Peace on Earth, and Other Nonsense

"Hey, buddy," the haggard, unshaven skell said, stopping the well-coifed man in the mohair coat as he was leaving a high-end cosmetics shop. "Can you spare a little? I'm trying to raise 40 cents... Today's my birthday?I'm 48 today."

"You hit me up on the way in, remember?" the well-dressed man shot back in a voice that could hardly be called jovial. "Get the hell away from me. Go get a life."

Then he turned and vanished into the holiday fray on 3rd Ave.

Inside another small shop farther up the block, a woman made an exaggeratedly painful effort to step around a stroller that had been parked diagonally across the narrow aisle.

"I...can-not...be-lieve," she hissed with each overblown step, "that someone...brought a...stroller...in here!"

The pervasive Bad Feelings that settle down around New York every holiday season seemed to be a little more strident this time around. You could feel it everywhere. Not just Macy's or the post office, but on the street, in grocery stores and restaurants and on the subway. Everywhere you looked, people were screaming at each other or grumbling angrily to themselves. Everyone was in a foul mood, and nobody was too proud to share it with the rest of us.

An old woman shoved her way through the door into a deli, making a younger woman wait a moment to let her pass before leaving. Before she left, however, the younger woman let her eyes bore into the old woman's back as she muttered under her breath something in Spanish that didn't sound much like "feliz navidad."

Up to a point this season, I'd been able to sidestep it by simply staying indoors and avoiding contact with the masses as much as possible. But the time came when I had to go to the post office. There was simply no way around it. It was a week before Christmas, and I had to mail off a large box to a faraway state. I'd never had any trouble at my local post office, and didn't expect to this time, either. Get there when they opened, be back outside in two minutes.

(I know post office trauma this time of year is a cliche?but cliches become cliches for a reason.)

By the time the doors opened on Monday, the line had already stretched around the corner, people bundled against the cold, clutching bags, boxes and stacks of unstamped envelopes. Even when the doors did open, nobody seemed too happy about it. After the first 15 people made it inside, the line stopped dead, leaving the rest of us outside the now-propped-open door.

Five minutes later, after the line hadn't moved at all, I heard a woman's voice?perhaps a bit more shrill than it needed to be?gently float back over the crowd and out the door.

"Will you open up?"

The line remained still. A minute later there was another voice, this time an old man's, bellowing gruffly, "Hey?it's 9 o'clock! You're supposed to be working now!"

Some minutes later, the line did begin to inch ahead slowly, but stopped when my box and I were lodged squarely in the middle of the open doorway. And there I stood?my mood still surprisingly even for where I was and what I was doing. Then the children?there were a dozen or so children there, accompanying parents and nannies?decided that running in and out of the doorway was great fun. And with each pass, I had to try to swing my body (and the enormous box I was carrying) out of the way. There was no moving forward or back, so all I could do was pivot and hope for the best.

The only child, it seems, who didn't delight in running back and forth through the doorway was the one who was perfectly happy to stay put directly behind me, from where she took random kicks at my ankles.

Inside, the vending machine was broken, which meant that those people who only wanted stamps had to stand on line with the rest of us, adding to the growing pile of rancor in the room.

To make things worse, the radio station they were playing inside featured nothing but an endless string of holiday-themed novelty songs in foreign languages.

Myself, I have nothing at all against the post office, but sometimes it seems like they do it on purpose.

After making it a few yards farther inside?to find myself poised in yet another doorway, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I swung around with my box.

"Excuse me," the woman asked?she was in her mid-30s, I'd guess, and had that self-satisfied air about her, like she'd never had to wait or want for anything in her life?"but would you mind giving these to the clerk when you get up there?" She held out a large plastic bag stuffed with oversized envelopes.

I stared at her, but said nothing. She spoke that phrase as if it were just a given, as if I'd understand that yes, of course, she was much too important to wait with the rest of us proles. While I stared at her, I wondered?of all the dozens of people in line, did I really look like the most responsible one? I glanced down at the box I was holding with both hands, and the bagful of envelopes she was still holding out to me.

Then I looked back at her.

"Look, ma'am, I sorta got my hands full as it is."

So then she asked the man in front of me, who was much nicer than I was, and was fool enough to take the bag from her.

Idiot, I thought.

I could feel it sprouting within me?the slow anger that put me on a par with my fellow man in this holiest of seasons.

Up at the front of the line, the old man who had yelled earlier in the morning?almost 45 minutes ago now, I noticed?was yelling again?this time directly at the man behind the bulletproof glass.

"There are two other windows there," the old man said, pointing. "Why aren't they open?" (He was right?of the five customer-service windows, two were closed.)

The man behind the bulletproof glass shrugged.

"There are people lined up around the block!" the old man shouted.

"I really don't care," the postal worker said with a tiny smirk, as he gave the old man change for his stamps.

Before the old man left the window, he leaned in close and said, "Thanks a lot for your help." Then he stopped at every open window on his way out and leaned in again, saying, "Thanks for your kindness. Yeah, thanks for all your help..." Then he marched past the rest of us, the scowl on his face looking like it had been carved with a chisel.

After he left, the line moved along quietly. My box was sent away, and my ankles eventually healed. But I still had another week or more of the season to contend with. We all did. But soon it will all be over, save for the cleanup, the hangover and the lingering sense of disappointment and loss. And for the next 10 months?before it all begins again?we can go back to being our normal kindly, gentle, warmhearted selves.