Christmas Expectations Rant

Sorry for the lengthy post. Sometimes it is cathartic to write it out.

Building on Julia’s (from My American Life) post on lowering expectations at Christmas, I thought maybe I could share my own crazy Christmas story from a few days ago.

Where to start? Probably with the preface that if my family knew I was writing about this on the internet they would probably shoot me.

I’ve shared a bit of frustration about my mother in the past. It’s not that she is a bad person necessarily, but we are very different. She has had a rocky path in life, and as a result she has a lot of negativity around her. As part of this, she can be difficult to be around. I can only take her in small doses, but I still appreciate that she is my mother, and I make an effort to connect when I can. Unfortunately I think my mother’s family (my grandmother and my many aunts and uncles) has decided they don’t want to deal with her anymore and have pretty much written her off. But she still makes the effort–coming on holidays, calling to check in occasionally, etc–but her gestures aren’t really reciprocated, and sometimes she is seemingly overtly shunned.

Now I’m trying to get my head around this Christmas, because when I see my mother’s siblings and my grandmother, I can’t tell if they realize how much their actions are hurting my mother, or if they are so absorbed into their own worlds they are oblivious to the fact that they are hurting her. Or maybe they don’t care anymore? Their actions make her angry, which makes her want to react, which make them think she is still being negative, and they do something else, which makes her angry and makes her want to react, and it is this vicious cycle.

Anyway– so this leads me to Christmas.

When we were kids, holidays were always a lot of fun. Both my parents come from large families (my dad is one of 5, my mom is one of 7), so holidays were always full of people. At my dad’s family we had a lot of cousins around our ages, so holidays meant snowball fights and lots of games. But there were always more rules at my dad’s family’s house, so his family came off as more strict. At my mom’s family’s house, my mom was the first to get married, and for a long time it was just me, and then my middle sister. It was us and the adults. Since many of my mother’s younger siblings weren’t married and not used to kids, they enjoyed spoiling us and having us break the rules– stay up late, eat candies, forget schedules. They always seemed like the “fun” family because everything was crazy with them.

So maybe that is the carefree spirit now, that they are still interested in doing their own thing instead of thinking about others… I don’t know.

My parents divorced a long time ago, and that makes holidays already a bit awkward sometimes, so having these extra frustrations can make them more so. But I always look forward to the possibility of having a fun carefree Christmas, like the holidays of my childhood.

Now my mother lives in Virginia, we live in New England, my grandmother lives in Southern NY and my aunts live close by in New Jersey. My grandmother and aunts (especially one younger aunt, who has since married and has three small kids) see each other all the time. They live about an hour from each other, and my grandmother often babysits, and stays for stretches of time at the aunt’s house. We, by contrast, have always lived a bit far– at least four hours away as a child, and now a similar distance for me as an adult, and about six or seven hours away for my mom and my middle sister. Since no one comes down to visit, and my mother works retail, getting up to see the relatives in NY/NJ is quite a feat. She sometimes makes the long drive only to stay for about 24 hours, to turn around and drive home to work again. No one seems to appreciate this. In fact, I think they would rather my mother not come. They exclude her from gift exchanges, aren’t considerate of her schedule, and usually don’t listen to her.

This year, my sister and mother were able to take off from work early. P’s brother U had nothing to do for Christmas, so I invited him to come with us (after checking with my grandmother to see if it is was alright. Her response– “Jesus says there is always room at the inn.”) U, who doesn’t have a car, had to take a train up from Philly, and since on Christmas Eve the trains are on a holiday schedule, we had to be at the station at a specific time to pick him up. I had called my grandmother about a week in advance to coordinate the details. P and I were hoping to come down around mid-day on Christmas Eve to my grandmother’s place to hang out and be with family and pick up U.

“Oh no,” my grandmother said, “No one will be here. We have to pick up your uncles at the airport in Newark, and then we are going to your cousin’s Christmas play in New Jersey. No one will be here until 9pm.”

Me: “That’s quite late, should we go to New Jersey then?”

“No, just come to my house at 9.”

Me: “Well, the trains, we might have to come early because of the train to pick up U.”

“Can’t he take a train to Boston and then drive down with you from there?”

Me: “But, then he is paying to go several hours in the wrong direction, it would make more sense to pick him up at the train station near your place, unless we need to drive to Philly to pick him up and then turn around and drive back to your place, but that is 4 extra hours of needless driving.”

“Yeah, no that is silly, just come at 9, we will be here at 9.”

–now an aside frustration– my two uncles are in their 40s and 50s. They have always been picked up at the airport for holidays, which is fine, but my relatives wouldn’t give P and I the same courtesy when we literally flew from the other side of the world back from Nepal in 2009. My aunt instead insisted we take a $200 car service instead since the airport was “too far.” When I mentioned $200 was a lot of money, she said that maybe we didn’t have enough money to make the trip then and we shouldn’t go in the first place. That was the last time I was going to ask them for help. Our good friend AD agreed to pick us up no questions asked and bring us to our car that was parked at his place an hour north of the city.

So Christmas Eve comes, and U realizes that his train options are 7:20pm or 11pm. 11 seemed awfully late to be traveling, so we said he should come at 7:20 and we would take him out to dinner to kill time. We called the restaurants near my grandmother’s place to see when they closed– which was around 8pm– I mean it was Christmas Eve, of course the wait staff would want to be home with their families too. We called my mom, who said they were going to be near my grandmother’s place at 6, since they got off from work early and wanted to set out early in case there was traffic coming through DC. So we aimed to be there at 6 so we could eat with my mother and sisters before going to my grandmother’s place.

