Holidays with children.
This was my first year celebrating Chanukah as a former Catholic with an eye toward conversion to Judaism.
This year, also, our family joined a local synagogue, and Sami will be attending preschool there beginning in March.
Chanukah is a beautiful holiday, even if it suffers elevated visibility because of its general proximity to Christmas. Any celebration that puts candles and frying at the forefront is A+ in my book. We celebrated with my husband’s family, and our one year old is just old enough to understand what it means to get presents. (In fact, she understands it so well that she broke into the gifts out of turn, opening her gift at 10 AM instead of around sunset when she would otherwise have received it.) And yet presents aren’t the ultimate goal of the holiday, and I appreciate that, too. I am never one to turn down an opportunity for gifting, but when this season’s major holiday is better described as Giftmas, it’s easy to be attracted to less materialistic holidays.
My Catholic parents sent Sami one gift, which is perfect. I want to allow her to explore religious traditions and to feel free to celebrate the more cultural (rather than religious) implications of The Holidays. But I don’t want her to become a Spoiled Brat, which appears to be so easy these days, if you look around at kids in toy stores.
This post isn’t really about what holidays Sami will grow up celebrating, though. We’re an odd family and have our share of odd little traditions, and I’m sure Sami will learn to withstand or appreciate them as she sees fit. This post is really a short elegy for Christmas as I knew it, because I know Sami won’t know it the same way.
I should start by mentioning that I went to Catholic school, and so it was inevitable that at school, Christmas was regarded as the Birthday of Jesus. However this wasn’t carried over at home. At home, Christmas was really Familymas – a time to eat special foods and celebrate each other with thoughtful gifts.
The most memorable detail I have is that Christmas morning was so exciting for me as a kid that I was literally unable to fall asleep on Christmas Eve. I’d go down to bed around 8:30, I guess, allowed to stay up a little later because of the Christmas specials on TV, and then lie awake for hours just imagining what kind of surprises lay under the tree. I’d wake up at 5 am and run into my brother’s room, where he was also awake, and we’d run around, shake packages, peek in on my parents to see if they were up yet. We’d climb into their bed, lift their eyelids, do our level best to not wake them up (which, of course, always woke them up) until finally they dragged themselves out of bed, grabbed the camera, and let us go to town.
There was never anything particularly expensive under the tree. But it was all so very exciting nonetheless. I think the biggest fight my brother and I ever had over a present was a cardboard space rocket my brother got. I can’t imagine how much the thing cost, but I bet it was pennies compared to the Hot Toys of the Day today. A glorified cardboard box, and it was hours, days… MONTHS of entertainment for us.
There doesn’t seem to be quite the same magic around Giftmas. Maybe it’s because it’s become Giftmas and has moved away from the kernel of Christmas that put the thoughtfulness and love into the gift-giving. Maybe it’s because I’m actually a grownup now and the artifice is gone; I know my parents stayed up late after I went to bed, wrapping presents and doing last minute prep stuff so that we would really believe that Santa had come down our chimney. I know that for Sami to believe these things would require a stiff serving of story-telling on our parts with a side dish of time I don’t really have. All for a mystery that would be handily dispelled when she starts kindergarten (believing in Santa is SO preschool….) Maybe it’s because I’m looking at the tradition of Christmas that I grew up with and am only seeing materialism, artifice and work.
I know despite my lack of investment in Christmas, Sami is going to grow up with a healthy sense of tradition and wonder, even if it will be distinctly different from the traditions I knew as a kid. Maybe she’ll be a little less materialistic than I turned out to be, which wouldn’t be a bad thing. I just hope that without the magic MY parents gave me for the holidays, she will still find the magic somewhere, some other way.
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I really, really enjoyed Christmas shopping this year. I went into it all with joy, and just wanting to get gifts. I also wanted to give good gifts to people – that they would like and use!! I surprised a friend of mine mightily in concert with her husband – that was extremely fun. And then I also got a great gift for my boss. It was great – and I just had a lot of fun getting good gifts for people!! First time in a while that I’ve been able to affirmatively say that – good times!!