Letting go of Christmas

Even though I'm the child of two Jewish parents, I grew up celebrating Christmas. My father's first wife wasn't Jewish, so they raised their three children with both Jewish and Christian holidays. When my mom and dad met, he wasn't willing to give up Christmas, so I was raised with it, too. I believed in Santa and could hardly get to sleep on Christmas Eve, the night our family traditionally sang carols with two other families -- one Jew-ish, one non-Jewish. Our house was adorned with a fully decorated Christmas tree, stockings by the chimney, and angel chimes, and I left cookies and milk for St. Nick even after I was pretty sure he didn't exist. (They were usually sugar-free cookies, since my father was diabetic.) I didn't know of too many other Jewish families who celebrated Christmas, but our Reconstructionist congregation was offbeat enough that I doubt it caused a scandal when certain members found out that we did. When I was young, Christmas was to me what it is to countless other kids: the most magical day of the year.

I mention all of this because, like Jew-ish.com editor Leyna Krow, I find Jewish anti-Christmas sentiment tiresome at best. Yes, we're a group that's been oppressed for millennia, and yes, Christians have often been our oppressors, but whinging about the ubiquity of Christmas is like traveling to Hawaii and complaining about the heat. We live in a country that's religiously neutral on a political level but extremely Christian on a cultural level, and it's likely always to be that way. Leyna's comment that saying "Actually, I'm Jewish" when someone wishes you a merry Christmas only makes things more awkward is true, and though some Jewish activists may interpret identity politics as a way to make non-Jews feel awkward, I don't find this constructive. Pride in one's own heritage, practices, and beliefs always outshines insecurity, and many Jewish people's reactions to Christmas smack of the latter. Maybe some Jews hate Christmas because they envied their non-Jewish peers when they were little, and what they really hate is having been in such an uncomfortable position all those years. I occasionally try to shock Jews I know by telling them that I go to St. Mark's every Christmas Eve for services, and I guess that's a reactionary response to reactionary anti-Christmas grouchiness.

That said, I find myself drifting away from most of my personal Christmas customs. This is the second year in a row that I haven't bought a tree, nominally because of the cost but actually because I live at the Ravenna Kibbutz, where displaying a Christmas tree in the living room would be too much even for a liberal Jewish community to handle. Having a small tree in my room might have been nice, but I prefer a larger tree in a more public space, so halfway through December I decided to let it go. I've watched It's a Wonderful Life at the Grand Illusion every Christmastime since 2002, but I may not go this year. I know the movie practically by heart, and seeing it for the ninth time doesn't really appeal to me (though I'm still awfully fond of it). I went to a caroling party a week ago, but I barely knew anyone there, and I focused more on the food than the singing. When I observe Christmas in Seattle, even in a limited way, I'm doing so mostly to honor my father's memory. He believed that winter holidays were about warmth, light, and common humanity, and he didn't see why Jews couldn't enjoy two instead of just one. (As an adult, I've added Solstice to the lineup, too.)

My Christmas customs also have a tinge of desperation about them, because I'm still grasping at a golden past -- the near-perfection of childhood Christmas -- that I can't return to. In much the same way that New Year's Eve almost always feels anticlimactic to me, Christmas has become a source of muted sadness. I want to feel connected to my father, and to the magical feeling of Christmases past, yet both of these things remain beyond my reach. Finding a vibrant Jewish community has helped me expect less from Christmas -- any kind of social support makes the winter holidays less melancholy -- but I may never get excited about Latkepalooza and other Jewish Christmas events. To me, they seem transparently like distractions, attempts to stay entertained during a day that has negative, even hurtful connotations for many Jews.

Of course, that's precisely what these events are, and there's nothing wrong with that, even if I sometimes feel that their organizers and participants doth protest too much. I don't get jazzed about The Hebrew Hammer screenings and Chinese food feasts on Christmas because I don't want to be distracted -- I want to carry my father's idiosyncratic love and observance of Christmas into the future. Whether or not to raise my own children with Christmas, especially if I marry Jewish, may prove to be a thorny question, but there's no need to resolve it yet. I was heartened to learn recently that an outspoken Jewish activist I know, someone whose personal philosophy is steeped in identity politics, plans to be at St. Mark's tomorrow night as well. A comment she made implied that she's half-Jewish, and that she goes to church on Christmas Eve to honor the non-Jewish part of her heritage.