Then I called my aunt to check in. Both my uncles had arrived (we were originally told that one uncle was coming in the morning and one in the evening, but that happened not to be the case) and had been picked up, and they were getting ready for the Christmas play which would be over by 6. Remember they were only an hour from my grandmother’s place. Which means they could technically have been back by 7pm. I told her the train schedule and my mother’s work schedule had us all reaching NY by 6, and we would kill time at a restaurant, but all the restaurants closed at 8pm, could they please come back closer to 8 instead of 9? Otherwise we would be sitting in the driveway in the car for an hour or so waiting for them. I even offered that if they would be up around 7, we could all eat at the restaurant together.

My aunt made an excuse about “if there is traffic and we are running late, we don’t want you to miss your dinner, so we will eat in NJ and come up after that.” I said, “Sure, but could you come closer to 8 than 9, everything closes at 8 and we will be stuck outside with nowhere to go on Christmas Eve.” She said something noncommittal and got off the phone.

All went according to plan– we met, ate, picked U at the train station, and stayed at the restaurant as long as we could before it became painfully obvious that the wait staff was anxious to leave. We called my uncle to check in– “oh we are still in NJ, your aunt made dinner, we will be about hour and a half… just go to a bar and wait. No big deal.”

My mother at this point was furious. She had driven 7 hours to come up for the holiday, tried to plan in advance, we had all met on our schedules, and all we asked was that they come back from my aunt’s place in NJ– an aunt that socializes with my grandmother and other aunt ALL THE TIME– an hour early so we wouldn’t have to sit in the cold waiting for them. They knew this at least a few hours in advance. They just didn’t seem to care. And there alternative suggestion was– oh, find a bar to hang out in– on Christmas EVE!– if we didn’t want to wait in the cold.

So we drove to my grandmother’s place. My mother said that my grandmother often forgets to lock the back porch door, and she was hoping that maybe the back door was also open. I went with her. We got in the porch, but the back door was locked. By the light of our cell phones I figured that I could probably shimmy the kitchen window open and crawl through so I could unlock the house from the inside. After 10 minutes of jiggling the window screens/latches, I took a set of car keys and wedged a key under the window pane and propped up the window, sliding through and rolling into the kitchen sink (a move that I didn’t realize at the time, but left both my upper thighs with three long sets of bruises as I shimmed through the high window sill). Finally I was in. I turned on the lights and unlocked the door and let my mom and sisters, and P and his brother in.

We settled in with our bags, and sat waiting for my grandmother and uncles to come back. My mom kept saying that she didn’t necessarily blame my grandmother, who is getting quite old and just kind of follows the crowd, but her siblings, for their lack of consideration for other people. She was practically in tears and seething. When the crew finally did show up some time between 9 and 10, they were surprised to find us in the house. I said the back door was unlocked, and they said, “oh that was lucky” and acted as if everything was no big deal. Later at midnight mass my grandmother didn’t know why my mother had “a puss on her face” during the service.

I tried to keep my mother from making snide comments under her breath the rest of the weekend (sometimes more successfully than others) but at least Christmas day was enjoyable. My youngest uncle was quick to fill everyone’s’ glass with more alcohol, and the house filled with other relatives.

The next day (26^th), the big news was that the east coast of the US was going to be hit with a big snow storm. P and I assumed that we would stay at my grandmother’s to ride out the storm before heading south to Philly to drop U off at his place. Instead my grandmother said that she, my aunt, and my two uncles were going to NJ again, and didn’t extend the invitation to any of us. Since my grandmother didn’t share her keys, the house would have to be locked when they left, which meant we all had to leave too. It basically meant we were being turned out of the house into an oncoming blizzard.

“In Nepal no family member would send you out into bad weather. Ever.” P said, as we loaded up the car and drove off. Again, my mother was seething, she was planning to drive 7 hours back to Virginia with both my sisters, into the storm. I kept calling her on my cell phone imploring her to take the route south which swings by Philly so if the weather got really bad she and my sisters could crash at U’s place.

According to our GPS the route from my grandmother’s place to U’s should only have taken 2 hours. It took us 6 because of the storm. We literally drove along the Garden State and New Jersey Turnpikes at 10-15 miles an hour, and could play “count the car wrecks” on the side of the road. We eventually caught my mother at a rest stop and had her follow us back to Philly where we weathered the rest of the storm at U’s and dug out the next morning. Upon calling my grandmother and aunts to let them know she reached somewhere safely they a) acted like it was no big deal and b) admonished her for staying at U’s place– a 20 something year old bachelor who was most likely “unprepared” for guests. They told her to get a hotel somewhere– which I know is outside my mother’s budget. Actually when my mother tried to coordinate Christmas to begin with, and the 9pm on Christmas Eve thing originally came up my aunt told my mother, “why don’t you get a hotel then” knowing my mother’s precarious financial situation.

And my youngest uncle had the audacity to say over the holiday that “family is important, and no matter how much we drive each other crazy, it’s important to get together.” Their actions didn’t really show it.

Needless to say I found the whole 2 day experience with the family quite hurtful. Not necessarily to me, but knowing how much their nonchalant attitude was angering my mother. I guess what makes it harder to chew is that growing up they were always the “fun” family. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized I have to lower my expectations from them. My mother said, “I feel guilty, because I know it’s me they don’t like, and I feel that they treat my children bad now because of it.”

I was also embarrassed because it was the first time P’s brother U was spending Christmas with us. It was his first look at an American family holiday gathering– and this was what he saw. Never  in a million years could I imagine P’s family, or any Nepali friend of ours, doing that kind of stuff to me or my family. So it saddened me a lot to showcase this side of my family. But likewise I would feel bad if I had to “hide” holidays from P and U as well.

