Two things about this sentence didn’t work for me. The first was probably unusual. I didn’t miss Christmas because I hardly knew anyone who celebrated it or what it was all about. I lived in the Jewish end of town, thanks to restrictive covenants. Of course nobody thought of it as the Jewish end of town, but my school was almost all Jewish, since the many Catholic kids in the area crammed their oh so many baby boomer bodies into the local parish school. We didn’t know them. The Protestant kids had the chance to learn about being a minority. We were fascinated by the blue-lit aluminum tree-like shape that revolved in Jimmy’s living room. He got questions about his family’s unusual alternative observance. Where was he going to hear that again?

And yes a few families toyed with Chanukah bushes—also aluminum and also lit blue. I shopped the idea gingerly at my house and dropped it like a hot latke when my Mother erupted.

What Christmas did mean for me was a dressed-up, lunched-out trip downtown to see the Christmas decorations the Friday after Thanksgiving. There was nothing black about it, except the 4:30 sky on the L ride home.

The second fiction was more subtle and has gotten even more confusing. Chanukah was a refreshingly unreligious holiday in my observant home. We played intense games of dreidel, ate a lot of chocolate, lit candles, sang and exchanged socks and underwear, mostly. There were a few dreidels and stars hung in our apartment. It wasn’t dressed up like a Christmas competitor or a consolation prize. It was something most kids in the neighborhood did and, while I had a slightly more old-fashioned version of it than many, it was a serviceable small holiday.

Growing up eventually meant making some choices. I had boyfriends, a husband and lots of friends who weren’t Jewish. To tree or not to tree? I lived in houses where trees happened, I took strong measures against trees, I acquiesced in trees when my pre-ex plead his case that this had been what was wrong with the whole marriage (reductionist crazy talk and the women who let them—another subject.) I have decided that trees, like so many things, might be the subject of passionate position until one actually has a little perspective on life (and a little less passion in general. Hey, it’s a tree.)

I had years of alternating Scroogedom and buy-in. And then I finally achieved enlightenment (well, on the Christmas issue, anyway.)

This is the best time of the year to be Jewish. There are the neutrals and the positives. The neutrals: I’m not mangled by the mind-body-wallet suck of the retail holiday. My presents are restricted to wine, chocolate and cash. It’s an unusually good time to buy the first two; I buy bars and bottles by the dozen or half-dozen as I do my ordinary shopping so I have a bar or bottle to hand to anyone whenever the mood strikes me. I don’t wrap.

I don’t have to worry about the compromise or confusion of a significant spiritual moment with the financial, familial, logistical, decorative, sartorial, alimentary or entertainment requirements. I don’t have to do anything about any of these.

But I can. I’m often invited to gatherings where I can dress up or down as necessary or desired, make or purchase foodstuffs to share, grab a bar or bottle on my way out the door, and catch up with old friends, meet new ones or tear around like a crazy person. Or not.

On the positive side, this is a time when most people around me are so harried and hassled, preoccupied and stressed, over-committed and out of their element or trying madly to escape their element, and engaged in such strange and strenuous activities that no one would notice if I should happen to space out, nap, introspect or otherwise engage less in the world than I might normally feel pressure to do. In other words, when one is not part of the increasing spin, that spin itself can allow for a bit of a holiday. It’s a foul time to travel, yes, but it’s a fine time to nest.

There are a few negatives, of course: sound pollution in stores and offices; traffic jams; that travel issue… The incessant mostly awful music is good reminder to avoid shopping, the travel is reinforced by the climate and the pricing–now that I’m liberated from the school calendar I hardly mind. And the traffic? Well it’s one really lousy thing, isn’t it. I can’t have it all. But that sense of being the other? Each year it seems like a more comfortable quilt to wrap around me as I nestle into the window seat and count my chocolate bars. We Jews don’t encourage conversion, but if you’re crazy and frazzled? Well it might be one way to find a little peace next year.

*DISCLAIMER: I’m not launching in on some theological diatribe, so if you’re looking for conversion or even conversation in that direction, I must disappoint and I’m not willing to engage.

We barely knew each other, but it was time to celebrate his birthday. So I suggested a trip to the coast? What location held more promise, energy, escape?

