If you live in Los Angeles and observe Christmas-adjacent holidays, you’ve probably noticed scattered neighborhoods where homeowners communally dress their properties and parks for public enjoyment each December; my favorites tend to combine enough imaginative copyright violations to make me feel like a 1990s kid again, back before I knew the meaning of cease-and-desist letter. I only recently learned about the Newport Beach displays, but over years of pandemic boredom, I explored cozy South Bay Christmas lights in Torrance, an under-the-radar decorations mecca in Woodland Hills, and century-old drive-through magic in Altadena.
I keep returning to the latter, Christmas Tree Lane, because Pasadena’s northern neighbor boasts an intriguing hodge-podge of L.A. historical style and roadside kitsch. Locals bedazzle Santa Rosa Avenue’s deodar cedars—huge coniferous trees that once lined the driveway of the city’s co-founder—with strings of lights, using massive ladders, a dedicated canopy-level power supply, and several weekends of volunteer labor.
The 132-year-old University of Chicago houses more than 800,000 volumes related to South Asia, making it one of the world's premier collections for studies on the region. But how did such a treasure trove of South Asian literature end up there?
The answer lies in a programme called PL-480, a US initiative launched in 1954 under Public Law 480, also known as the Food for Peace, a hallmark of Cold War diplomacy.
I never know how to react when someone tells me I “don’t look Jewish,” but at this point I have come to expect it, even in New York, even in 2024. I usually say “thanks” because it makes my charming conversationalist feel uncomfortable. They then say it “wasn’t meant to be a compliment,” or they simply look at me very nervously, waiting for the moment to pass. I guess maybe they expect me to respond, “Oh, my father is Irish, actually,” or “I was found in a basket on the banks of the River Nile and taken in by the pharaoh’s daughter, actually.” But my aunt Leslie took a DNA test a few years ago and it turned out she was 99.9 percent Ashkenazi Jewish. The disappointment in the air as she read the results was uneasy and thick; I think we all secretly wanted her to say that we were one-quarter Irish, actually; that we weren’t like the other families restlessly fidgeting in the pews of our shul; that we were in fact rescued from the River Nile.
I never ask, but maybe I should: what about me seems goyishe? Perhaps it is my ability to name the towns going up the crook of the shore in Barnstable County. Maybe it’s because I am of the belief that the nation-state of Israel is a settler-colonial project, or that I dated several gentiles in my early twenties (though both facts, to me, scream “Semitic” and “very cool”). I won’t entertain schnoz talk, but to clear the air, mine’s somewhere between pre-op Jennifer Grey and the American Girl doll Molly McIntire, so it’s impossible to tell if that’s the culprit. Instead, I think strangers often assume I believe Jesus Christ was the son of God because I am blonde.