So anyway, P and I are leaving Philly today after a day of relaxation to head south to VA for New Years at my mothers. Hopefully this holiday will have slightly less drama, but knowing how it started out, I’m not so sure.

White Christmas

It seems like the northern hemisphere around the world has been blasted with winter weather (a quick read of BBC will give you a rundown of all the cancelled flights and storms in Europe), and I’m happy to report that my little section of New England has finally received a dusting of snow. Not a lot, but enough to say the ground is white (or nearly white, when the grass isn’t poking up through it).

Having grown up in the North East of the US, I’m used to a “white Christmas.” Most of my childhood Christmases were white, even if it didn’t start snowing until Christmas Eve. Part of me used to believe that Santa couldn’t come unless it snowed, and that his sleigh was preceded on Christmas Eve by the fluffy falling flakes.

As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up in the land of ice and snow (central New York), so this pre-Christmas whiteness has made me happy, it’s about time that it arrived!

So here is a song to get you in the holiday mood:

Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” in the 1942 movie “Holiday Inn”

And if you need a little masala… sent to me by NN: Punjabi Jingle Bells

Annual AmericaNepali Christmas Party

You can read about last year’s party HERE.

Saturday night P and I pulled off our 4^th annual Christmas party, and although the prep was a bit exhausting, I think it was one of our best! In total there were 32 people in our apartment, some of whom didn’t leave until nearly 2am! :)

The general structure for our party starts with wild cookie baking the night or two before the actual event. I always get over zealous in the cookie making department, and generally fall a bit short of my ultimate cookie goal, but this year I think we did a pretty good job. Out of the 10 batches of cookies I hoped to make, we finished 9, and without realizing it each of the 9 cookies hit a different flavor—we had lemon, coconut, chocolate peppermint, raspberry jam, cinnamon, peanut butter, Irish soda bread, orange cranberry, and ginger molasses!

My "Cinammon Polar Bear" Cookies.... one of the 9 types made for the party

On Saturday the party started around 7 with a round of appetizers and drinks. I debated  up until the last minute  (literally 6 hours before the event when we finally went grocery shopping), whether to have Nepali or American food. In the past my middle sister K has attended and she would bake the Turkey while I would make a Thanksgiving style meal, but the past two years she hasn’t been able to come. Last year I fell back on our old staples of Nepali food because it is so much easier to cook South Asian food in bulk. Yet since the party was in honor of the American side of our household I really wanted to make American food.

Alas, we eventually we settled on a combo–American appetizers: raw veggies and dip, chips and salsa, cheese and crackers; some American entrées: Roasted veggies with garlic and rosemary, sautéed brussel sprouts; some Nepali entrées: two types of chicken curry (drumsticks and chopped meat), cauliflower curry, rice, and kwanti (bean soup); and a random entrée: a recipe inspired by AS—ham, feta and orzo salad. Lastly the dessert was purely American—9 different types of Christmas cookies!

Our Irish friend brought “Christmas crackers” for everyone. Crackers are a tradition in Ireland and England, and they were a great idea for the party. The crackers look a bit like empty toilet paper tubes wrapped in shiny paper. Inside the tubes are paper crowns, silly novelty items, and jokes. You pull the cracker with a friend, with one person holding one end of the wrapping, and the other holding the opposite. When you both pull, the cracker makes a “pop” noise and the gifts fall out. For the rest of the night most of our guests were wearing colorful paper crowns which definitely added to the festivity of the evening!

The next phase of the party was “Yankee Swap.” I think this game can be played by a variety of rules and can go by different names (“White Elephant” is one) but the way we generally play is that people buy a gift that’s usually around $5—the gifts can be humorous and silly, or they can be regular gifts. I write out numbers on little slips of paper for everyone participating and people pull the numbers ouf of a hat so the distribution is random. All the wrapped gifts are put under the Christmas tree before we start. The first person to go can choose any gift from the tree and unwraps it. The second person to go does the same, but has the option to swap with person 1 if they choose. The third person then goes and so on, with each person successively able to swap their gift with anything else that has already been opened (so it is better to get a higher number rather than lower with the exception of person 1). Depending on the gifts available, sometimes a person might wind up with several different gifts due to swapping, but ultimately ends up with one. The last person to go is “number 1” and they can choose to swap any gift from all that have been opened in the entire game.

The group was split this year, with several people giving silly gifts—an orgasmic sound making bottle opener, an “over the hill” themed piggy bank, a candy bra, etc– and many giving more “regular” gifts like tea, coffee mugs, chocolates, etc. The most famous gift of the night was the candy bra, which was swapped around a few times to the cheers of “Candy bra! Candy bra!” Merry Christmas, eh?

The remainder of the night was filled with eating, and more eating, and even more eating, as well as lots of drinking, conversation, Christmas carols and fun.

So whether or not you celebrate the holidays, we wish you season’s greetings from AmericaNepali and a Happy New Year!

PS- anyone have a good Christmas cookie recipe? Wanna swap recipes?

Being Good at Christmas Time

There was a funny post today highlighted on the WordPress homepage called, “Why it’s a bad idea to peek at your presents” and I thought it was time for a confessional post about my own childhood Christmas curiosities, and—er—lack of patience? Too bad I didn’t have a character like the “Dad” in this post to “teach me a lesson,” I had to teach it to myself.

I promise, I don’t do this anymore, but for a few years in my pre-teen days, I fancied myself something of a Christmas-present-secret-agent. I was getting old enough to know the truth about “Santa” and savvy enough to know my parents had to hide those gifts somewhere, and I loved to find them before Christmas and figure out what they were.