Since I'll be writing an article soon for Jew-ish.com on the subject of half-Jewish identity, I was both intrigued and comforted to hear that she, too, would be attending midnight mass. Christmas Eve services may hit more of a nerve than other Jewish cultural and spiritual dabblings -- in Buddhism, say, or Eastern medicine -- but sitting in a pew on Dec. 24 doesn't have to be more sinister than going to meditation class. I visit St. Mark's for what my friend Sarah calls the "smells and bells" -- the beautiful pageantry, the breathtaking music, and the sense of universal goodwill. Though I'm not sure how I'll mark Christmas as the years pass, I agree with my father that any ceremony or gathering that helps dispel the winter blues -- especially in Seattle -- isn't likely to do any harm.

Snapshots from the past

I scanned some more old photos today to make a Facebook album. The older I get, the more gratifying it is to share these images with people I know, and simply to look at them and marvel at how far I've come, and how much has changed. Check out the rest of the pictures here.

Gratuitous portrait of two dogs related to my mom's dog

Wilbur's on the left, Miranda's to his right. It's rare that they stand still long enough to pose -- especially Wilbur, who's only 18 months old. They've played nicely this weekend with Juliet, Miranda's mother, who lives with my mother. Seems like a joint human and canine family tree is in order these days.

Things I'm thankful for

My amazing community, the Ravenna Kibbutz, which continues to evolve and grow in challenging, inspiring ways.

My mother, who is endlessly supportive and always willing to give advice, nearly all of which is excellent. :-)

My siblings, with whom I'm trying/hoping to have a closer relationship as the years go by.

The Seattle Times and my boss there, Jane Watson, who calls me first when she needs an extra hand on deck.

The old NWsource crew -- Geoff Carter, Monica Fischer, Jon Palmer, Greg Dunlap, and Sheri Quirt -- for being awesome and a de facto support group for journalists in a post-journalism world.

School, for still being as great as I remember it.

The hope of making 2010 a year of greater physical fitness. I plan to join a gym on Nov. 30 and start a nine-week run/walk regimen, plus hopefully a little weight training. It's time.

All my wonderful friends, who have supported me through tough times and helped me celebrate the good times, this year and every year.

Quality -- or at least entertaining -- television, which has provided me with quasi-necessary relaxation and escape when I needed it this year.

Movies, which even in a subpar year like this one can deliver surprises and make me glad to be alive.

Hope springs eternal

My mom and I recently exchanged views on Facebook regarding Obama's health-care speech. First my mom:

Obama's address was a home run, as far as I'm concerned. He will be the last president to deal with this issue. I believe him, I believe in him and what he favors, and I trust him. We are so lucky to have him as president. People need to remember the last 8 years and look forward.

Then me:

From your mouth to God's ears. I really hope he'll be the last one to address it, but I imagine in the future we'll need to fine-tune whatever passes this year. I'm beginning to wonder whether "the American people," that amorphous body, will ever stand for a plan like what European countries and Canada have. The fear of socialism is so ingrained here. When they poll Americans, a majority want reform, but they also don't want change, because it's scary. They want some magical plan whereby all the problems get fixed without anything really changing. If the Obama administration can make it illegal for insurance companies not to cover preexisting conditions, that will be big. Ditto removing the cap on lifetime coverage. I'll be grateful for whatever passes, knowing that Republicans (and, to be fair, many of their constituents) are very, very resistant to any real change. At least the Blue Dog Democrats were affected (positively) by last night's speech, according to NPR.

Her uncautious optimism inspires me, but I wonder how much of it is warranted. I guess we'll know soon enough.

On reading my mother's memoir

Just wrote a piece for Jew-ish.com about reading Re(vision) of a Life, my mother's loving and impassioned account of my grandmother's Holocaust story. Anyone interested in reading it can do so at the Kibbutz (it's only about 120 pages long), or it can be checked out, library-style. It's a good read, even for people who aren't members of my family (so says Kelly). The picture above is of my grandmother at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

One more time-capsule poem

I wrote this one in 1998, as a creative writing major at Oberlin. My mother uses it in the introduction of her soon-to-be-published memoir, (Re)vision of a Life: My Mother’s Holocaust Story.