I hadn’t checked into a hotel with a man other than my ex in over 20 years. The atmosphere was so charged I could barely sign. There was a king sized bed, a hot tub, and the two of us for hours and hours.

Just after midnight we finally dragged ourselves out of bed and down to the beach. I’d heard something about the Leonid meteor shower. No one would count on a clear sky at Cannon Beach, but there it was, black velvet sparkled with stars everywhere–and then they started to fly. They shot from the foreground to the background, across the sky in wild arcs, low to high and back again. They fired at Haystack Rock in the Pacific. The trusty monument was surprised to hand over its glory to the coastal sky, finally free of her shroud and busy staging the best light-show in the world.

The half-dozen of us strung across the wide beach bonded in ecstatic exclamations. We spun around dizzily to catch the action. The sky wasn’t still for a moment. My birthday boy knew all the constellations by name, distance, and location. He was a fabulous guide to our sparkled travels that evening: twisting, turning and gasping in the excitement of it all. Some hours later, we finally gave it up, although the show went on and on.

I learned since that nature does not speak in signs, metaphors, allegories or favorites. That brilliant display had nothing to do with our brilliance, suitability, or the destiny of our love, however much I wanted to believe it. Romance, like everything else, looks for confirmation. And what could be better than this amazing night with my star stud. It was fantastic and for awhile, it sparkled our shiniest points.

We rejoice in our liberation. We mourn the drowning of the oppressor armies sent to recapture us, just for a mite. We sit and recite the familiar stories and re-experience the events with our loved ones, our old friends, our new friends and the Stranger all over the world. We eat, we drink, we meet, we remember.

How might we offer a bit of patience to the simple son who asks—“what is this?” When we are children, this patience might seem impossible. Then we have children and undertake the task, learning the lessons all over again and for the first time, as we teach.

When we crawl out from our family’s protective shell we might be shocked at the many who have not yet encountered the measuring stick of Passover, or we might be those children ourselves. They do not even know how to ask—“what is this?” For them we must let this night flow full from our hearts so they can freely taste it and find inspiration in its universal and timeless message.

We redden with shame when we remember our disrespectful phase, so assertive in our alienation that we could not respect another’s devotion, caught in the cloak of the prideful wicked son. “What is this to you?” And so we own and enjoy our sentimentality, our traditionalism and even our sense of meaning. Perhaps we reach deep inside and out—to find love.

We are at our best, when we can—for a moment—suspend our judgments and be the wise sons and daughters who expand our table to include all these comers: the ignorant; the prideful; the uninformed and the stranger. Together we puzzle the days of our lives, and nights and days—or is it just the nights—reminded that to ponder, to wonder, to re-imagine and to offer time, food, laughter and acceptance, is answer enough.

Each spring we celebrate new-ness. We handle the egg, the lamb bone, and young greens. We identify with a new people, newly home in its new land, singing a new song and building a new life in freedom. We aspire to a world without bondage, joining hearts with those who suffer today. We long for so many freedoms: freedom from slavery; freedom from want; freedom from the tyrannies we impose upon each other and upon ourselves; freedom to celebrate a festival of freedom; freedom to be kind, to indulge, to listen, to love and to nurture; the freedom to know our own worth.

In the spirit of plunging forward towards a dream, I review the seeds I would nourish. I crave a place to be free from my quick complaint and criticism—slaveries I sometimes impose upon myself. In a tiny seed I might hear the wildest ravings of my heart; a freedom to yearn for the opportunity that may never be or the accomplishment that seems so unlikely. I won’t thin that start from my row of wishes. I’ll leave it grow a bit, meet the sun and hang from a stout stem although it drains away energy and looms a bit ridiculous. Perhaps it is impractical; maybe it’s even impossible.

How many weeks can it hang there before I begin to accommodate its awkwardness? They say it takes three weeks before habits are formed. Sometimes the body is faster still. Sometimes the mind is slow and heavy. When I’ve gone the three weeks, what should I do about this impossible bloom? Prune the bush and restore order? Or is there something that calls for my time, my thought, the air and the water? I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone, out of the invisible. I’ve written, edited, spoken, shouted, swirled and sung. The blossom is fine. Now, I’ll look again for the seed.

