Dear Mayor Walsh, 

I know this isn’t your first rodeo, er, Allston Christmas. Sure, you’re a Dorchester guy, having represented the neighborhood you grew up in, and others, on Beacon Hill for years. And while you may not have experienced an infamous extravaganza quite the scale of Allston Xmas, surely you can appreciate the rigors of move-in day in a densely populated area of the city.

In case you haven’t seen the spectacle that is Allston Xmas first hand, allow me to briefly break it down for you: Allston Xmas is September 1, the day that seemingly everyone tries to move in and out of the Allston-Brighton neighborhood before college revs up.

You might be thinking, in that archetypal Boston accent of yours, “Well, nearly all of Boston is moving in and out of somewhere on September 1, not just Allston.” 

You’d be correct to infer such a notion. 

But I’d be willing to bet the moving in and out of each Boston neighborhood combined still fails to yield the same exhaustive, monumental, street-clogging, traffic-jamming, horn-blaring, junk-throwing, trash-picking, item-breaking, furniture-stealing, street-cleaning, curse-inducing, fist-throwing, hug-making shitshow that’s made Bostonians love to hate this fateful event.

Your predecessor, Mayor Tom Menino, who occupied your very office for the previous two decades surely imparted an abundance of sage wisdom upon the passing of the torch.

I wonder, though, if any of it pertained to Allston Xmas? I realize there are more pressing matters facing Boston and its residents on a daily basis, but the size and scope of Allston Xmas is something I doubt many other major metropolitan areas across the nation are burdened with.

Here at BostInno, we’re not in the business of telling people how to do their jobs. Sure, we have opinions on certain matters, much as the general public does, but it’s not my place to give you strict instructions on how to go about combatting Allston Xmas, or watching haphazardly from the sidelines to the best of your abilities.

 Rather, we thought we’d share some photos we procured from the city archives to give you a visual of what to expect from your first Allston Xmas as Mayor of Boston. All of them are from Mayor Menino’s administration, and hopefully they’ll give you a few ideas on how to handle the, well, absolute cluster-f—.

Hope everything else is going well. 

With love, 

The BostInno editorial team

p.s. Don’t think we’ve forgotten about that coffee you owe us.