KADDISH

a welling up of voices,
sorrowed, pious
and heavy with deference

these are
the dizzying heights
of mourning, of seeking out
the unanswerable questions
and answering them once more

this is
how He would have us weep,
how the order of things must be,
how lives at their end
are marked by narrow grooves
worn into the Rock of Ages

raised on the odor
of old pine pews,
the child finds his place
in the Holy Ark, his lullabies
the swelling hymns and distant,
hollow voices of the dead

And here's a passage from my mother's book:

I am the only child of Holocaust survivors. As is the case with most of the second generation, I am one of very few of our family members left in the world. I never knew my grandparents or a host of other relatives who could have filled my bank of memories and experiences while growing up. Instead, they were photographs to me—and stories. I always felt different in that regard as a child, except when I was around others who had suffered similar losses even before they were born. My recollection of childhood memories is incomplete, but the Leitmotif is certainly the Holocaust. My mother would say with both grief and pride: “I am from the Holocaust. I am the survivor, the only one left from my big family.” And now my son Neal and I are the only ones left from her side of the family.

Pictures from my mom's recent trip to Poland

She took them on her newish digital camera and uploaded them herself. I'm so proud!

He ain't heavy, he's my father

During my visit to L.A. last weekend, I looked at some pictures I'd never seen before -- old photos my sister Lore brought out for us to peruse together. In one of them, my father is surrounded by his three children from his first marriage -- my half-siblings, including Lore -- as well as his first wife, Patricia. What struck me immediately was how large he was. When I was alive, my father was big, but I didn't think much of it until my teenage years, when I went from overweight to anorexic via a self-deprivation plan of my own design.

When I was at my most deluded and paranoid, I looked at people who were overweight and thought: I'd rather die than end up like that. Seeing the old picture of my dad this past weekend really moved me, and helped me realize how far I've come since the last time I visited my sister in California -- 15 years ago, when I was deep in the throes of my eating disorder. In 1994, she weighed me daily during my visit, as my parents and the growing number of specialists following my case insisted she had to. I, of course, hated being weighed and watched and told to eat what was in front of me. These days I still struggle with eating and weight and body image -- during my recent physical exam, I found out I'm back over 190, which is what I weighed when I unsuccessfully gave Weight Watchers a shot in 2007 -- but I've probably never had a healthier, more even-keeled outlook on those interlocking subjects, and that's worth appreciating, or even celebrating.

What struck me about the photo was that my father must have struggled even more than I have with his size, since he clearly passed out of adolescence and into fatherhood at an unhealthy weight. He never did what I did; he never fled the problem of being too heavy with all his might -- with such fervor, in fact, that he overcompensated, went too far, and ended up with a different, no less dangerous problem. Also, all of his children are doing better today than he was in that picture, and that's a nice way of regaining perspective when I give myself flak for overeating or not exercising enough. I've told several people lately that I still can't quite grasp how others, friends and acquaintances of mine, can actually enjoy exercise. For me, the act of exercising is still weighed down, so to speak, with middle-school baggage (being the fat kid, failing to do even one pull-up, all the humiliation that accompanied that kind of failure, etc.).

This year, I hope to develop a better relationship with exercise by doing things I actually enjoy -- softball, classes, bicycling -- rather than forcing myself to pay for yet another gym membership I can't afford and will likely underuse, or never use at all. I guess my heart broke a little for my dad when I saw that picture, but I was also glad that by the time he became my father, he'd lost at least some of the weight he'd carried around as a younger man. And as I try to get a better sense of what he was like at my age, I imagine it's inevitable that I would start to think of him less as my infallible, all-knowing father and more as a human being, flawed and well-intentioned and funny and good. He's been gone for nearly six years, and it saddens me that he'll never see me get married or have children. But if old photos and stories I've never heard can help me get a better sense of him, I'll settle for that.

Family album

I uploaded some old photos on Facebook today. It does my heart good to know they're digitally preserved.

1,000 words

My mom just sent me this picture of my father, which was sent to her by my father's longtime secretary. (I know the term is "administrative assistant," but I'm trying to avoid revisionist history; back then, people really did say "secretary.") The time: the '80s. The place: the office of Junior Year in Freiburg/Munich, the Wayne State University study-abroad program that my father directed, and which he resident-directed in '84 and '88 (the two years that we, as a family, spent in Freiburg, Germany).

