Book Review for 9.26.24: December on 5C4

Title: December on 5C4

Author: Adam Strassberg 

Date: 2024

Publisher: Nat 1

ISBN: 

Quote: "I remembered many stories from my residency years, some apocryphal, some accurate, of involuntary hospitalizations of various patients with delusions of being either Jesus or Santa. It occurred to me it would be interesting to see what might happen if a patient with similarities to Jesus were hospitalized concurrently with a patient with similarities to Santa. Would they be friends? Enemies? Both?"

/First, Strassberg imagines, they'd get into a quarrel about their different approaches to giving. Then, as men who've chosen to identify with models of generosity, they'd become friends and help each other...In the best Christmas-fairy-tale tradition, Josh N. will give encouraging counsel to the other patients, and Nick K. will hand out trinkets.

/Josh left his Orthodox Jewish family after realizing that they just wouldn't understand that he thought an incestuous act with a male cousin was a kind of baptism. He had since organized other street dwellers into a community who share their skills and resources and help others. He is frequently troubled by mad suicidal urges, which he identifies with Jesus''s temptation to throw himself down from the Temple. Hospital staff want to give him stronger medication that will suppress these urges, but will also cut off what he experiences as a sort of communion with God.

Nick likes the "trinity of coke," cocoa, Coca-Cola, and cocaine. After using a lot of the latter he was arrested for trespassing when he got stuck in an acquaintance's chimney. His purpose was to rescue three immigrant girls, and their parents, from coyote types who were prostituting the girls. Nick seems to think he has a wife at home. His wife has been dead for a long time.

They're homeless mental patients but somehow their giving seems to be touched with supernatural grace. They heal the other patients' emotions; the gifts they make in Occupational Therapy seem magical. Josh prays and preaches traditional Hebrew prayers as Jesus might have done.

Maybe, Josh appears to think, in another incarnation they'll be born in the right time to be Jesus of Nazareth and Nicholas a.k.a. Kriss Kringle. 

This story is funny, sad, and always close to the edge of blasphemy. Strassberg isn't saying that Jesus was either schizoid or homosexual or a street character; He is saying that it's possible for a Christian t see reflections of Christ in schizoid homosexual street characters. 

This is not your usual Christmas story. Josh doesn't even have a Christmas tradition. But it's worth ordering now if you want to read it during December.