Electric sex gleaming in the window

When I was growing up, Christmas meant three days of the house smelling like a women’s rest-stop bathroom as dried cod fish soaked in the kitchen sink and a week of winter vacation avoiding my alcoholic, bah-humbugging father who tried his jolly best to spread holiday misery to one and all.

So, I can’t pretend that being 8,000 miles away from home during this time of year is anything other than wonderful, and the only sentimentality I attach to the holiday are the repeat viewings of “A Christmas Story” that helped maintain a bit of the Christmas magic and prevented me from becoming a total black hole of despair as December 25 rolled around each year.

Trying to explain the popularity of “A Christmas Story” to non-Americans isn’t easy, but what better captures the religious and cultural superficiality of the United States than our most beloved holiday movie being about a young boy who desperately wants Santa to bring him a gun on the day that celebrates the birth of our savior? Everything you need to know about America, you can learn from little Ralphie and his family.

This Christmas, my husband, two American friends and I decided to pay the ultimate tribute to the movie by going out for Peking duck at a Chinese restaurant in China—well, as much as you can consider Hong Kong part of China.

Based on a co-worker’s recommendation, we went to Cuisine Cuisine, a restaurant in The Mira hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. I generally avoid hotel restaurants here because they’re overpriced and underwhelming, but I give the place credit. The barbecue pork and Peking duck were some of the best I’ve had in my four years in Hong Kong, and I won’t even hold it against the waiter that he thought Wild Turkey was a type of cocktail and needed to have the concept of bourbon explained to him.

We gorged ourselves on plain duck, duck wrapped in pancakes and stir-fried minced duck. We warned my friends’ baby to be careful with the swizzle stick she was playing with or she’d “poke her eye out” (hey, close enough). We laughed about the time my sister-in-law's not-exactly-the-sharpest-knife-in-the-drawer ex-boyfriend froze his tongue to a light post. We cursed Scut Farkus. It was the greatest “A Christmas Story” Christmas ever. Then this happened.



And now I can die because nothing--not even going to the leg-lamp factory in China like my friend did--greater will ever happen in my life. It was a true Christmas miracle.