It started in the first year or two with the family gifts that began to appear under the Christmas tree in mid-December. Instead of buying gifts for parents and sisters, then hiding the wrapped gifts until Christmas Eve, we would wrap them and put them under the tree shortly after purchasing them. It made the living room all the more “Christmasy” to have a few scatter presents there.

I somehow got the idea that I could get a good sense of  what the present inside the wrapping paper was if I scratched a bit of a hole underneath a gift tag or bow. Between present size, shape, sound (if shaken) and a tiny peep hole peek under the wrapping paper, I could make a pretty good educated guess. No one discovered my “wrapping peep holes” so I felt pretty daring.

The following year I decided to take it a step further, and when no one was around I thought I could sneak a gift to the bathroom, delicately peel off the scotch tape and open the whole edge of a present and see a majority of the box underneath. This gave me an even better idea of what gifts were—but I found that peeling off the tape sometimes ripped the wrapping paper, or pulled off some of the paper design, and the tape wasn’t all that sticky again afterwards—too much chance for discovery!

The year after that I got really bold. I figured that my parents hid the majority of “Santa” gifts in the attic, which was tough to get into when people were around. It was one of those attics that unfolded from the ceiling, you had to pull a draw string to open the wooden “door” and a collapsible set of “stairs” descended to help you climb up into the attic space. The “door” was part of my parents’ bedroom ceiling, and the collapsible “stairs” creaked to high heaven when you pulled them down and straightened them out. No chance of sneaking up there when others were around.

So I hatched a plan—fake sick, stay home from school alone, and spend the day exploring the attic space and checking out the gifts—remember, I fancied myself a secret agent, I was bubbling with anticipation!

Not to mention, my dad had lent me an old rubber stamp making kit that came with an x-acto knife. Due to the tape stickiness issues of the previous year, I theorized I could easily unwrap the attic stash by surgically slicing the scotch tape along the edges of the wrapping paper, unwrap the entire gift, check it out, then refold the paper along the same edges and apply a second layer of tape directly over the tape I had sliced. Presto, who would know?

The night before I was to put my plan into action I started turning on the theatrics… acting tired, rubbing my throat, complaining of achiness. I wanted to set the stage for a “I can’t go to school today mom, I’m feeling rotten” the next morning. And so it went—my sisters were herded out the door to the school bus, my mom left for work, and I stayed at home watching cartoons and sipping vegetable soup.

I waited an  hour or two, just to make sure that no one would come back and “surprise me” while I was frolicking in the attic. Once I felt confident the coast was clear I pulled on the string connected to the attic door, unfolded the creaky wooden ladder/stairs, grabbed the scotch tape and x-acto knife, and scurried up.

My suspicious were correct! The attic was brimming with brightly wrapped boxes of Christmas gifts, tucked amongst the rafters and pink insulation. I spent a good deal of time going through the piles to look for gifts, mindful to keep packages in the right “order” so as not to arouse suspicion. I unwrapped and rewrapped most of my gifts, and even some of my sisters’ gifts, just to see what was there. It was great fun, and once it was over, I felt a sense of pride that I was able to pull off this secret agent mission.

The rest of the day I was excited. I had this big secret. I knew my gifts, but my parents didn’t know I knew, and I knew my sisters’ gifts but they didn’t know I knew either.

However the excitement didn’t last long. After a day or two, I realized that knowing all the gifts kind of ruined the excitement and anticipation of Christmas day. There were no surprises to look forward to, no burning curiosity to keep you up at night wondering, no suspense. As the days ticked closer to Christmas Eve, I realized that by sneaking into the attic and covertly opening the gifts I essentially ruined half the fun of receiving gifts to begin with.

Christmas day I already knew how many gifts would be stacked in the living room. Of course it was nice to receive presents, but my enthusiasm was drained.

That was when I decided I wouldn’t look at presents beforehand again. I enjoyed the anticipation too much.

However somehow my family found out about my sleuthing, and I became notorious for checking out my gifts ahead of Christmas, even though I never did it again. They all expected it, and wouldn’t let me forget it. Even now my younger sister still brings it up.

So sometimes it’s better to be good at Christmas time… but to be safe, maybe parents out there should hide their scotch tape and x-acto knives.

My secret agent kit pretty much looked like this... perhaps I missed my true calling, as a surgeon!

What I’ve Been Up To…

I’m sorry my posting spree of October became a relatively quite November. As I mentioned at one point, things became pretty busy. Here’s what’s been happening in the American-Nepali Household:

-November meant Tihar celebrations leading into an international educators conference, leading into International Education Week programming, leading into good bye parties and dinners for AS and N, leading into Thanksgiving celebrations (and lots of “on the road traveling” to see family)…

-December meant preparing for the international student council’s biggest event of the year the International Dinner, and now that the dinner is finished, prepping for Christmas, writing out my long list of Christmas cards, and organizing our annual Christmas party in “the household.”

P and I have also been doing a lot of apartment cleaning/rearranging since the departure of our friends. It was a little challenging to completely “settle in” when we first moved to our new place since we didn’t use certain sections of the apartment. Not to mention (frustratingly) there were a lot of small things around the apartment that were broken by previous tenants, that P and I didn’t have time or patience to fix before (don’t get me started on the landlady who lives thousands of miles away and is not interested in fixing these “small” inconveniencies.). I actually spent a good deal of Sunday afternoon on a ladder 12 feet up in the air  replacing venetian blinds and fixing the pulley systems to get them to open and close properly (perhaps working at an engineering college is starting to rub off on me?) Now that the weather is getting cold, being able to close the blinds and keep out the evening draft will  be important!

