In a small apartment in Chicago, two best friends are huddled over their keyboards. The soft glow of the screen casts a shadow as their fingers type away in rhythmic patterns. Words flow, forming into ideas, and the ideas lead to the end of a path where dreams come true.
Down the street an old Asian lady quietly tends to her dry cleaning business while the sound of Christmas carolers echoes out of the church across the intersection.
A block away, a sex shop prominently displays this year’s line of electronics in their window, proudly flying a rainbow flag above the streets of Boystown.
A pack of Cubs fans hoop and holler as they wait on the 152 bus. It’s been weeks since the playoffs but you can still feel the excitement. When you wait a hundred years to win the world series, every day feels like Christmas.
Christians, Muslims, and Jews wait in line to buy coffee as a gentle snow begins to fall outside. People are nicer somehow, holding the door for each other and giving a friendly hello as they pass on the sidewalk.
The holidays are here.
Ever since last month’s election, people have been telling me I live in a bubble. They say the “liberal elites” are out-of-touch with real people and have no idea about life in small town, rural America.
The truth is, I grew up in small town America. I was raised in the middle-of-nowhere Kansas in a four-stoplight-one-high-school-eighty-person-graduating-class-mostly-white county seat.
For as long as I can remember, I wanted more. I wanted to be where the action was, surrounded by people and excitement. I was a big city kid trapped in my small rural hometown.
I didn’t turn my back on my upbringing - I learned from it.
A small town often feels like Christmas in the big city. People are always friendly. You see someone you know everywhere you go and everyone always has time to talk.
You leave your windows down and keep your front doors unlocked. You don’t have to chain your bicycle and it takes weeks to go through a tank of gas.
Small town life is full of perks.
But living in a small town has its downside, too. The community often attracts similar people - ethnically, politically, religiously, and so on. Only surrounding yourself with like-minded people sounds a lot like a bubble to me.
That’s why I dreamt of leaving. I wanted to know what else existed outside my two mile square hometown.
I’ll never forget my first day of college at USC in Los Angeles. I went from having five thousand people in my hometown to having five thousand people on my side of campus. Everywhere I went I was met with an idea that opposed the first eighteen years of my childhood. Some were good and some were bad, but they taught me to understand why I felt the way I did.
If I could defend my point-of-view, then I stood my ground and clung to that idea. If someone challenged me and I didn’t have a decent response then I realized I had to change my way of thinking.
Surrounding yourself with different people makes you realize you don’t have all the answers and the ones you do have probably aren’t the best.
I moved to Chicago to be around forward-thinking people from all walks of life. I share train cars with all sorts of people - black, white, gay, straight, old, and young.
We rarely make eye contact and bike thieves are rampant. Most people just put their heads down and get where they’re trying to go. And we always lock our doors. (That’s the simple reality of living somewhere with more people: there are plenty of good people doing good things, but there are also plenty of bad people doing bad things.) If I do live in a bubble, at least it covers all of life’s experiences and not just the good ones.
That’s what most of the year is like in Chicago. You keep your head down and try to avoid people so you can get to work. You have to filter out the distractions from the main attractions, just so you can get through the day.
Except for December.
Something magical happens right after Thanksgiving. I get to walk through my neighborhood and smile at people as they walk by. We all take an extra second to make sure everyone is in high spirits.
I’ve always loved Christmas. The food, the weather, the music, the memories. Everything about it.
But this year, more than ever, I’m so thankful to live in a city where I can share the season with all kinds of people. I’m glad we can all come together to be merry and wish each other well.
I keep mentioning Christmas because that’s how I was raised, but the “liberal elite” in me knows I should be saying “Happy Holidays”.
At a gig several years ago I made the rookie mistake of wishing children “Merry Christmas” as they gave me high-fives after my show. A small girl looked up at me and said “We don’t celebrate Christmas. We’re Jewish.”
I had no idea. I was new to the big city. I’d never met someone who didn’t celebrate Christmas before.
But now I know.
No matter what you believe or where you’re from, Happy Holidays from this optimistic, overly enthusiastic husband, friend, student, writer, mind reader, artist, and atheist.
In this bubble, all are welcome.