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| The Miniature Christmas Village: An Act of Rebellion in BRA |
In their homes, decorated with lights on the outside and a Christmas tree on the inside, pictures from the past are framed and serve as a constant reminder of what once was during the holiday season. Family members, friends, and relatives long gone stare back at you, their smiles and joy forever immortalized in your own private version of It's a Wonderful Life; the memory of Christmases long ago in a still shot as fresh as when they were made.
That special Christmas present that Santa brought to you, wrapped perfectly under the tree that you had desired all year; this perfect moment is captured in your family photo album and the sense of overwhelming delight can be rekindled each Christmas when you dust of these memories of old.
Despite all the heartache we endure throughout the year, there's something magical about Christmas that helps melt away these trivial problems like the rising sun upon freshly fallen snow. Spending time with family and friends doesn't seem as taxing. It doesn't seem as forced. The miles that separate loved ones seem shorter when you gather multiple generations together to eat your traditional feast and open gifts.
It's even more magical when a young family member anxiously awaits the arrival of Santa Claus for the first time and you have to keep them from waking during the night to see if the obese inhabitant of the North Pole and his eight tiny reindeer have made it to your house yet.
Christmas is truly for children, and it is every parents (and grandparents) duty during this season to ensure that they have the happiest experience possible. After all, these memories will last their entire life and provide fuel for future conversations when the family gets together.
Why do you think Charles Dickens set his immortal story The Christmas Carol -- with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future haunting poor Scrooge -- during the Yule season?
Every Real American wants to live in a city like Bedford Falls. It's the reason that newly wed couples save their money in preparation for a move to a Whitopia where they can raise their children in a city free from the ills that plague Black Undertow counties and cities.
It is only Whitopia's that have the thriving practice of Christmas decorations adorning the houses and front yards in perfectly safe neighborhoods where caroling can still be performed. It is only Whitopia's where neighbors ban together to put luminaries on the streets/side walks.
To understand America in 2011 -- the Real America -- you only have to visit the private home of citizens without a voice throughout the nation during this Christmas season. For in these homes -- where pictures of loved ones and you adorn the walls like ghosts of Christmases past -- rest perhaps the most seditious reminder that the world of Black-Run America (BRA) has been rejected: the miniature Christmas village.
A slice of the Norman Rockwell America, these miniature Christmas villages are a reminder that not only do Real Americans want to live in Whitopia's, but they truly a white Christmas by purchasing towns that have nary a non-white citizen in them.
No Wal-Mart is in these miniature Christmas villages, only mom and pop stores like those found in Bedford Falls. No fast food chains have been erected in these miniature Christmas villages, only the diner that serves milk shakes and hamburgers instead of 365Black dreams.
Happy white faces are all that is found in these miniature Christmas villages (that range from scenes from the 1800s to the idyllically 1950s American city) that are proudly displayed in Real American homes. A mirror serves as a make-shift frozen pond where skaters glide over the "ice"; homes are decorated with cotton balls standing in as snow; and miniature white people enjoy a peaceful quintessentially American Christmas, with nary a Black face to coordinate a Mahogany Mob on the local gas station.
Even the Post Office is bustling with white people.
Miniature Christmas villages are one of the ultimate Stuff Black People Don't Like. Would replacing these white figures with Black ones even make sense? Considering that every majority Black city or county quickly goes the route of Detroit, Birmingham, Clayton or Prince George's County, such miniature Christmas villages with Black figures would require dilapidated buildings, liquor stores, pawn shops, and a Headstart office.
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| The America that Real Americans yearn for privately |
Stuff Black People Don't Like includes the miniature Christmas village, for there has never been a city populated primarily by Black people worthy of replicating as a tiny miniature town to proudly display in ones home during Christmas.
No, what you have in the real world is this:
Earl Johnson's boots crunch broken glass from liquor bottles as he walks down an alley in East Baltimore's Oliver neighborhood. He is just blocks from the site of the firebombing of a family who called the police on area drug dealers and were killed for it and just yards from some of the most memorable scenes of urban decay in "The Wire."
At his side are Rich Blake, 32, a Marine Corps veteran, and Jeremy Johnson, 34, a Navy veteran, who like Earl — who is no relation — are on a different kind of mission.
They've come to this neighborhood once synonymous with the worst of Baltimore to help it become something better. They call this mission "Operation Oliver."
As the men walk, they pick up empty Seagram's gin and Bacardi rum bottles. They point to progress — refurbished homes, a painted playground — and to vacant houses and trash-filled alleys that still need work.
The miniature Christmas village that white people proudly display in their during Christmas is easily the most seditious act one can perform in Black-Run America. It signifies something powerful.
"The impoverished conditions, the vacant homes, the crime — in some cases, Oliver is in worse shape than some of the neighborhoods we've been deployed to," Blake says. "We're not afraid to dig in and make a difference in a community that's got a bad reputation in the city. The discipline, the go-get-'em, let's-do-this-now, aggressive attitude, it really lends itself to community service in a way traditional organizations haven't been able to do."
It signifies that, whether it's a conscious or unconscious decision, they know something is horribly wrong with the current state of nation. It signifies that the yearn for what once was, when America was an actual nation.
Nestled in the homes of tens of millions this Christmas is a miniature village of white people quietly celebrating, at a time when being white wasn't a bad thing. It merely meant being an American.
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