One detail that jumped out at me from this old picture: the box of Stoned Wheat Thins on the shelf behind my dad. I loved those crackers when I was a kid, and clearly I acquired that love -- as I did my love of movies, most of my sense of humor, and quite a few other things -- from him. I hope to begin scanning old family photos sometime this year so I can post them here and on Facebook. As I near thirty, I find my thoughts naturally turning to my father, and what he might think of where I am now and what I'm doing. I think he'd be pretty pleased, all in all.

My dad's birthday

It's today, and his Wikipedia entry remains intact. I should probably clean it up a bit, as the site suggests, but for the moment I'm just glad it's still there. My mom helped edit it; the picture above is of the two of them. I miss you, Papa!

Cutest puppy in the world?

A relative of my mom's Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Wilbur may in fact be the most adorable young canine our planet has ever known.

Zadie Smith's father

The British author has a nice piece in the current New Yorker about her dad's sense of humor, and a certain strain of class-based British humor in general. It's just the kind of thing I'd like to write about my own father someday.

This is how I roll

Thanks to Sarah for letting me know about a Slate article that captures my experience of Christmas uncannily well. Especially this:

My father was raised in a devoutly Jewish home, but he always adored Christmas.

And this:

My father passed away when I was young, but my family's holidays remained much the same. We focused on the togetherness and celebrating my father's memory on his favorite holiday. The miracle of Jesus' birth was far from our minds.

My dad's explanation of "Wxmas"

From an e-mail sent Dec. 15, 1998:

Shortly after Jesus' birth, a group of Jews (the original Jews for Jesus) made the decision to follow him and form a new religion. The day of his birth was celebrated as Christmas. The letter X soon became a symbol for the name "Christ" and was often used as a replacement for the word, so that Xmas became the name of the holiday. In the meantime, the other Jews, who remained authentic Jews, liked to celebrate Xmas, when they would decorate a fir tree by hanging potato latkes and gold and silver coins from the branches. So as to maintain and proclaim their religious differences from the new Christians, they called the holiday "Wxmas." The "X" remained in this new form to remind all that Jesus was a Jew (Orthodox, yet) but partly hidden by the "W," which is the last letter of the word "Jew."

And so it goes.

Dinner in Greektown

As usual, click to enlarge 'em. (They're ginormous because I uploaded the wrong files, but whatever. Enjoy the microscopic detail!) They were taken in and around Pegasus on Monroe Street in Detroit's Greektown.






The author of No One Cares What You Had for Lunch would hate me for posting these.

Fun with Cavalier King Charles Spaniels

My mom's dog, Juliet, joined her daughter, Miranda, and another relative, six-month-old Wilbur, for a bit of social time in the kitchen. Behold the cute overload that resulted!

Weekend update

I had a great time at the Class of '98 reunion, and tomorrow I'm going to shul because my mom is co-leading services and I want to interview the rabbi for my upcoming Jew-ish.com article about Jewish views of the afterlife. Then a former teacher, Barry Lepler, is coming over for tea, and after that I might get to see my college friend Lauren before my mom and I go to Greektown for dinner. (Happy-Go-Lucky didn't work out today after all -- the projector broke, and we got our money back. I'll have to catch it back in Seattle.) Sunday morning I'll drive to Ann Arbor to have brunch with my friend Rebecca, who recently bought a condo, and I'll spend the rest of the afternoon and early evening with my mom before heading to the airport. It's been a great trip so far, though I do miss the Kibbutz and look forward to returning to its welcoming embrace.

Things I'm thankful for

Many, many aspects of the Ravenna Kibbutz, including my amazing housemates, excellent food on a remarkably regular basis, and the Kibbutz community -- the first community I've really felt a part of in Seattle.

Small but encouraging breakthroughs in the search for a job.

My mom.

Greek food in Detroit.

The good movies that get released between now and Dec. 31.

Glimmers of hope that emerge from places both expected and unexpected.

All the good things about Seattle, including beautiful water (and the city lights reflected in it), first-rate Thai and Vietnamese food, ahead-of-the-curve environmental awareness, and sunny days that revive your mood after a series of rainy ones.

Obama's victory.

How funny and cute small dogs are.

All my wonderful friends.

Having spent almost 30 years on this planet.

A hunch that 2009 won't be quite as hard as 2008, or at least hard in more manageable ways.