Merry Christ-makuh

I can just see the smoke coming out of Bill O'Reilly's ears. Christ-makuh? Certainly that goes hand-in-hand with his whole War on Christmas.

But the thing is, my little 5 person family (6 during the holidays when my Grandmother visits) doesn't have the luxury of spending Christmas with our extended family. The few that we still communicate with couldn't afford to come up here, and we can't afford to all travel down there.

So, it has been a long custom of my family to open our doors to anyone on all the holidays. I think this stems from our culture. Always the more, the merrier. Over Thanksgiving our house is opened to whoever didn't get the chance to make the trip home. This year it was Lucas, Heather, Christy, and Ryan.

For the past several years we have celebrated Christmas with our neighbors across the street, the Wolffs. We have known them for many years and consider them to be the family we have chosen.

One thing... they're Jewish. And we're Catholic. That means we don't even really say a blessing or a prayer before we eat. Yeah, ok, so what? Some people don't even stop and pause between all the shopping and bad traffic to think about what Christmas means or even to just be a little kinder. What does it matter if you ignore all the details?

It matters to me, though, and I think that's why we actually capture the "Christmas" spirit with our half Jewish half Christian celebration. What better than to spend time with the family we've chosen and to appreciate diversity and learn a little while we're at it?

Plus, since Hanukah starts today, this year we had potato pancakes too. With ham (it helps that they're mostly 'culinary' Jews). :-)