My morning glimpse of the city — gray and rainy. I like it.

Christmas looms. On Sunday night, on our way to a dinner party, a car tore past us, the vague shape of a fir tree strapped to the roof. “Is it legal to ignore the light if you’re bringing home a Christmas tree?” Michael asked.

Didn’t this holiday begin as a celebration of time? The darkest, longest night of the year, the present dying into the past as we slide into the future, that faint touch of the sinister that gives it a richer, more adult flavor as we age. So, people reach out to each other, and our calendar is crowded with meals out, parties. Lunch yesterday with old friends we haven’t seen for months in a dim sum place out on the avenues, eating food I should not eat, gossping about ourselves, watching rain pour down the windows, people hurrying past, hunched forward under umbrellas. ”This used to be a video cafe,” someone said. “Hamburgers and fries and shakes and VHS rentals over there behind the counter. Remember when that was new?” Which really meant “Remember when we were young?”

We stayed until we were the last customers left.

The city is emptying out. The echoes are beautiful.

I’m too old to feel the excitement of the Christmases of my long, happy, gentile childhood, but a hangover remains. It’s a pleasant, umber shadow constantly falling over me, jangly with bells, lit with colored lights and smelling of cinnamon.