I’m not a New Year’s girl, exactly. Rosh Hashana is my favorite Jewish holiday, so I get my fill of New Year’s feelings back in the fall. And my birthday is coming up later on in January, and that’s when I do most of my introspective New Year’s stuff, in terms of resolutions and looking back. But tonight’s New Year’s Eve, and if nothing else, it’s wrapping up the Christmas vacation and that’s worthy of a blog post in and of itself.
Christmas this year was nearly perfect. It’s never an easy holiday and that’ll probably never really change for me. Too weighted with emotional baggage from the conversion and family stress – and also too colored by past memories of it being awful. Too much pressure to make it perfect, this line in the sand that I’ve drawn and insist on celebrating each year. But it gets easier. Reclaiming it helps – redefining traditions and doing my best to be gentle with myself. Christmas eve was spent at my mom’s house, with the kids bopping around and quiet family time. That night we went out to dinner with all our friends.
One reason I did the Christmas Eve chinese food is that I know there are no guarantees. And I don’t want them, in terms of my kids celebrating Christmas. Or being Jewish, for that matter. They’re going to grow up and may create families that only celebrate Jewish holidays. They may grow up and become Buddist monks in Tibet as well – but more than likely, whatever religious tradition they follow – Chinese food on Christmas Eve is a tradition that I think will stand the test of time.
Christmas Day was lovely, in the end. We came home Christmas eve night and put all three kids to bed, and then Marc crashed soon after. I made hot cocoa for myself, and sat up wrapping presents. Then I sat on the couch, and wrote my letter from Santa and ate all the cookies. We had a bunch of friends come over that afternoon for dinner, and in the end, it was actually a lot nicer than I thought it would be.
Glennys came down on Saturday and has been here for the week. We’ve had some crappy weather, which on the upside, meant that we were home for a few days, with nothing to do but play board games and hang out together. The downside was that we realized – again – that living on the hill from hell is such a pain in the winter. We were literally stuck on the hill from Monday night until Wednesday afternoon. But the kids have been great – they’re all old enough to play really well together, mostly. We had Monopoly marathons, Uno matches that lasted way longer than I thought they should.
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