How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane (24 page)

THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

T
he month before she turned three, my daughter asked me the question that I had been fearing ever since she was a glimmer in my fallopian tube: “What's Christmas?” she asked. When I opened my mouth to answer, all that came out was a raspy, choking sound. It was more awkward than the time she saw me coming out of the shower and asked me why I was wearing socks on my “kiki.”
^*

Here's the thing: as we've established, I was born to a pair of dope-smoking, radical hippie Jewish intellectuals
in Winnipeg, Canada. As has not been established, I didn't know a lot of Jews in Winnipeg, Canada, and I knew even fewer dope-smoking, radical hippie intellectual ones.
^*

My parents were “free thinkers” (when they weren't stoned, anyway) and felt that organized religion was a “thin construct of a shallow, emotionally enfeebled culture.” As a kid I didn't have the foggiest idea what that meant (I still don't), but it didn't matter because on Sunday mornings while my friends were waking up at seven, pulling on itchy wool dresses and dusty tights for church, I was cocooned in a warm blankie, laughing at
Bugs Bunny
cartoons while jamming spoonfuls of Count Chocula into my yap. There I was, all those Sunday mornings, gloating at my good fortune with brown marshmallows stuck in my teeth.

And then December would roll around.

Hanukkah would slide past our house without a nod, but I was fine with that. Since I didn't know any other Jews—for a while I considered them mythical creatures—as far as I was concerned, Hanukkah was the weird, distant, creepy mouth breather of an uncle that you don't want to spend one night with, never mind eight.

No, my soul-scarring pain belonged to Christmas. My holy grail day, the one holiday I desired more than anything in the world. The songs! The gingerbread! And the trees. All those adolescent pines garishly adorned with tinsel, lights, and big shiny balls, so wrong yet so right, as tasteless
and tawdry as a ten-year-old Brooke Shields in high heels and hooker makeup. Oh, Christmas Tree indeed!

But in the Stein household, Christmas was the most despicable of religious holidays. My parents rejected its rampant, crass commercialization, its Judeo-Christian-fascist hypocrisy (their indecipherable phrasing, not mine), though I think they mostly just resented having to spend time with extended family who didn't approve of their “alternative lifestyle” (i.e., their frequent consumption of pot brownies).

But my parents, God (or whoever) bless 'em, had the presence of mind to recognize that, even though they had their principles, our family was weird enough already. Depriving their kids of presents during the holiday season, well, that was just one toke over the line.

And lo, “Stein Day” came to be.

“Stein Day” fell on December 26 (Boxing Day, a.k.a., “The Great Canadian Fire Sale”), when sometime around midafternoon, Mom, Dad, and the big blue Rambler station wagon would pull into the garage, loaded down with half-price Legos, out-of-the-box Erector Sets, and several bags of Chinese food. And while the kids happily played with their loot, Mom and Dad would spoon out the chop suey and smoke a joint or two or seven, and that was that. Happy Stein Day, everybody! No gate-crashing relatives stinking up the bathroom, no toasts about gross things like family togetherness, no commie-fascist-Hallmark bullshit. Just fun!

By the time I was old enough to appreciate it, Stein Day had evolved into something even more casual, if
that's possible (and yes, it was). My teenage brothers couldn't be paid to hang out with their parents, even if they did have the best pot in town. And the magical, cavernous Rambler, now deceased, had been replaced by a VW Bug in which my mom would drive me to Kmart, where she would hand me twenty bucks with the instructions to “get yourself something and bring me back the change.”

While I truly appreciated the strings-free cash, I wanted
more
. More what, I didn't quite know. Just more
something.

The year I turned eleven I asked my mom if we could take a crack at this whole Christmas thing, maybe get a small tree? She laughed long and hard and then gave me her stock answer of “Don't be ridiculous,” because underneath all that tie-dye beat the heart of a pragmatic dictator.

That was the moment that my personal search for Yuletide satisfaction began.

On Christmas morning, before anyone in my house was awake, I'd shower, get dressed in my fanciest duds and snow boots, then leave the house to make my rounds. I'd have breakfast with the Taylors, brunch with the Herberts, and dinner with the Ricketts.

After gorging myself at each stop, I'd do a little reconnaissance, using the opportunity to test-drive all that freshly unwrapped Christmas booty (even though I'd deemed “Stein Day” lacking, all spiritual dissatisfaction aside I did have twenty dollars of toys to pick out). It's how I learned that Sea Monkeys suffer from a horrible case of false advertising and that an Easy-Bake Oven,
even if it is just a lightbulb encased in plastic, is pretty damned spectacular.

An unexpected (but welcome) side effect of my Christmas Day Drop-In tactic was that I'd invariably cash in on the sympathies of my friends' parents, who were completely confused and horrified by the notion of “Stein Day,” which meant I'd usually get sent home with at least one floater gift from under each tree. (As a result, to this day, I have enough address books, photo albums, and Santa-shaped candles to last me the rest of my life.)

And then I'd walk home with a bellyful of Christmas goose and fruitcake and armfuls of gifts and leftover mincemeat pie, but with an odd feeling, like I'd cheated the system but still didn't win.

Then when I turned fifteen, something remarkable happened—well, remarkable for a fifteen-year-old. I fell madly in something-like-love with a boy who wooed me by reading to me from his hip youth Bible,
The Way
(which featured colored photos of Jesus, who, it turns out, was a stone-cold fox). On our first Christmas Eve together, he took me to his church. It was a small, homey Presbyterian joint, and as we held hands and sang songs about frankincense and reindeer, I felt a deep sense of warmth and belonging. The feeling remained, even after we left the church, and I felt it later that night while he was feeling me up in the backseat of his Pontiac, my heart overflowing with hormones, emotion, and the true spirit of Christmas.

