Dispatches from NYC’s bustling Chinatown on Christmas Day

According to the Jewish calendar, the year is 5786. According to the Chinese calendar, the year is 4723. And so, the saying goes, the Jews had to wait over 1,000 years to have Chinese food – and more than 3,000 to have it on Christmas.

We have wasted no time since, at least not in New York.

Though the streets were barren most elsewhere in the boroughs this Christmas Day, Manhattan’s Chinatown was bustling.

Mott Street looked like a winter block party. Walking down Canal Street was, at points, more akin to standing in a line. Actual lines and line-like clumps wrapped outside some of the more popular eateries: Joe’s Shanghai, Mei Lai Wah Bakery, House of Joy Restaurant.

Nom Wah Tea Parlor was prepared for the crush, and put out stanchions, bringing some order to its throngs of hungry, waiting patrons.

“It’s the most busiest day in the year,” said Stephen Li, co-owner of longtime local favorite Great N.Y. Noodletown. “Most of the restaurants in New York City [are] closed, so everybody comes down to Chinatown, to celebrate Christmas.”

“Every year, it’s the busiest day,” he said.

In large part, this business is thanks to Jews. This is due to reasons of both practicality (Chinese food is among the only open food options on Christmas Day) and tradition – back in the day, specifically the 19th century, the Jewish and Chinese communities composed the two biggest non-Christian immigrant groups on the Lower East Side and came to form certain practices around one another. The history was recently highlighted in the Beverly Press.

For Li, working the holiday has become something of a personal tradition. He’s worked Christmas Day for the last 30 years.

“I almost forgot Christmas, because I don’t have Christmas to celebrate,” he said with a chuckle as customers lined up behind the cashier. “My family is celebrating during Christmas, but I’m not. I’m the only one that still has to work here.”

But, for some regulars, nothing says Christmas like Great N.Y. Noodletown.

“We come to Noodletown for every holiday,” said Marion Schultheis over a plate of lemon chicken. Her and her husband Bob have been coming down here from the Upper East Side regularly for years.

“We’ll be here again in February, for Chinese New Year’s” as well as most other major holidays, she said.

For Michael Zwilinske, the Noodletown tradition is a bit newer.

“My partner usually takes me over here to get some chicken over rice,” said Zwilinske, an FDNY paramedic, after successfully parallel parking his ambulance directly in front of the restaurant. He worked the Christmas shift last year too, and visited Noodletown then as well.

He doesn’t come around Chinatown much, he said, but is excited about his burgeoning holiday tradition — and said he’ll probably come back again next Christmas, so long as he’s on the clock.