When I was young our family celebrated absolutely nothing in December. My father who’d been raised an orthodox Jew in the Bronx and who’d made my Belgian mother convert to Judaism when they were married very soon rejected his upbringing and, besides abhorring most holidays and celebrations, made a deliberate attempt to eradicate Judaism from our household most of the time. His feeling, ostensibly, was that all days should be revered and we should give gifts on any day we want to for no particular reason except that we want to, of which I can see the virtue. Still, our Decembers were very conflicted and sad. When most everyone else had decorative lights or special dinners or parties, we were business as usual. One Christmas Eve when I was 10, though, stands out in my mind as very special. It was already dark and there was a heavy snow falling. We’d just finished our dinner and I decided to bundle up and go outside to enjoy the snow. So did all the other kids in our neighborhood, and one of them had a football in his hands. I was a girl who loved to play sports and did it quite well when allowed to play (in the days when girls weren’t allowed to participate in team sports of any kind). There was no traffic on our common side street and an impromptu game of touch football ensued on it. There was a magical feeling as we slid on the snow and more flakes came down thickly from above. We were quiet; it was not the usual noisy and bossy affair (”No, YOU go out this time, I’ll be the quarterback, and fake to the left-THIS way!…”)
Now I am married to a Catholic man from Poland. We have three girls (none of whom are tomboys, oddly), and we have a wonderful bunch of traditions we keep for Christmas every year. We try (my husband and I) as hard as we can to delay the decorating of our home and the putting up of our tree so that Christmas itself is not anti-climactic when it finally arrives, as many of our neighbors have already done these things even before Halloween. The kids are always pulling us to do them as early as possible. We bake cookies, make little presents in our “craft room”, and deliver them to neighbors and sometimes people in the neighborhood we don’t know but who we think could use a little something to let them know they’ve been thought of fondly (for instance, a man who helped us take care of a stray and very large puppy we encountered on a walk. This man had trouble walking and had a bloody nose, which scared the kids. He was so helpful, though it was obviously a laborious, if not painful, thing for him to do, and he told me finally that he was in the end stages of a bout with leukemia. I was hoping madly that a silly thing like a surprise from us on his doorstep would somehow turn his fate around.) This year I became obsessed with making little votive candle holders out of what were originally milk cartons. We painted them and paper-mached them with tissue papers, decorated them for Autumn with little windows of vellum paper and flower-pressed Fall foliage, or for Christmas or Hannukah with other details, and I gave them to anyone I thought might like one. I kept a few to have on our dining table every evening. A little candle glowing from the inside just makes my heart swell with warmth.
We have a Polish Christmas Eve dinner with fish at the table, no other sources of animal protein, and there are certain dishes traditionally served, like borsht with pirogi, and/or mushroom soup. We make a chocolate mousse (among other desserts) and I put an almond in just one of them. Whoever is served the cup with the almond will have special good luck in the coming year. We sometimes have extended family with us, and we invite those who we know have no plans for this evening. Before our meal we all take pieces of a special paper-thin wafer and break pieces of it off to eat from others’ as we make wishes for each other for the coming year.
Of course the next morning involves presents, though I try hard not to overdo it. This year I told everyone not to buy me anything, as there is nothing I want or need more than a holiday of loving family and friends with good food and company to share. I asked the kids to please make things for the adults, not buy them, which they happily did with glorious results. On Christmas there were a few presents for me, and they were wonderful. I know the unparalled feeling of giving to others, and I guess it may not be fair to insist on denying others that joy towards me. Christmas morning always involves going to church. Though I did not convert to Catholicism, we are bringing the kids up in this way. I try to find the very best messages and lessons to learn from it, and I try to tactfully bring to our family the Jewish trait of healthy questioning of what we are told (which was either inadvertently passed on to me by my father, or which I have acquired in the form of a rebellious nature!).
Our Christmases now are what I always wished to have had as a child, but I am more than satisfied since it is my opinion that one can never have too many childhoods, and I, myself, am currently enjoying my third!