A Holiday Gift

Holidays are interesting phenomena. So routine and at the same time so special. By routine, I guess I mean predictable. Each holiday, from Halloween to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, comes at the same time every year, is identified by the same ceremonies and/or activities, inspires advertisements for the same kinds of food, and provides similar shared memories for members of the groups (families, towns, national cultures) who celebrate them. I have never understood why people are so fond of all this sameness.

OK, maybe “never” is a more than slight exaggeration. After all, I was a kid once, many long years ago, and back then I certainly loved the sameness of Chanukkah – lighting the candles every night for eight nights, followed by a different small gift each night – and was never bored by the same annual Purim carnival at the synagogue with all of us kids dressing up as our same favorite characters from the Book of Esther and boisterously shaking the same gragors every time the evil name of Haman was heard in the megillah reading.

Our family even had a small Christmas tradition. I don’t know why. We certainly didn’t believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. In fact, judging from my Sunday School and later Hebrew School lessons, it seems we didn’t even believe He had ever existed, since despite the major part Christ played in Jewish history, He was never mentioned.

Still, Christmas permeates the season so completely that hardly anyone can be immune to it, belief or no belief. Apparently my mother thought we should do a little something to mark the day. No tree, of course. (Already told you that story.) No big gift opening ritual. No strings of lights or Christmas dinner. But yes to “stockings hung by the chimney with care.” Since we didn’t have a chimney, she would hang stockings from a table in the living room and fill them with nuts and chocolate and oranges. And yes to Santa Clause, at least the department store Santa Clause. We have several photos of my sister and I sitting on Santa’s lap. The two of us looked so much alike that in one of those old pictures we are not sure which one of us was the subject of the moment. My super curly hair should have given it away, but the little girl in that photo is wearing a concealing hat, and the coat was one my sister inherited after I outgrew it, so it could be either one of us. And of course, there’s no clue in the photo’s other subject. Santa always looks the same!

That was the only non-Jewish holiday we observed in any way, except for holidays not tied to any particular religion, such as Mothers Day and the Fourth of July. And I definitely did not mind seeing the same fireworks year after year.

You might recall that I ranted on about the evils of sameness in another blog a while back. In response, a good friend offered an alternate view. “That is the real beauty of tradition, that it gets us to thinking about the past and all we have to be grateful for, the large crowd of witnesses that went before us. And if we are thinking about such things it gets us off of the American obsession with self, which has to be a good thing.”

And you know, I think he’s right. There is a value to creating a comfortable space for celebration and observance of important days. I think my problem is more accurately with advertising, with the huge role marketing plays in promoting and creating our national sense of what is right and proper – and expected -- for each holiday. All those advertisements on TV and in newspaper inserts practically mandate how we should feel and what we should do for each holiday, whether it’s eat hot dogs or sip champagne, celebrate indoors or out, rush to the nearest store to buy straw baskets or strings of colored lights. It seems, at least to me, that our national holiday celebrations have become externally imposed to the point that many of us feel compelled to follow the established program and reluctant to try anything different.

There I go, ranting again.

The catalyst this time around came from all the lovely Facebook entries posted by Bahá'í friends about what they were doing to celebrate Ayyám-i-Há, our end of February gift-giving, party-throwing, charity-offering holiday that precedes a fasting period and the start of our new calendar year on March 21. I read about an Ayyám-i-Há pancake party in one friend’s status, an afternoon spent delivering gift baskets in another, a children’s party, a masquerade ball, an interfaith dialogue and dinner, and a celebration concert. One posting included a sample of Arabic calligraphy as a gift to other FB friends, another offered a link to a video and article about a gallery opening. Diversity to the max!

It would actually be much easier for me if we did have set patterns for observing Ayyám-i-Há, because I’m not very adept at coming up with ideas or even, some years, remembering that a holiday is on the horizon. This was that kind of year. During December, influenced by Christmas frenzy, I had grandiose intentions for big doings this week. However, when February actually arrived, my attention was totally absorbed in a couple major projects, and since the world-at-large wasn’t helping me along with a barrage of Ayyám-i-Há commercials and Ayyám-i-Há advertisements and Ayyám-i-Há TV shows and Ayyám-i-Há street decorations (what an image!), my good intentions fell flat.

Heck, I almost forgot to get presents for my grandsons!

And now Ayyám-i-Há is almost over – it ends at sunset on March 1 – but it’s not too late yet. I have one special gift ready to impart: a big, brightly wrapped box of GRATITUDE to all of you steadfast (but hopefully not too long-suffering) friends who read my blog, week after week, even the not-so-hot efforts. Blogging is, after all, a rather self-indulgent endeavor, and it’s pure delight to be able to ramble on about one’s own interests and find an audience of kindred souls who are willing to spend a few minutes reading all that rambling, and often even responding to it with insightful comments and shared observations.

I’m also grateful for all the overwhelming encouragement many of you gave me when I applied to graduate school. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be watching the mail for the promised March decision to tell me whether I’ve been admitted. I’m not holding my breath. That’s not a statement of pessimism, I just know too much about the grad school admissions process after working with it for almost nine years. Even the world’s most qualified applicant – which I can guarantee you I’m not – can be rejected, for a variety of reasons: because her preferred advisor isn’t currently taking new students, or because her academic goals don’t fit well with the department’s program, or because her reference letters aren’t strong or specific enough, or simply because the competition is too stiff. Whatever my letter says when it comes, it’ll be OK. The experience was a good one regardless of result, and not the least because of your confidence and support.

Julie Powell, author of “Julie and Julia,” coined a name for her blog readers. She called them “bleaders.” So to my own wonderful bleaders, let me just end by saying …

Happy Ayyám-i-Há to all. And to all, a good night.

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