Not Home for the Holidays

Willie Ray, a Venice mechanic, hoped to escape Christmas Day by spending it above the clouds. But when he arrived at the Lake Elsinore skydiving facility last year, he found the drop zone closed.

Disgruntled and more firmly against Christmas than ever, Ray plunked down the change for “Eggs Over My Hammy” at Denny’s and called it a day.

“I have no use for Christmas,” says Ray, who plans to spend today testing his hot-air balloon in Frazier Park this year. “Everything’s closed.”

Ray is not the only one spending Christmas away from family and friends, though attitudes and reasons differ.

Varissa Jetawattana is a waitress at Silver Lake’s Astro Family Diner. She will be happy to take your order as she has for the last 17 years.

“Whatever my schedule says, I work,” she says. “If it happens to be Christmas Day, I work.”

Astro will be serving up turkey, ham and roast-brisket dinners to one of their biggest crowds of the year. “We get lots of big families and parties of friends.”

Her co-worker, Lilly, is relieved she is not working.

“It’s the first time I will be able [to spend Christmas] with my kids.”

But Chrissie Wilson won’t be able to spend Christmas with the children in her life--her niece and nephew. Still, she remains cheerful about the holiday. Managing editor of Lotus magazine, Wilson would rather be at the family homestead in Wales.

“It’s not practical to be away,” she says. “It’s my first Christmas in L.A. after nine years. I was a little worried about it, but now I think it’s going to be fun. I am going to spoil myself at the Beverly Hot Springs and go to Louis XIV to hang out with a bunch of other expats who can’t make it [overseas] for Christmas.”

Still, Wilson knows what she’s missing--being with old friends, as well as the parties, the cozy weather and the sense of being on terra firma.

“There is something indescribably primal that you get from being home for the holidays. A sense of being in the presence of our history and geography.”

But Ray’s halls are decked with thornier boughs.

“People stuff themselves until they get sick. They drink too much, and then get out on the highway putting everyone’s life in danger,” he says. “Skydiving is safer.”