“Tomorrow you can see Diana’s new piece.” Diana lives next door to my hostess and she’s a Liturgical Choreographer, whatever that means. Delightful—a free dance performance in Manhattan.

On Sunday morning I head off on foot through Central Park to the Church where the performance will start at ten. Ten a.m. seems an odd time for a dance performance.

The wind is especially wicked, whipping my unsuspecting flesh through my gloves and past my lungs. Although I’m in my twenties, I’m gasping and teary-eyed. Mind you, I’m no winter wimp. In college, I walked that evil bridge across the Mississippi many many January Minnesota nights. My Chicago mile-to-school-up-hill-both-ways stories are in mothballs for future grandchildren. Cold weather in Manhattan is different, though—it’s windier and lonelier.

I’m wearing just about everything I brought to New York. The duck-hunter’s ugly down vest is poochyand brown long before either were fashionable. The black wool coat weighs me down and twists around my legs in the wind. I might as well have left my jeans and long underwear at home for all the good they do me.

Central Park is empty. I endure it and don’t see a person until I’m heading south on Park Avenue. He’s a mid fifties sort of guy in a black-diamond mink coat walking a well-dressed Airdale. Steam rises from both of them; I am invisible. That’s ok, I’m relieved to be walking measurable blocks alongside buildings. I can think about my destination rather than Jack London endings.

Oh I noticed that mink coat, all right. And the gracious buildings and classy cars. Sexy ladies from the eighties, hunh? I wonder if this might not be a fancier affair than I contemplated?

It’s Sunday morning, two weeks before Christmas. Am I heading toward a church service? Is this some special sort of day? I bet it is. Suddenly I notice a swarm of limousines at a large building in the next block.

I’d never go to my own religious services dressed anything like this, even if it wasn’t a special holiday season-sort of day. But here I am and it’s too cold to walk away. Besides, it’s all about the dance.

The limos and taxis discharge snow white winter suits, ermine collars, cashmere, sparkling hats, and pearls. The rabble wears mink. What was I thinking?

I get caught in the swirl of entry into the gracious old church building and head toward the front. I haven’t come this far not to see the choreography. I skip the first couple of rows in case there is some special obligation. I get a good view from a third-row seat.

My ermine-trimmed neighbor and I exchange greetings. Everything matches. It’s warm.

Oh to be one of those people who sit wrapped-up in her coat. But in my world it was rude and unwise to stay coated indoors. Too bad, I almost could have passed. The panels of black Forstmann wool are by far the best part of my outfit and my raggy jeaned legs would be mostly hidden. But now that I’ve stopped throwing my body against the wind my cheeks sting hot, hands turn red and I might pass out. The coat comes off and I stuff the vest under a pew.

I am the lost last-decade hippy chick, au too naturelle. Maybe there is something remotely charming in the ragamuffin’s struggle through the cold to worship. And, for all its ermine, a congregation that has half-nude modern dancers and a string quartet on its alter in 1978 must be fairly enlightened.

Enlightened perhaps, but my neighbor is also intent on seeing that I sing my way through the service. Her pointer thrusts into my hymnal for the many follow-on verses of O Little Town of Bethlehem.

“Gratitude.” Yes, I’m grateful for the heat and that there’s no confusing kneeler or footrest. “Collection plate.” If I could have parted with money, I would have taken a cab. But smiles abound and I’ve settled into my role as the Crampet’s older headstrong girl.

Finally it’s time for the dance—my excuse for exposing these lovely people to me. I recall nothing. Some thirty years later, it’s my sense of ignorance and surprise, the warmth of the space and the tolerance of my neighbors—the true spirit of Christmas all around me—that I remember.

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is giv’n
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heav’n.

“Och, gotenyu. What a smell. I can tell you need new socks, you little stinker.”

And so, all over the world, at Chanukah, children get socks to replace the old worn out and stinky ones from last Chanukah. So now you know! Now we understand our non-Jewish neighbors, who always like to borrow our traditions and adjust them just a bit, come to hang their stockings by the hearth. Their Great Bubbe goes in drag and has a yen for fireplaces. Do we have fireplaces? No. Who would chop the wood? Who would make the fire? But it’s good for the Goyim. So socks connect us all with a sense of the warmth of the season.

