Oh my sisters…. Here I sit trying to compose for you the
ultimate witty banter to enrich the week and help me keep up my end of the
bargain. We’ve been together a while, my sisters and I like to take this time
to look back on the years gone by.
Forgive me my girlfriends if I deviate a bit from the science this week and just ponder on the past....
Is that not what this holiday season brings? A time for
reflection? A time for gratitude? A time to look through your closet and ponder
what possessed you to think those purple Capri pants would look good on you?
The holidays are always an interesting time. There are those
who stress over the search for perfection-
-The perfect gift for so-and-so
-The perfect turkey dinner
-The perfect date for New Year’s
-The perfect sale price on that Mary Katrantzou cape that I
have been lusting after since August….
Then there are those of us who just resign ourselves to the
madness and try and put our heads downs and make it through….
-Dinner with relatives who insist on judging us for our life
choices
-Work parties with paper cups that leave us feeling as empty
as the buffet table
-A credit card bill that demands we sell a kidney in order
to meet its needs.
I wonder if we might take a moment between the hunt and the
hurt to just pause and smile at our good fortunes. Can we turn this time of
year around and just laugh it all off as a time we spend with the people we
love in the hopes of having more time to spend with the people we love?
When I was a kid Christmas was a time to envy other kids.
You see we did not celebrate Christmas. (for once I can Identify with Michael
Jackson). I remember watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special with a sense
of longing. Why couldn’t we have the whole presents under the tree thing? The
whole thing was just so pretty… so festive. There I was dreaming of a white
Christmas with a longing the likes of which I only feel when I’m watching Paris
Fashion week.
I remember one December when I was about five or six years
old. My father took me to the mall. We lived in Winnipeg and it was winter in
1977. If you wanted to go for a walk you went to a mall. There was no global warming.
It was minus 80 degreees. You walked outside and your face fell off. Besides….
they had a Laura Secord candy store and they gave out free samples.
I would prance around in my 17 layers of winter gear (we
lived on the praires afterall) sheltered from the minus 40 windchill as I shed
one layer after another between stores trying desperately not to lose my latest
pair of mittens.
We walked from store to store- my father and me looking for
whatever. I would try not to sweat to death in long underwear and he would try
not to lose me amidst the pre-Christmas shopping madness.
And that’s when I saw him…. The man in the red suit.
There in the mall he sat all shiny and new with a bunch of
elves and a castle. You sat on his lap and asked for shit and it was delivered
to you a few weeks later. Santa was my first glimpse of what online shopping
would be like many years later….. And he gave out candy.
Shit. This dude was good.
“Dad”, I asked wiping the sweat from my face and removing
another turtleneck, “Can we get a Christmas tree? Can I make a list and you
give me some presents on Christmas?”
“Sorry Alphonse. We don’t celebrate Christmas.”
You see, I’m Jewish. Jews don’t celebrate Christmas. At
least most of us don’t. Some of us put up a tree and call it a Channukah bush
and give presents for 8 days but really? In my opinion that’s like buying a
knock-off Chanel and saying its real.
I should say. My Dad was really good guy.
He sat me down in the mall and we had a talk about how we
were of a different religion and Christmas was off the menu. It wasn’t a bad
thing- it was just very matter-of-fact. He did not try to make me feel better-
like I was missing out on something and he had to make up for it- he was plain
and simple- unapologetic.
I tried to get it…. Really I did. My Dad was very kind and
tried to let me down easy. It’s not like he pulled me aside and said plainly,
“we’re Jewish kid…. Get over it”. But he also did not try to patronize me into
thinking that our Channukah would just be enough for me….
You see Channukah really can’t compete. One little menorah
and 8 candles can not in any way shape or form compare to the two month long
holiday of chocolate covered red and green- let’s light up the joint and set it
to music- that is Christmas. Not a hope in hell.
And that is okay. At least now it is. Now that I only have
to buy Christmas gifts for a select few and now that as a Jewish doctor I am
the hottest commodity in town around the holidays. (You see- my colleagues all
want someone to work for them and ever so gracious when I give up my Chinese
Food Dinner/Movie night to do so)
And it it was never so bad growing up without the whole
Christmas thing- In fact now as I’m older and wiser I understand really don’t
know what I was missing…. Partly because I really don’t know what I was
missing.
But there was a sense of loss back there in that mall in ’77
when my Dad let me sit on Santa’s lap anyways and I wished for gifts I knew
would never come….
Last year I bought myself my first Christmas present. I was,
afterall a grown woman…. I figured it had been 41 years and I had gone without
for too long. I have a complicated relationship with religion at the best of
times and I knew that this gesture was an empty one at best…. But I did it
ayways.
I bought myself a fabulous John Hardy necklace wrapped it up
and everything. I was working in the ICU in Lethbridge at the time and I put
the present under the bedside table in my hotel room before I went to bed on
Christmas eve. That morning like eight year olds everywhere I awoke to the
wonder of a wrapped present. I unwrapped the necklace, put it on (it was
perfect) and went into work.
And life went on….
So here we are another year down. It more than 35 years
since my Dad broke it to me gently that Santa was not mine to have or to hold
and that sure- I could always wish big for a present- but only on my birthday.
I’ve spent the last twenty something Christmases in a
hospital somewhere ringing in the day as if it was any other.
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