Happy Holidays

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house…

Sarah was trying to decide where to put the menorah so that it didn’t block the view from the bay window of the Christmas tree. Chanukah was, strictly speaking, long over. It was one of those years when Chanukah came “early”, meaning well before Christmas. The Christmas tree had been up since the day after Thanksgiving, meaning well before Chanukah had started. Sarah smiled. She liked the way the two winter holidays bumped into each other. She felt very fortunate to get to celebrate both in her home.
She’d grown up in an all-Jewish home where Chanukah was always festive and fun. She’d never wished, like some of her friends, for a Christmas tree. But she confessed to really liking the whole thing now.
Robert had grown up in a traditionally Christian home; and Christmas decorating had consumed his mom for weeks before the actual holiday. Although he’d always enjoyed the tree particularly, he’d hated climbing on ladders to hang the outside lights. He’d sworn to himself that when he had his own home, the tree would be it.
As he stood in front of the tree now, he was admiring the tree-topper. He’d found it in a tiny little store in the middle of nowhere. On their first Christmas together, he’d surprised Sarah with it. It was a menorah that fit on the top of the tree. They couldn’t know its real origins; but they both imagined that it had been crafted by someone just like them—happily ensconced in a bi-religious marriage and wanting to celebrate that combination. The tree-topper menorah was beautiful and iridescent. It graced the tree with a special magical quality.
As Sarah stepped back from the menorah and Robert stepped back from the tree, they backed into each other. They laughed and took advantage of the opportunity for a hug. They nuzzled each other for a moment before they were interrupted by two of their three children running into the room. They were the youngest two and they needed a review of the rules for playing the dreidel game, neither one of them willing to accept the ruling of the oldest child.
Sarah walked them back into the kitchen—it had the best floor for spinning the dreidel. As she arbitrated, Robert listened. He loved playing dreidel. At first they’d played for M&Ms, but he kept eating the pot. So now the family played with pennies, which the winner could trade in at the end for a snack-size bag of M&Ms. But they all knew that it wasn’t about the M&Ms—it was about winning! The kids all loved introducing their friends to the dreidel game. The whole neighborhood now played dreidel, whether in front of a menorah or a Christmas tree.
Robert turned back to the tree. He’d been a little concerned that first Christmas about how his mom would react to the holiday mix in his house. She’d always been so over-the-top about Christmas; he wasn’t sure how she’d feel about its evolution into something non-traditional in her son’s home.
To his surprise and delight, she’d arrived that first Christmas Eve carrying all the supplies to make latkes. The traditional potato pancake fried in oil was something he’d have sworn she’d never even heard of. That first Christmas together had coincided with one of the nights of Chanukah. Arriving with the latke supplies had been a wonderfully warm and affirming gesture. Sarah, who’d never actually made a latke from scratch before, had a wonderful time with Robert’s mom, who was in fact a much better cook than her own mom.
Robert and Sarah continued to evolve their holiday celebrations. Each year something new was added, sometimes to the Christmas side of things, sometimes to Chanukah. Each year now they left a latke along with the cookies for Santa. Fearing that Santa might be lactose-intolerant, like him, Max, the youngest, had insisted that the latke-and-cookies be accompanied not by milk but by Sprite.
That night as they sat together in front of the menorah and watched the lights on the tree twinkle magically, Robert and Sarah felt very blessed. Neither one had ever imagined this kind of holiday; now neither one could imagine anything different from this.