Our First Christmas Tree

 

Ramblings of a Retired Mind

Our First Christmas Tree

When I married a fallen Catholic, I quickly learned that Christmas comes with a rulebook—one that is invisible, ironclad, and absolutely nonnegotiable.

My wife’s family is wonderfully complicated and just scattered enough to make every holiday an exercise in logistics. She has four sisters and one brother, and every single one of them had their own Christmas traditions. Separate celebrations. Separate locations. No exceptions.

So when her brother announced he’d be bringing his family up from South Carolina to spend Christmas in Chicago, my wife made what seemed like a perfectly reasonable suggestion:

“Could we all celebrate together, just this once?”

The answer was swift and unanimous.

No.

Since her brother and his family would be staying with us, I figured they deserved a proper Christmas—tree, lights, the whole deal. The problem was simple: we had never had a Christmas tree. Ever.

“Well,” I said, “let’s get one. We’ll decorate it and give them a real Christmas.”

Her response was immediate and theatrical.

“What? What will the neighbors think? What will we tell the kids?”

She paced the room, listing every possible catastrophe. And then came the clincher:

“And how will we get rid of the tree? Everyone will know!”

We lived in a Jewish neighborhood, and her anxiety was genuine. I listened, nodded, and then said the only thing I could.

“Let’s do it.”

I watched disbelief slowly soften into curiosity… and then into excitement. I could almost see the gears turning behind those blue eyes.

“Fine,” she finally said. “But it has to be an aromatic Fraser fir.”

We found a beautiful tree, ornaments, and lights. The tree would live quietly in the family room at the back of the house—no outside lights, no announcements. Once the kids found out there would be presents involved, they enthusiastically signed on to the experiment.

That year, we celebrated our first Christmas.

And we’ve had a tree every year since.

The siblings stuck to their traditions—without us—but my brother-in-law never forgot that Christmas spent in a Jewish home. The one where we bent the rules, ignored expectations, and created something entirely our own.

That year, we didn’t just celebrate Christmas.

We started a tradition.

Christmukkah.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Esther

Image
  Ramblings of a Retired Mind Esther A Move and a Memory Seven years ago, my wife and I left Chicago—the only home we had ever known—and moved to Polson, Montana. Retirement and the pull to be near our daughter and four grandchildren brought us West. Leaving behind friends, family, and the familiar rhythm of city life was no small undertaking. Before the move, I found myself at my parents’ graves, saying a quiet goodbye. I knew they weren’t truly there, but I felt the need to honor their lives and the life I was leaving behind. Graves matter. They are touchstones of existence, proof that a life once was. Too many leave this world without such a marker. The Pull of Genealogy Decades ago, my wife and I became absorbed in genealogy. With much of the older generation already gone, we pieced together names, dates, photographs, and fragments of stories. We visited cemeteries, photographing gravestones as if gathering the last whispers of lives once lived. But some left no trace at...
Read more

The Samovar

Image
  Ramblings of a Retired Mind: The Samovar A few weeks ago, I opened my laptop and checked my email. My inbox was overflowing with offers—each more ridiculous than the last. One promised free samples , no strings attached—unless you count handing over all your personal information as a string. Another urged me to “sponsor” a lovely young woman fleeing the devastation in Ukraine. Just one click to connect—though if blondes aren’t your thing, brunettes were available too. Two messages later, I was greeted with a miracle product that guaranteed to banish every trace of lime and rust from my toilet. “Never use a toilet brush again!” it proudly proclaimed. Sifting through my inbox felt like panning for gold—only instead of nuggets, I kept pulling up spam and promotional sludge. An Email That Mattered About twenty messages down, I finally found an email from someone I knew: my cousin Alice. Alice is my father’s second cousin—technically my second cousin once removed—and the offic...
Read more

Noisy People

                 Ramblings of a Retired Mind                                                   Noisy People At my age, I get it—some of us struggle with hearing and end up speaking louder just to hear ourselves think. That makes sense. But then there are the naturally loud talkers—the ones with no concept of volume control. Those are the ones who really get under my skin. I’ve got a bone to pick with the steady invasion of unwanted noise in my world. How many times can someone excuse it with, “Oh, they don’t realize they’re being loud” ? Please. If I can understand every word of your conversation from across a football field, you’re not just being loud—you’re broadcasting. Many people fall squarely into the “too-loud” category. This is true of both sexes; it is not regulated to just on...
Read more