Lastly, I’ve also been working on wedding stuff—I found a dress for the American ceremony (hurray!), we finally locked in the Nepali ceremony site (another hurray!), and my sister printed “Save the Date” magnets that she designed for us that I am hoping to get out soon (which will be a “hurray!” once they are distributed). I’ve also been working on a website so that invitees can have more information about venues, times, dates, places to stay, etc. I’m hoping to have two pages that explain some of the cultural elements of the “white wedding” and the “red wedding” and for some reason have hit a bit of a wall—I’m not really sure what to include. Perhaps if I have time later today I’ll try to draft something and put it up here for some suggestions. I don’t want to overload people with information, but being an international educator I find the dual ceremonies a “teachable moment” and I want my friends and family to learn more about the traditions involved.

So that’s where I am these days. What are you up to? Any holiday/festivals coming up in your households? Do you have suggestions on what to write for Nepali or American wedding traditions?

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

As I’ve noted before, my family takes pride in its Irish heritage. My maternal grandfather immigrated from Ireland when he was in his 20s, and my maternal grandmother’s parents were from the same county in western Ireland as my grandfather. On my father’s side the connection goes back farther, but they still celebrate their Irish roots. Thus St. Patrick’s Day in my family has always been a big deal.

At the very least, one has to wear green on March 17^th to celebrate. When my little sister was younger, she used to go all out (she probably still does, I’ll have to ask), painting her face the colors of the Irish flag, and wearing shamrock stickers, Irish flags and other Irish paraphernalia all over her body on St. Patrick’s Day. As kids my dad was president of the local Ancient Order of Hibernians club, and we would help out by making corned beef sandwiches and “boiled” dinners (boiled cabbage, carrots, and potatoes with corned beef) at the club, with Irish music blaring from the stereo, while we served people dressed head-to-toe in green.

Since we always did something on St. Patrick’s Day, it took me a long time to realize that not everyone around the world celebrated the day. When I was in elementary school I had an Indian pen pal who lived in Malaysia. I asked him what he did for St. Patrick’s Day and he told me (much to my elementary school surprise) that there weren’t many Irish people in Malaysia, so they didn’t celebrate (wha?). Then when I lived in France, I wished everyone a “bon fete de St. Patrice!” to which most people responded, “But my name’s not Patrick.” (since in France each day has a saint associated with it, and on the saint’s day associated with your name you wish people a “bon fete”). Since it wasn’t a big deal there either, I decided to go all out… totally dressing in green and making sure to wish everyone a Happy St. Patrick’s Day anyway whether their name was Patrice or not.

P has celebrated several St. Patrick’s Days with us– a few at the old AOH club we grew up at. I can’t say that he is a big fan of “boiled” Irish dinners he used to eat the cabbage, potatoes, carrots and ham… and I’d eat the cabbage, potatoes and carrots. The lack of “spice” (unless you count salt and pepper) disappoints the palate if you are used to more flavorful fair, but he tries it none-the-less.

So if you get the chance, try to take a moment to do something to commemorate the day… have a slice of Irish Soda Bread, try a boiled dinner, listen to some Irish music, but on a green shirt, or at least enjoy a beer… because as they say at the Guinness Factory, “Everyone is Irish on March 17^th!”

For Many, December’s a Dilemma

P forwarded me this article earlier today. I found it interesting and wanted to share. To see the article in its original format click HERE.

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Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) — As Christmas season went into full swing this year, Glen Fullmer’s 7-year-old son came home from school with an assignment: Make a poster illustrating his family holiday traditions.

The boy wasn’t sure how to proceed because he and his family are Baha’is, not Christians, and they have no holidays during the Christmas season.

Thus, Fullmer encountered the “December Dilemma” — the term used for the quandaries and anxieties non-Christians and interfaith couples face during Christmas season.

Fullmer, a Baha’i faith spokesman who lives in Evanston, Illinois, said he saw the poster assignment as a “teachable moment” for his 4-, 7- and 10-year-old sons who associated holiday traditions with Christmas.

He reminded his boys that Baha’is have a gift-giving and charity period in February called Ayyam-i-Ha, a stretch of time not unlike the Christmas season.

And he helped his son design the poster about that holiday, which precedes a fasting period and then the Baha’i New Year in March.

“His classmates asked him questions about the holiday, and one of his friends came up to him and wants to celebrate that holiday,” Fullmer said, pleased that his son’s peers helped him reaffirm his identity.

Navigating the Christmas season can be a challenge for the millions of people who don’t celebrate the holiday. Many acknowledge and sometime embrace the season’s customs, such as gift-giving and sending out greeting cards, while at the same time they are conscious of maintaining their own religious identities.

“They strongly try to maintain their own integrity, but they really want to find bridges across holidays,” said the Rev. Dr. Paul Numrich, a professor at the Theological Consortium of Greater Columbus in Ohio. “I think that’s the majority.”

L.S. Narasimhan, chairman of the Georgia Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, is a Hindu and doesn’t celebrate Christmas. But he said he admires the Christian celebrations of his friends and has attended Christmas Eve services at several churches.

“Hindus are typically more open-minded and tolerant. Hinduism is very comfortable in accommodating a diversity of ideas,” he said.

“It is very common for Hindu families to have Christmas trees at their homes, purely as a fun thing to do for their children. When they visit shopping malls, Hindu parents in general are comfortable with a photo-op for their little kids with Santa.”

But at the same time, there are pressures about the encroachment of Christianity on Hindu life.

“Television commercials, good selection of merchandise and great sale prices persuade Hindu-Americans to take advantage of the shopping spree,” Narasimhan said. “Several Hindu temples have risen up to the challenge and added some special Hindu prayers and ceremonies to engage Hindus who are on winter holidays but not on overseas vacations.”

