Holidays
The first time I told a child there was no such thing as Santa Claus, I was seven years old and overwhelmed with jealousy. My then best friend, a sweet Episcopalian girl whose family made December into a month-long orgy of gingerbread, reindeer and Christmas loot, drove me to it. With her blonde hair tied up in red and green ribbons and her War and Peace-length Christmas list, she seemed to embody everything wonderful about the holidays, everything for which I, as one of very few Jewish girls growing up in my rural Virginia town, was longing.
As for Christmas in my own household, it involved an evening meal at House of Chang and some ungrateful tinkering with the toys I'd received for Hanukkah a week or so before. The problem was simple: no matter how many perfunctory potato latkes my marginally-observant family ate, no matter how many times my parents reminded me that there was more to religion than sweets and swag, the entire holiday season always seemed like a terrific party from which I'd been excluded. This mentality was what must have led me one December Saturday, as my Christian friend and I strode through the mall several paces behind my mother, to inform her that the fat man in the red suit with children sitting on his lap was not a saint from the North Pole but the entire holiday season always seemed like a terrific party from which I'd been excluded.
a hired hand.
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