alone has great upsides: you can leave as you want. One need not always be perfect in etiquette -- I’ve spat gristle into my napkin, which I would never do with company. Perhaps best of all is the view it gives. You may learn so much about others and the world around you if you pause, sit silent, and simply observe.

I arrived just as the Sunday after church crowd was leaving. The replacements mostly were sloven, sometimes pajamed misfits. There was a 300 pound boy whose first plate consisted of a whole chocolate cream pie with three yeast rolls on top, that acted, I was left to assume, as icing. Another man, who smelled of liquor and tobacco, blatantly eschewed Western notions of the line, and skipped me in the prime rib queue. When I returned from one of my twelve trips to the food counter, a pile of another table’s detritus greeted me. Apparently, my dining neighbors didn’t want their used plates and napkins and thought my table was a more appropriate waiting area. Toonces Tiger is alive -- for I saw him on the sweatshirts of two alumni, I presume, whose child nearly caused a riot. The boy had dropped a roll into the chocolate fountain and fished it out with his hands. Apparently, this is a public health hazard of such a magnitude that the fountain was hastily brought to the kitchen for sterilization.

As I ate my eight sirloin steaks and four slabs of prime rib, it dawned on me: I’m not all that different from the ones I sometimes despise or upon whom I look down. Often it’s the people we most closely resemble or most closely resemble the ones we love whom we harshly judge and revile. I think of the narcissist who downvotes and whines to the moderator about another narcissist simply for making a thread on a message board, all the while he has created five such threads in the same day. Where does all this rancor and animosity originate? From within, for deep within, the seed of narcissism is one’s own self hatred and self doubt. The anger is greatest when the despised other is simply a mirror to your own soul and self.

This post was edited on 12/15/19 at 5:29 pm