Dr. Shefali Chheda, an Atlanta-area pediatrician, is a Jain — practicing a religion with Indian roots. Growing up in Houston, Texas, she said her parents “felt comfortable letting us celebrate Christmas,” perhaps to help fit into American society and maintain a sense of normalcy.

“The spirit and meaning of Christmas, of helping others and of giving, are nice messages. Therefore, it is hard to consciously object to it,” Chheda said.

“Jains, as a whole, are a minority in India. Many Jains celebrate Hindu holidays, so celebrating Christmas with Santa and a tree and presents is no different. Since Jains wholeheartedly believe in ‘ahimsa’ — peace toward all living beings in thought, word and action — the Christmas spirit is a very Jain-like philosophy.”

The religious aspect of Christmas — believing Jesus is the savior and that December 25 is his birthday — is not celebrated in Jainism, but the customs and symbols are interwoven into daily life, she said.

“Now that I have toddlers in the house, they come home with stories about Christmas. They sing songs about Rudolph and Santa, and Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah. But it’s Santa that everyone talks about, so they talk about him as well,” Chheda said.

“I use Santa as a behavioral modification tool. ‘Santa’s watching you, so you better be good’ works infinitely better than timeout. My kids will be living in this country; they will have a hard enough time anyway with their names and food and other cultural traditions; Christmas — and the Christmas spirit — is not one tradition that I want to take away from them.”

Jesus plays a role in the theology of other religions, such as the Baha’i faith and Islam, even though those faiths don’t observe Christmas as a religious holiday.

The Christmas season presented a struggle for Haris Tarin, director of the Washington office of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. He grew up in Los Angeles, California, area schools, where he sang the ever-present Christmas carols and made the gingerbread houses in schools but didn’t have a tree in his home.

“We definitely had a little bit of anxiety in childhood,” Tarin said. But that changed as he grew up and refined his American Muslim persona amid the American atmosphere of diversity and tolerance.

Now, where he and his family live in northern Virginia, “we don’t celebrate Christmas. We celebrate our holidays” — pointing, for example, to Eid al-Fitr after Ramadan and Eid al-Adha after the hajj pilgrimage. But he welcomes the goodwill of the season — the gift-exchanges with non-Muslim neighbors and the requests from schoolteachers to talk about Muslim holidays.

“There’s definitely going to be a level of discomfort, especially for those who aren’t used to that diverse culture that we belong to,” he said. But the unease spawns discussion, presenting a useful opportunity to help young people and newcomers, he said.

For Jews, the eight-day holiday of Hanukkah happens to fall during the Christmas season. Hanukkah is wildly popular and observed, with its special foods, gift-giving and candle lighting, and with its symbols such as the menorah — a candelabrum — and the dreidel, a toy that spins like a top.

Compared with other non-Christians, many Jews have drawn a sharper line in the sand when it comes to observing Christmas, a stance informed by historic, theological and self-preservation reasons. That attitude emerged recently during a young professionals’ get-together at an Indian restaurant outside Atlanta sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and Young Indian Professionals.

People there indicated that attending Christmas-themed holiday parties, exchanging greeting cards and wishing Christian friends “Merry Christmas” are surely not uncommon or unacceptable among Jews. But some practices are widely shunned — such as plunking one’s child on Santa’s lap at the mall, and deplored — such as assigning kids in public schools to write a letter to Santa Claus.

“It’s a beautiful season. It brings out a joy,” said Hannah Vahaba, who organized the Jewish-Indian event. “But I’m not going to celebrate it.”

Interfaith couples celebrate their diversity during the Christmas season. Jeff Silver, a certified public accountant who is Jewish, and Shweta Gupta, a dentist who is Hindu, are planning their marriage next year. They will have an interfaith household and said they hope to raise children to understand both of their traditions. At their home in Atlanta, they’ve set up a holiday tree decorated with Hindu and Jewish ornaments.

Non-religious Americans embrace a December “secular holiday” called HumanLight.

Patrick Colucci, vice chair of the HumanLight Committee and member of the New Jersey Humanist Network, said the holiday can uplift “atheist, humanist and nonreligious” people who feel left out and isolated during Christmas.

It was a perfect fit for him when it came along, he said, because “it corresponds with my humanity-based ethics and values, without any supernatural or theistic beliefs. My ‘holiday season’ is HumanLight and New Year’s Eve — that’s what I celebrate.”

“The only dilemma, in my experience is, if Christmas is part of the larger family tradition, and then some family members reject us for not believing in it anymore. We’re not out to take Christmas away from anyone who wants to celebrate it — there is no ‘war on Christmas,’ ” Colucci said.

How do Christians themselves see the presence and practices of non-Christians during Christmas? While many would like to see non-Christians convert to Christianity, they also recognize that the United States is a “diverse society” and that conversion “is not even on their radar screen,” said Numrich, the theology professor.

“There’s a deep American virtue in respecting religious differences,” he said.

Christmas Cards

Sorry I’ve been missing for a little bit. It’s actually a little embarrassing, but I’ll be honest… I started watching the television series “Lost” through the streaming video available online on Netflix, and I’ve been quite hooked. It’s tough to stop watching when the weather stinks outside, the days are short and dark, the apartment is chilly, and I know there is another episode waiting for me if I push the play button from under the warm blankets. Plus mysterious island intrigue and never-ending episodic cliff hangers don’t help ;)

In order to make myself feel less guilty about spending most of the weekend glued to the computer screen, I tried to kill two birds with one stone and do my Christmas cards while watching.

This is a holiday tradition I really enjoy, but I think P finds it all very amusing. Every year I buy the cards and stamps, organize a long list, track down missing addresses and spend hours writing out cards and envelopes (yeah I know, I’m not in the 21^st century with electronic address lists and printed labels). I stack up the finished cards, have P sign, then I seal them and send them on their way.