Unfortunately, my swollen heart was mutilated about a week later when he broke it off, saying that he didn't have enough love in his heart for both Jesus and me. Just
like that, my own private Christmas was ruined. That year, the year that Jesus stole my boyfriend (then subsequently gave him to Tanya Bendarchuk), was the year I made peace with the fact that I would never make peace with Christmas.

And I didn't. As I exited puberty and entered adulthood, every year became an experimental improvisation of holiday revelry; one year I'd put up a tree and decorate it ironically with sneakers and fake mustaches; the next year I'd ignore it entirely. Sure, I'd enjoy a slice of Christmas ham when offered, and who was I to say no to a mug of five-thousand-calorie eggnog? But the older I got, the more estranged we became. Christmas was like a Facebook friend that I'd stalk now and then, but I wouldn't dream of inviting him to crash at my house for a week.

By the time the husband showed up, I was long past my Christmas obsession.

Enter, the kid.

The husband and I agreed that we should probably mark the holiday season in some way, because, like my parents, we're weird enough already. I had a feeling it would end up looking a lot like Stein Day;
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maybe we'd throw a few chocolate dreidels into the mix, but beyond that I figured we'd be loading up the Rambler and gorging ourselves on lo mein.

And that's exactly what we did.

For exactly one year.

Because (if you're like us) one day you discover that children are humans with opinions and questions of their own, and that your lazy nonsolution is not a solution at all.

And while I did come to appreciate “Stein Day” (and not just for its cocktail-party conversation appeal), it didn't fit my new family: For one, marijuana makes me paranoid 82 percent of the time. And second, half of the people in my marriage were bar mitzvahed when they were thirteen. Add in the fact that the husband (a.k.a. the bar-mitzvah boy) began to feel what I now understand is a common experience of new parents—the pull of his religious roots. And so we found a sweet little Jewish preschool, a block from Chicago's Wrigley Field. A place where the kid could learn about Jewish holidays, tradition, and identity in an open, welcoming environment, and we could snack on the occasional loaf of challah as we strolled home through the throngs of drunk and disorderly Cubs fans.

We had chosen our team (Judaism/Cubbies); we had a direction; we were finally on a path.

So when the almost-four-year-old child asked, “WHY CAN'T WE GET A CHRISTMAS TREE?”—our united-front answer, “Because we're Jewish,” was the end of the conversation. Or at least it should have been.

Cut to: a Tuesday afternoon in mid-December. I was spending a delightful afternoon shopping for HVAC filters at the local Home Depot when I became lost among the forty acres of Christmas-decoration displays and stopped
in my tracks at the sight of a sparkly bush/tree/plant in a pot no taller than me.

It was spindly, prickly, and shapeless. This wasn't a Christmas Tree; it wasn't a Hanukkah Bush. It was a glorious HOLIDAY SHRUB, and though I can't quite explain what came over me, in that moment I realized that it was the answer to all of our/my prayers.

Ten minutes later I found myself forty dollars poorer, but one Holiday-Shrub-jammed-into-the-back-of-our-SUV richer. I headed out of the parking lot and then called the husband to give him the great news!

He didn't see it as great news. He was actually kinda annoyed that I'd made an executive decision on a subject over which we would need at least a week of arguing and obsessing.

Passive-aggressive expert that I am, my immediate impulse was just to override his concerns, present my daughter with her wonderful new Holiday Shrub, and henceforth be the titleholder of the Best Parent Award. But my cooler brain cell prevailed; this was going to take a little time and a lot of finesse. And if not that, then some harsh words followed by several well-focused silent treatments.

But in that moment, with just twenty minutes before I had to pick up the kid from her preschool, I pulled a quick detour by the home of my friend Christina, whose name is no coincidence: her holiday rituals are staggering—she spends more in a month on tinsel than I do in a year on my hair.

I carried the HS up to Christina's second-floor apartment (stabbing myself in the face with its hypodermic-like
needles as I went), set it on the landing, and rang the bell. I figured I could leave it with her for a day or two, or as long as it took for me to talk the husband into letting it live with us.

As I made my way down the stairwell, Christina peeked her head out of her door.

“MERRY CHRISTMAS!” I called out.

“GET THAT UGLY-ASS CACTUS OUT OF MY HALLWAY” she called back.

I explained my predicament—that I was on my way to pick up the kid and couldn't risk her seeing the HS before clearing it with the husband. Christina's thoughtful response was that I should “GET IT THE HELL OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW.”

I dragged the HS down the stairs (more facial stabbing), shoved it into the back of my truck, and, with just seconds to spare, sped to the preschool, where I found the kid proudly spinning the clay dreidel she'd made that afternoon. It looked like a four-sided blob of sparkly fecal matter, but as we walked to the car the kid babbled excitedly about the upcoming “Festival of Lights,” and as I buckled the kid into her car seat, I found myself getting choked up at her enthusiasm for this relatively minor Jewish holiday.

“SOMETHING SMELLS LIKE GUM!” she said, unaware that twelve inches behind her head, doused in fake pine scent, was the answer to her dreams. Or were they mine? I was no longer sure.

When we arrived home, the husband hugged me. “I've thought it over . . . Let's do it,” he said. “Let's keep the tree.”

“No,” I whispered. “I'm taking it back tomorrow. No tree for us. We're Jews. Big Jews. Jew Jew Jew Jew Jews.”