“FLY WITH ME, LESBIAN SEAGULL!” A Very Merry Tom Wolfe Christmas. In the Wall Street Journal, Alexandra Wolfe writes:

My younger self would be appalled by the person I’ve become around the holidays. Gone are the tasteful decorations of my youth—the popcorn garlands, homemade ornaments on Popsicle sticks and a stitched Mark Twain doll in place of a Christmas star at the top of the tree.

Now my house is filled with fluorescent red and green bulbs, Paw Patrol-themed sirens and foot-long candy canes covered in tinsel.

My embrace of Christmas maximalism is fairly recent, but I now see that the seeds of this aesthetic were first planted in 1996, when my father saw the classic holiday film “Beavis & Butt-Head Do America.” My dad, Tom Wolfe, an otherwise polite Richmond gentleman, spent the next six months singing at the top of his lungs, “Fly with me, lesbian seagull!” At 16 I was only just noticing my father’s taste for the absurd.

Although my dad was always proper and impeccably dressed, I grew to see how much he enjoyed the occasional silly flourish. Every July 4 since I was a toddler, he’d attend our town’s parade in his usual summer outfit of a white linen Oxford shirt, white linen suit and white boat shoes, but with a red, white and blue tie—an ensemble that already turned heads. Then, as we stood among the crowds waiting for the procession to begin, he’d press a button that made his tie loudly sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The shock on everyone’s faces sent him into paroxysms of laughter.

Our holiday decorations may have been elegant, but dad always injected some quirkiness. On Christmas mornings, he’d come downstairs in beige slacks and a sweater, then pull up his pant leg to reveal bright green socks with red Christmas trees. After a breakfast of pancakes and bacon—the one day a year he allowed himself this indulgence—he’d cackle at the stocking-stuffer toys that screamed at the press of a button, “Shut up!” or “Whaddaya think you’re doing?!” An unexpected connoisseur of singing pop-up greeting cards, he may have laughed harder at their robotic lyrics than at anything else all year.

After he died in 2018, Christmas got quieter. Gone were the sounds of his wrapping gifts until 4 a.m., his feet shuffling up and down the steps from the tree to his study, where he wrote our names on cards in colorful calligraphy. Gone was his Christmas greeting, “Good morning, Breakfast Clubbers!” He was so hard to shop for that I couldn’t help buying that first year something that I knew he would’ve liked: a set of salt and pepper shakers shaped like white shoes.

Despite his penchant for white suits and faux-spats and the humor throughout his writing, it’s tough to picture Wolfe acting so goofy in person, based on the courtly southern gentleman persona he developed when speaking and doing interviews. Certainly, this side of him doesn’t really come across in the otherwise must-see recent Netflix documentary, Radical Wolfe, and would have been a welcome addition.