“You’re such an American,” he was teasing me the other day while I passed him a big stack to sign (while “Lost” was briefly paused, of course). I usually try to get him to write more than just his name but he generally answers with, “you said everything I would have said anyway.” I think he finds it interesting that most cards come to us with very little writing in them, usually just a quick “merry Christmas, happy new year” and signature, so he doesn’t really “get” the whole purpose if the card isn’t really saying much.

“It’s the gesture.” I explain, “someone was thinking about you, wanted to stay connected. It’s the thought that counts.” Conversely, sometimes we receive cards with newsletters in them giving a long year in review. I particularly enjoy these, especially with people I haven’t been in much contact with, and I think P is amused by the extremes between the two types of cards one can receive. Often family will send cards with pictures of their children, and those are nice to see as well.

I think what also amuses him is the process. Deciding who gets a card and who doesn’t, and if he notices changes to “the list” from year to year he likes to comment on it, “ohhhh… so and so didn’t make it on the list! What did they do?” As my beloved Wikipedia says, “Because cards are usually exchanged year after year, the phrase ‘to be off someone’s Christmas card list’ is used to indicate a falling out between friends or public figures.”

This isn’t necessarily the case for me—sometimes it depends on if I send lots of  cards over the years but never get one back, then people might get bumped from “the list” with no hard feelings (particularly if I’m running low on cards or stamps). Occasionally someone isn’t meant to be on “the list” but we receive a card out of the blue, and they then make it back on “the list.” Sometimes people don’t get a card because they wouldn’t expect one (this happens when I’m running low on supplies as well), or if their address isn’t confirmed, or if we finally just lost touch. I always ask if P wants to add someone to “the list” but he thinks of the annual project as my own, so he usually lets me ultimately decide. I’m always willing to add if he is interested.

My friend AD (I should probably change his name to Tundal45) “gets” the Christmas card thing. He started sending them a few years back because it was a great “networking tool” to stay connected with people he knew but didn’t get to interact with on a daily basis. He sends the cards to friends, mentors and other important people in his life because it is nice to have an excuse once a year to touch base. I’m definitely of the same opinion. Even if I don’t send a newsletter (I know, surprising, I bet you guys pegged me for the long Christmas newsletter type. Not yet, but I’m sure someday), and I only write a brief tidbit in the card, at least the person knows that they were in our thoughts and the connection continues.

Not to mention, we get a lot of junk mail. With the advent of e-bills, 95% or more of P and my regular mail is junk. It is disappointing as an adult to know most of our mail is shredded and recycled. As a kid I loved running out and checking the mailbox, I was on a first name basis with our mail lady, I had multiple pen pals from around the world and I loved getting personal cards, postcards and letters through the post. The feeling lingers, and I enjoy this time of year when I can sift through the junk we receive on a daily basis and see colorful envelopes with handwritten addresses. I enjoy opening them, reading them, and taping them up around the doorway in the living room, like my Grandmother, to be displayed until New Years.

So… thanks to my “Lost” addiction, 99% of my Christmas cards are in the mail. So be on the lookout (you know who you are), and I’ll be on the lookout for mine :)

Christmas in December… Only!

Can I talk about a pet-peeve for a moment? Okay… (deep breath in, deep breath out).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a scrooge. I like Christmas a lot, I really do, particularly now that Christmas is representative of a family cultural tradition that never existed for P before, it has more meaning for me. I never felt that the holiday had a personal spiritual pull, but I can really embrace the cultural aspects of it. I try not to buy into a lot of the consumerism that surrounds the holiday, but I like different pieces of it… like Christmas carols, and cookie baking, and putting up my fake tree that sits in storage most of the year. I enjoy getting holiday cards and sticking them around the doorway in the living room like my Grandmother does…

Christmas *doesn't* need to be celebrated all year round...

But one thing that drives me bonkers every year is how early the Christmas “season” starts. I was really bothered when I walked into our local grocery store on October 31^st and all the Halloween candy had been replaced with candy canes and red and green foil-wrapped chocolates. October 31^st! They couldn’t even wait for Halloween to be officially over! The next day the grocery store replaced the pumpkins outside with little evergreen centerpieces with red and green bows, and not too long after that I saw Christmas trees being sold in an empty lot on my way home from work.

My sisters and my mother’s family are of the opinion that the Christmas “season” begins when Santa arrives at the end of the Macy’s Day Parade on Thanksgiving. As kids we used to watch it while at my grandmother’s house, and it was always very exciting to see Santa arrive. I’m fine with that… at least Thanksgiving is almost December. But October? Come on people.

I try to refrain from any Christmas celebrating (tree decorating, carol-listening, holiday parties, etc) in my house until December 1^st. I’m happy to keep the Christmas season confined to one month, and only one month of the year. Otherwise I feel it is too much. I’m glad that I don’t work in retail… my sister who has a part-time job at a department store says they have been listening to Christmas songs for a month now, and in college I worked at a bookstore that had so much extra holiday stuff crammed in it was hard to walk around! At least we don’t have a tv so we don’t see a lot of the holiday advertisements in between programs.

P trys to help keep me to my promise of “Christmas in December Only.” Before we departed the apartment for our Thanksgiving roadtrip south he warned me that he hid the Christmas cds so I wouldn’t feel tempted, and when scanning the radio if I fell on a station playing carols we would move on to a different station. It’s not to be mean or un-festive, we are just trying to control how overblown the Christmas holidays have become. Let Halloween and Thanksgiving have their time and space, Christmas already has a full month.

