BAH HUM

I’m not saying that I’m anti-holidays this year. It may look that way because I have yet to put up our Christmas tree and I am opting out of Christmas cards this year. I did buy us a new dinosaur menorah that we’ve been calling the Menorasaurus and my lovely holiday wreath is hanging on the front door. I will get our stocking out of storage, but I’m skipping the tree this year. Here’s what happened. The distance between Thanksgiving and Christmas got shortened. I spent Thanksgiving driving to Oklahoma and back. I got sick again and I’m now on antibiotics. I figured that by the time I had enough energy to clean the house and set up the tree, it would be time to take it all down. The idea of it did not spark joy.

Instead, I’ve decided that I am celebrating the holiday season in a more selective way.

Years ago, my family started a new Christmas Day tradition. Instead of turkey or ham for the big holiday meal, we picked something that we all really loved that we didn’t get to eat as often as we liked and that was fried oysters. Randy and Katrina would buy the oysters from the White River Fish Market and then Katrina and Mom would cook the oysters all while fending off anyone walking into the kitchen trying to snag a fried oyster before sitting down to dinner. Eventually other things got added like shrimp cocktail and then there was that hilariously fun year we had a fondue pot. This is Christmas for me. My head is filled with visions of all of us gathering in the old family house, crowding the kitchen or setting the table. It took four of us to make the cocktail sauce, each of us contemplating flavors and always agreeing that we needed more horseradish. That cocktail sauce is the only reason my parents always had a bottle of gin in the house. Yes..put gin in your cocktail sauce, heavy on the horseradish, light on the ketchup, some lemon and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Do not buy a pre-made cocktail sauce.

This kind of Christmas has been lost to me for many years.

Once my dad was placed into a memory care facility and my mom quickly sold our house to move into a much smaller house, we have failed to maintain this tradition. I think we tried it once or twice but I never felt comfortable in the new kitchen space and we gave up trying, opting instead to just eat at White River Fish Market where they cook the oysters and clean up the mess. It’s fine. I’ve told myself (keep telling myself) that the food is not important. It is the gathering together in one space that is important. This year, I’ve been having a much harder time believing this. I have felt untethered from my home in Oklahoma for some time and after moving our mom into assisted living, I completely lost an anchor. At Thanksgiving, I slept on my brother’s couch so I could have Thanksgiving dinner with my family at the Cracker Barrel. While standing in the storefront with Mom, waiting for a table, Mom said “it doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving.” I couldn’t disagree with her. There was something slightly depressing about the whole thing and I knew this going in. I was already scheming up a new plan for Christmas.

Michael and I booked an Airbnb in a neighborhood near my mom for the weekend before Christmas. My idea is to create a comfortable space for us all to gather. We’ll cook oysters and have shrimp cocktail. We’ll spend a day just being in a comfortable living room together without the chaos of restaurants. I am not delusional. I know this will not be like old times. We’re missing some very important players from the old times. One might even say that at least one of those players was the cornmeal to this fried oyster tradition. But part of celebrating the holiday in a more selective way is making choices for comfort and choosing something familiar to all of us. A large kitchen and comfortable living room for gathering. Fried oysters and cocktail shrimp. These are familiar things.

We’re two weeks away from this and I am already anxiously hoping for perfection. I’ve been compiling a list of things to take with us like extra chairs, throw blankets and pillows. Plus food. I’ve put siblings in charge of specific tasks. And it already feels brighter than Thanksgiving. I am coming to terms with the fact that my family is no longer growing as much as it is aging. In some ways that makes things easier. We no longer do physical gifts. Instead we gift each other time. The aging part is made more difficult when we try to hold onto the way things were, desperately grasping to a life that is no longer the same. So, what if instead of desperately grasping to the past, we just remember the past while being in our present? Any way…this is my Christmas wish for this season and I don’t need a tree lit up with lights to make that wish come true.

I’m choosing to be bah hum….not full strength bah humbug.

EIGHT CRAZY NIGHTS: WHAT WE LEARNED FROM LIGHTING THE MENORAH

Day eight

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 5 likes

On Christmas Eve, as we were driving to drop off the Cabbage with her Mom, I said to Michael "It's the first night of Hanukkah. We should light a menorah!" He narrowed his eyes and said "We should light a menorah!" We dropped the kid off and then headed to Walgreens to buy a menorah except Walgreens didn't have any. So then we went to World Market, but they didn't have any menorahs either. World Market doesn't seem so 'worldly' now. Finally, we walked next door to Target and they had menorahs tucked over on an end cap between stationary and birthday wrapping paper. We bought a menorah and some candles and while Michael drove us home, I did some research on how we're actually supposed to light the candles. 

We got home and set up our little menorah. Michael lit the shamash candle and then I said the blessings before he lit the first candle of Hanukkah. Then we looked at each other with giant grins on our faces. This felt important and relevant. Soon after I posted a picture of our menorah, Chad sent me a text asking me if Michael is Jewish. I sent a reply of 'nope' and then explained that we just felt that lighting the menorah was something we would do this year. As the days past and I posted more menorah pictures, I had several people say to me "I didn't know you were Jewish!" Again, I would explain that I am not Jewish and that lighting the menorah was our way of honoring other religions during this Holiday season. Michael even talked about getting a calendar that listed ALL the holidays and trying to celebrate every single one throughout a year. Charles, our friend who is about to be ordained as a priest, reminded us that this was an overwhelming idea because there are SO MANY HOLIDAYS. So we put a hold on that thought. 

For eight days, we said blessings and lit the candles on the menorah. When we traveled, we took the menorah with us. We included all of those we stayed with in lighting the menorah. 

Blessed are you, our G-d, King of the Universe who sanctified us with his commandments, and commanded us to kindle the Chanukah lights.

Blessed are you, our G-d, King of the Universe who performed miracles for our forefathers in those days, at this time. 

Each night, I spoke those words as I watched Michael light one candle and then another. It was a moment of each day where we had to pause. It was a moment of each day where we had to stop and say "it's time to light the menorah." and it made us more mindful. It gave the holiday and the time spent with family and friends more of something I'm not sure of. Maybe tangible? Meaningful? Respectful. Important. This may be the beginning of a yearly tradition. Maybe next year we add on until we are recognizing all of the different religions. Do you know the story of Giordano Bruno? He was an Italian Dominican friar who lived between 1550 and 1600.  He continued Copernicus's work and proposed that stars where distant suns and that the universe is infinite. Of course, the Roman Inquisition didn't care for this and had Bruno executed for heresy. During his trial it is said that Bruno defended his theories by saying that God is infinite and therefor the universe must be infinite. He declared to the Roman Catholics that "their God was too small." He was burned at the stake on February 17th, 1600.

Lighting the menorah each night reminded me that I grew up in a religion whose God is too small, too exclusive, a religion very much like the many other exclusive religions. Yet, by taking a moment to understand other religions we begin to understand more about each other and it is apparent that we all want to believe in something greater than ourselves. Isn't that proof that God is indeed infinite and not confined to one book or another?