Holidays For All of Us

It hasn’t happened for a few years, but this year, one of my children asked me if I missed celebrating Christmas. The short answer to the question is, no, I don’t. But, naturally, there’s more to that answer.

In the span of my life, I spent my early formative years in the nursery of the First Presbyterian Church in Mansfield, Ohio. I sang in the church choir because my best friend’s father was the choir director. And I loved the music.

Then I fell in love with a Jewish man whose father lost many of his siblings – and parents – in the Nazi extermination camps. And I began an exploration of his religion and practices. Before we married, I studied and learned how many of the underpinnings of the rituals of our Judeo-Christian heritage grow from the same core belief in an omnipotent being we humans have named God.

I easily and readily embraced the practices that have now informed the past forty years of my life – Friday night meals with blessings and candles. Holidays that mark the seasons of the calendar, and an amazing matzo ball soup taught to me by my mother-in-law.  

My father understood the pursuit. We had long conversations about what it meant to become a Jew. He worried about how our future children may be treated in a world that, overall, doesn’t welcome differences or diversity. But his overall religious philosophy was centered on how people behave rather than what people say they believe. Rather than a rejection of my childhood, he recognized my conversion as an embrace of a meaningful pursuit of building a family intent on repairing the world, or tikkun olam.

“Mary Margaret,” he always called me. “There are good people and bad people in this world of ours. What’s important is how we treat each other because that’s where the meaning of life lies – in the spaces between us and the acts we perform.”

In that pursuit of treating others well, there are many traditions of this season I hold to. I still pull out my childhood cookbook with my 12-year-old handwritten cookie recipes from Mrs. McConnell. And I still send texts to Janny and Julie to let them know I’m making one or another of them as a treat for neighbors. In this long night/short day part of the country, sharing a batch of sweetness is always a good plan.

I still love Christmas music – playing on most of our radio stations throughout the house. Of course, many of my favorites – Silver Bells, White Christmas, Let it Snow, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year – all were written by Jewish composers.

So, do I miss all of the hustle and bustle of the heavily decorated, well-tinseled expectations that fuel so much exhaustion for so many at this time of year? Not at all.

Instead, I relish this period of time when this country slows down, emails stop, and there’s a collective exhale. We celebrated the weekend with takeout Chinese and many movies.

And I respect the true joy so many of my friends and family will find in the meaningful activities surrounding the birth of a Jewish infant who became the inspirational leader for one of our globe’s major religions.