It is hard to think of the Christmas season from the perspective of a family who never celebrated the holiday, but I would imagine for those who don’t celebrate it must get annoying when everywhere you turn there is something Christmas oriented, even if it is dressed up as “non-denominational holiday” festivities. It is truly hard to escape. However, I’ve grown up in a household that has fully embraced Christmas, so I even have a hard time imagining life without it.

For example: The first Christmas season that P and I were dating he came back with me from school so that he could meet my family before flying home to Nepal for his first visit in almost three years. My mother had a hilarious conversation with him, because she just couldn’t fathom a culture that didn’t celebrate Christmas. It went something like this:

Mom: “So, in Nepal-India, what do you do for Christmas?” (for a while she didn’t realize they were two separate countries).

P: “My family is Hindu, we don’t celebrate Christmas.”

Mom: “Yeah, but, you must put a tree up or something, right?”

P: “Nope, we are Hindu, so we don’t celebrate the holiday.”

(This goes on for a little while, with different pieces of Christmas iconography…)

Mom: “But you must have lights… I mean, everyone has lights… like in your window?”

P: “No… we don’t put up lights. We aren’t Christian, so we don’t celebrate Christmas.”

Mom: “But everyone puts lights! You don’t put lights for Christmas? Not even the stores? The stores must!”

P: (sensing my mom just couldn’t understand, he compromises…) “Well, maybe in some of the stores in the tourist district, but otherwise not really. A lot of people are Hindu or Buddhist, so most people don’t celebrate Christmas.”

Mom: (grasping on to something…) “ah, see that sounds right… at least the stores celebrate…”

So the point I am getting at is, December 1^st has come and gone, thus officially opening the Christmas season in my house. This week the tree will go up and the carols will play. But don’t come knocking on my door November 3rd expecting any Christmas cookies!

Cranberries and Thanksgiving Dinner

I was chatting with S about Thanksgiving earlier today. P and I are going to travel south to visit family next Thursday for Thanksgiving but will stop over at R and S’s place for our usually visit. Since S’s parents are in the US this year for the holidays, R thought it might be fun to plan a Thanksgiving dinner on Black Friday when P and I are driving back north.

I asked what was on the menu, and S replied, “turkey.”

“What else?” I asked, “Sweet potatoes with the little marshmallows on top? Green peas and pearl onions? Mashed potatoes? Cranberry sauce?”

S: “I don’t like most of those.. but sure, I want to celebrate Thanksgiving…”

Me: “So what is your plan besides turkey… daal bhaat?”

S: “No… maybe you should be put in charge of making the other things since you know them…just make sure that they are not bland—like in typical Thanksgiving dinner—my parents don’t like that. We should use flavor, for instance we will have a Turkey, but it will have Nepalese spice on it… it will be different.”

Me: “Wouldn’t it be fun to make a real American Thanksgiving dinner? It would be a cultural experience.”

S: “Trust me they hate real American dinner… they had bad experiences.”

This makes me a bit sad. I’m always willing to try different food. I guess it is different with older people, but it still makes me sad. I don’t know if it is easier to make the jump from “bland” food to “spicier” food then the other way around, but (in my mind) a potato is a potato whether it is covered in garlic, salt and cumin or if it is mashed with butter.

Me: “I guess we could ‘Nepali-fy’ things… we could make mashed potatoes that taste like veg momo filling, and we could make green peas like mattar paneer.”

S: “Yeah, and we should skip the sweet potatoes… that will work.”

Me: “Well then, I’m still bringing the cranberry sauce… because even if you don’t eat it, I will!”

As I explained to S, there are two types of cranberry sauce. There is the sauce that is more traditional… more “sauce”-like and berry-filled… and well, then there is the “sauce” which is more like jelly. Growing up we would rotate Thanksgivings each year, so that some years we were with my dad’s family and some years we were with my mom’s.

More "traditional" cranberry sauce... see the berries?

My dad’s family is more “into” cooking. This was the side of my family where my grandmother baked an assortment of pies for the holidays, and lots of homemade snacks (cookies, doughnuts, etc) were made by relatives and brought to the gathering for people to munch on throughout the weekend. This side of the family also had the more “traditional” berry-filled cranberry sauce.

On my mom’s side, people aren’t really into cooking… which is actually kind of amusing. See, when my great grandmother (“Nanny” as she was referred to) first came to the US from Ireland, she just happened to come along at the right time and in the right place to land a job as a cook for JD Rockefeller at his estate near Tarrytown, NY. As the family story goes, the cook before Nanny was a Swede with a hot temper, and chased the butler with a kitchen knife. Rockefeller sacked her, and found Nanny. As part of her training she took cooking classes in New York City, and made Rockefeller’s 90^th birthday cake. Anyway, by the time she left the position and married she was in her 40s, and when my grandmother (an only child) was born, I guess Nanny was just sick of cooking. Thus she didn’t pass on a lot of cooking skills to my grandmother, who in turn, didn’t pass on a lot of cooking skills to her seven children (including my mom). Holidays at their house are still filled with lots of food… but it is mostly store bought snacks.

I love it! Can you see the ridges!! And the "plopping" splatter?

One thing in particular that they always had was the store bought canned cranberry sauce, and for some reason I always loved it, and preferred this one to the “real” stuff. I get such a kick out of it… the “sauce” comes in an aluminum can and doesn’t really have any traces of “berry” anywhere… it’s a cranberry colored mushy-solid flavored jelly, that slides out of the can with a sucking sound and retains the can shape after being plopped on the plate… can ridges and all! After sliding the “cranberry sauce” out of the can, you kind of knock it over and then slice it up. I love it, I think it is hysterical, and tasty, even if it is just over-processed jelly.

Anyway… that is my Thanksgiving cranberry story of the day. You bet I’ll bring a can to S and R’s place!