Archive for December 2014

I was maybe 13 and sitting in the middle row of my friend Abby’s mother’s mini-van, somewhere between the Bay Bridge and the Eastern Shore. I had only known Abby for a few weeks—it was the beginning of 7th grade and I was the new kid at school, the only one in my grade, so I was still confused and trying to figure out this whole new world of middle school and uniforms and busses and friendships I found myself in without understanding how they came to be. We were driving to the outlets, some shopping for school clothes, and Abby and her mom kept up a scarily constant stream of conversation—in this mini-van there would be not a second of silence. If they weren’t talking, they were singing. They had the soundtrack to Wicked on that day, and they sang every word and every instrumental note. I was overwhelmed. I’ve never been so good at strangers—and these people still mostly felt like strangers—and I was trapped in this car as they sang drum parts. I knew the Wicked soundtrack of course, I was a middle school theatre kid, but I was still too shy to sing along.

There is a song on that soundtrack called “For Good” it’s a rousing number towards the end of the show, where the two leads talk about how important it is that they are in each other’s lives. “I've heard it said” they sing “That people come into our lives for a reason/ Bringing something we must learn/ And we are led/ To those who help us most to grow/ If we let them/ And we help them in return/ Well, I don't know if I believe that's true/ But I know I'm who I am today/ Because I knew you...”

I’ve been thinking a lot about that song this week, as 2014 comes to an end. It’s been a weird year, a really really hard year, but it’s brought so many good people in to my life.

I spent last New Year’s Eve in an apartment in Cleveland staring at snow and drinking bad booze and yelling at shitty movies on the TV. I was wearing pajamas and glasses, and surrounded by people who loved me at my very worst. I spent January couch surfing through bedroom floors and living room sofas, surrounded by enough warmth to overwhelm even the cold of Ohio.

And I guess that January set the course for what these year has been. Strange and new and kind of terrifying. Bad, I guess, but also good, and full of care and snuggles on couches in apartments full of friends. For a lot of this year those friends have been far away, but thanks to the magic of skype calls and facebook messages and texting, I’ve got love in my pocket all day long.

I left Salisbury in 2014. I spent an incredible, eye-opening summer at Kutz. I moved to New York. I started new jobs and made some new friends and read so, so many good books. I heard new music and more movies and laughed and cried more than my fair share.

But I’m more than ready to say goodbye to 2014. I’m ready for the new, for the different, for the whatever comes next.

My friend Charlie is coming over tonight. We’re going to sit on the balcony and watch the drunken partiers stumble down Second Avenue, snuggled under blankets, six stories in the sky. Next year he’ll start law school, and I’ll start- again- on the path to finish my degree. New years bring new challenges, but I’m thankful for the friendships that carry on.

So happy new years, friends. I hope your new year is better than your old, and you start 2015 smiling as bright as I am right now. I hope you have love and friendship and happiness and reasons to do the remarkable things that you are going to do. I hope we all find new adventures, and new words and new things that make us feel. I hope your year rocks. I hope mine does too.

There were not many Jewish children in the DC suburb where I grew up. There was me and my little brother; I didn’t really meet other Jewish kids until I started going to Hebrew school in the fourth grade. My elementary school was very typically suburban (not a lot of Jews, way too many boys with the exact same haircut ) and my strange schedule—High Holy days were excused absences, but school wasn’t closed—confused my non-Jewish friends.

But as much as the Jewish calendar confused them, their strange holidays confused me even more. Who was this Santa dude? And why didn’t he ever come visit me?

The Hanukkah Tree; aka the craft
for the only Jewish child in the
first grade class.

As I grew older, I learned more and more about Christmas. It’s basically impossible not to. I helped my best friend and her family decorate their Christmas tree. I sang carols in school, and every winter my mom would load us all in to the car with thermoses of hot chocolate and drive us around to look at all of the Christmas lights. We liked the crazy ones. The miss matched, loud and vibrant. Inflatables and plastic toys and rows and rows of decorations.

At this stage in the game, my parents realized they had to say something about Santa. So, they did what all good parents apparently do during the holiday season—they made up a ridiculous lie.

My parents told us—for years!—and we believed them!—that there was a giant red X on the roof of our house. This way Santa knew we were Jewish, and that he didn’t need to bother with our chimney on Christmas Eve. Similarities to the Passover story aside, this was a very convincing story for me when I was young. It made sense; I knew I was nice and not naughty so there was no way Santa would skip me of his own volition.

This fiction didn’t last forever, of course. For one thing, I soon realized that there was no way either of my parents ever went up on our roof, so that possibility was out. For another, the other Jewish kids didn’t seem to know about this whole red X thing. That seemed suspicious.

Eventually my parents cracked. They explained to me that Santa wasn’t real, but I was under no circumstances to tell this to any of the children I went to school with that weren’t Jewish. I felt important knowing this secret, and I played my part well. I’d do the Christmas crafts at school with a knowing glint in my eye. I’d never call out when our teacher read us Christmas stories.

It’s interesting to hear other non-Christmas-celebrating kids explain the ways their parents made sure they didn’t spoil Santa. It’s cute how hard everyone tries to preserve that little bit of magic. The parents who promised treats for keeping the secret. The weird stories about why Santa only visits specific houses. The red X on the roof.

This proves a couple of things. First, that winter time is kind of magical. Even for those of us that don’t get the whole holiday cheer thing, there’s an extra spark in the air that makes us just a little kinder; just a little more likely to try and make someone else’s holidays great. And second, that Christian parents don’t have a monopoly on lying to their children about Santa. Mine managed to pull that one off too.

New

The Santa Secret