Chocolate, my children, we celebrate Chanukah to appreciate how good the world is when there are eight days in a row of chocolate at our table. We have chocolates to share, to give and most importantly to eat. We even have chocolate to drink-noch. We make chocolate into money and gamble for it with our dreidels. If we are very lucky we get many Gimmels. Gimmels are for great—a great miracle happened here. Of course I’m right—I just won all the chocolate. Ante up so I can spin again before my dreidel cools off.

And why is chocolate so important? It’s the most delicious thing of all. It is rich and warm. It can be wrapped in beautiful paper and please the eye, even the eye of a grumpy Shin spinner. It gives you energy. It’s energy and hope that make you spin again and again and eventually you might get at least a Hay and split the pot. Chocolate makes you sweet on the inside, which makes you sweet on the outside which makes the world sweet.

Nuts kinder, nuts. This is what we want on Chanukah. The earth has given us nuts of the season and we use these to play and play with our dreidel. Nuts of all kinds, with their pretty little wooden homes. Round mahogany homes for filberts, thin crowded pecan shells crammed with sweetness. Stout comfortable walnut shells so that walnuts may play Chanukah games before they serve as Charoseth next Pesach and even dark crinkly homes for Brazil nuts, full of oil, like our beloved lamp.

Oh but you must think I am silly to forget the star of the whole show, quietly waiting in the dark for me to notice—our humble and most-dear Chanukah friend—the potato. The potato gives it’s all for Chanukah, allowing it’s pale flesh to be shredded, and stirred with eggs and onion and ladled into hot grease, flipped on it’s back, splashed with sour cream or applesauce (ok, you can have both) chewed and swallowed and maybe even some day soon, digested. This gentle giant promises all year long, reminding us how much we love Chanukah for the excuse to make latkes, for the better excuse to eat latkes, and for all the oil we can consume with each latke. And this, this little potato, really this is the secret of Chanukah. How the perfectly ordinary, so common among us, shines with greatness in the lights of hope, happiness, family, food and song.

What? You say Chanukah is not the potato, not the nuts, not the chocolate, not the warm snuggly socks? You’ve got to be kidding. Not even the beautiful menorah all bright with her warm candles? Songs—are you sad because I forgot the wonderful Chanukah songs where everyone knows the first two lines and hums the rest slightly out of tune? Is that what you think?

Oh, no. You think it’s us? Me, and the children, and our friends, and the guy I work with, and my neighbor, all gathered around the menorah while I look for the matches, turn down the soup that’s boiling over, flip the latkes one last time and finally make the brocha. You think that’s what Chanukah’s all about? Well, maybe you’re right.

Thanks for bringing this group together year upon year, through marriages, visiting parents, babies, toddlers, widowed mothers, t’weens, divorces, rearrangements, and— for some time now— only one Grandma left. Maybe sometime we’ll be the grandmas. Will that add to or take away? Yes, well, don’t anyone hold their breath.Thanks for all the spills, the misses, and fine nights of charades.

This is what my Thanksgivings have looked like for most of thirty years. A tight and cozy table at a friend’s house with once-a-year linen and platters upon platters. It must have been a whole year between each one of these food-a-thons, but I’m surprised they add up so high.

Thanks for good fortune in our own lives. We’re fortunate that our sadnesses have been transitory: real but not chronic. Long suffering has stayed distant from this table. Death has come only for the older ones.  We’ve come to know that’s not always the case and so we’ve grown so very grateful.

Our children…they already grew up so fast. Now that we see the rate of spin, we know their lives will fly right by at an increasing rate. We know that the next ten years might have some harsh surprises for them—for us. No rush, no rush—but no slowing it down.

Take a few moments before dessert. Take a basket, choose teams and try to recollect the movies ofthe year, the book titles nobody read and the songs that separate the generations.  Let me hold onto this enormous good and gather in all the smells and tastes, the warmth and the story, the hopes, the disappointments and the familiar smiles. Let me taste them like another course, no matter how full I am. Four and twenty lifetimes baked in a pie. Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.