There’s a real holiday crisis brewing, this year. Hanukkah started the night before Thanksgiving!
Whose idea was this? Who authorized this? And most importantly, didn’t they realize the sales wouldn’t even have started, by the time we had to finish all our holiday shopping?
I didn’t used to care when Hanukkah happened. When my children were little, they couldn’t read anything, let alone the calendar, so I could tell them Hanukkah had started whenever I was finally ready.
Sometimes that wasn’t till January, but you know that pesky Hanukkah, it moves around so much!
But eventually, my kids figured out they could count the candles on the menorahs in other people’s front windows (or, lately, the big one at the train station – thanks a lot, Chabad!) and find out that their mom was way behind schedule. “Mommy, how come it’s Hanukkah at Ezra’s house but not at ours?”
That’s when I got desperate. Because little kids don’t understand gift certificates, or “IOUs.” They need boxes to open, and actual toys.
So I made some lists, filled up the gas tank, and hit the stores. And came home with shopping bag after shopping bag, crammed full of stuff. My husband started getting nervous.
“Tell me at least that you’re done shopping, now, for another year?”
“Nearly.”
What could I say? I couldn’t tell him that, although I looked and looked, what I kept finding were things for the person whose tastes and desires I know best: myself. “Look at it this way – at least you don’t have to get anything for me,” I told my beloved. “That’s all been taken care of.”
He blanched. “Do I want to know?”
“Probably not.”
Of course, there’s more to the season than shopping. There’s baking, too. Just how much baking, though, I never appreciated till my friend Susan showed me her holiday To-Do list. Somehow, Christmas – more than Hanukkah or even Kwanzaa – seems to run on cookies. Lots of cookies. And not any single kind, either. There must be bottomless platters, of multiple kinds.
So she organized a cookie exchange. A group of us would each bake as many as we could of one kind of cookie, and then swap: a dozen Pinwheels, say, for a dozen Gingerbreads. I was dubious about the need for it all, but said I’d bring in my quota in chocolate chip.
“Hold on there, Judy,” said Susan. Everyone stopped chatting to look our way. “These better not be a bag or two of Chips Ahoy, like you bring to every pot-luck. They have to be home-made. I can tell the difference.”
I hadn’t realized anybody was keeping track of my culinary prowess – or lack thereof. “I promise: the cookies won’t be Chips Ahoy.”
But I hadn’t promised anything about the bag. I ended up spending all weekend ruining cookie sheets and burning cookies, until I had enough good ones to fill two Chips Ahoy packages. It was a lot of trouble – but it was worth it to see the look on Sue’s face when I plunked those bags down on her table!
One year of baking was enough to send me, thankfully, back to mere shopping troubles.
So this year’s deadline was the night before Thanksgiving — the very night my college boy got home for his brief Thanksgiving break. On the bright side, he was actually home for Hanukkah, something that almost never coincides with his college calendar.
But I already know what Thanksgiving means to this child. When he was in kindergarten, his class put on a Thanksgiving pageant. The kids donned paper pilgrim hats, or Native American-inspired headbands, and stood to recite, to an audience of parents, siblings, and camcorders, why they were thankful.
“I am thankful for my parents.”
“I am thankful for my new puppy”
“I am thankful for my new baby brother.” Well, that last one, clearly, was a put-up job, but at least their hearts were in the right place.
My child was of a more practical turn. He stood up and said, “I am thankful for my science presents.” He must have spotted the rock-polishing kit in my closet.
That was a long time ago. This year, all the children I am buying presents for are old enough to appreciate the abstract beauty of a gift card. And all the adults, too. So this year I can stay home, away from the stores; and they, on their own time, can deal with the sales.
For that, I am profoundly thankful.
