Photo by Adriaan Greyling from Pexels
When I was a kid, this time of year was the one time of year that I truly felt like my family was fully in-sync. We’d get out the boxes and boxes of Christmas ornaments and set up the Christmas tree with painstaking precision. My mother and her Christmas tree were unlike anything I’ve ever encountered to this day. Her tree was white, silver, and glass. It was a small child’s worst nightmare, and every ornament had a story. I can’t remember breaking a single ornament on my mother’s tree for fear of destroying the symbol of a memory that she held dear. After white lights came the strings of beads, then the ornaments, and finally the tree topper. After Christmas, taking down the tree was a chore, because every ornament had to be carefully re-wrapped and placed carefully in a very specific order back into the storage boxes.
I loved it. I loved every minute of it, even as a child.
Another tradition was that we’d pick a night to drive around and look at all of the lights in their glittering glory. These were the days before programmed lights that danced around houses to Mannheim Steamroller. My parents liked driving us to the neighborhoods with the largest houses because they lined their streets with luminaries and the lights were classic white and stunning. When we lived in Southern Missouri, a short drive from the Precious Moments Park & Chapel, we’d drive out every year for Christmas to see the light displays there and go through a drive-through display at a large Catholic Vietnamese institute run by a group of priests.
Lights were an essential part of my childhood and, for me, signaled what a family did in December.
The only other tradition my family had was that, on Christmas Day, if we could afford the expensive meat, my mom would make rouladen. This dish is honestly the only “ethnic” dish my mom ever made, and I don’t know our family history with it other than my mom’s family is German-French. With its expensive, thinly sliced beef with onions and pickles rolled up inside, it was then stewed in tomato sauce, and I grew up hating this dish (pickles are delicious, but not warm). But my mom? Much like the extravagant tree laden with delicate ornaments, my mom looked forward to it every year and it became part of the Edwards family Christmas.
But now? I’m Jewish. Even though Christmas never meant church or Jesus or anything religious, I stopped celebrating Christmas or anything that resembled it back in 2006 after I graduated college and moved out East to pursue my dreams and live Jewishly. My mom slowly stopped setting up the tree because there was no one to help her, and it broke my heart. One year, when she finally decided she was done with Christmas and the tree, she sent me one of her mirrored ornaments shaped like the Star of David, so I could always have a piece of the family tree with me. She joked that, maybe they always knew I'd be Jewish and thus, they had a six-pointed star. It made me sad, it made me wonder what this time of year meant for me and my future children.
Now, I’m lamenting that I can't sit in my favorite independent coffee haunts because of the pandemic. I miss listening to the tunes echoing through the cavernous spaces, with classics such as “Silver Bells” and “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” — songs that swung me back to a different time in my life. In high school, this time of year meant solos in the choir Christmas concert, so I can’t help singing along with the tunes. They make me smile, they make me feel. The concepts or meanings are not what do it, but the simple beauty of the voices and the melodies.
When I had my first child in December of 2013, I was living in Israel and this time of year was strange, but easy. I didn’t have to worry about Santa Claus at the mall or all of the lights or the trees or kids in daycare who weren’t Jewish talking about the holiday. It was easy. But now that we’re in Denver, and kids have questions, I’m constantly assessing how I should tackle this time of year in a way that makes sense to my three littles, yet somehow honors my own upbringing.
I will admit that it's easier this year with the pandemic. We aren't going to the mall where there's large displays of Christmas, and we're not going into grocery stores or Target where everything is red and green. I’m obviously not making rouladen (yuck), and I’m most definitely not putting up a tree.
So? This leaves us with lights. Homes around ours are stringing up lights in all colors and styles, and it reminds me of those evenings out in the minivan driving through the ritzy neighborhoods with my parents and brothers. It’s such a simple thing, but such a meaningful thing — for me — and I want to be able to share that with my kids.
‘Tis the season, after all, because light is what Chanukah is all about. The world emerged with the words “let there be light,” and light is often understood in the Torah to mean knowledge or wisdom. Since creation, we’ve fought to bring those sparks of light back into the world and to bring ourselves out of darkness. As a Jew, I yearn, pursue, and seek that light every day, even as I relish in the cloudy cool of winter in Denver.
During Chanukah’s eight days, the world is illuminated with the light of the chanukiyah. These lights are special because we can only gaze upon them, we can’t use them for any personal reasons. They serve as a message to all who pass by that “darkness can be dispelled with wisdom, obscurity can be illuminated with truth.”
I look at my neighbors' holiday lights much in the same manner. Giant inflatable Santa Clauses and nativity scenes aside, the lights are bringing a beautiful light into the darkest time of the year, and it’s an innocent way I can bring my children into a space that for me has great meaning and history. I can’t wait to pack up my kids and drive them around the nearby neighborhood filled with giant houses to look at the lights. We won’t be listening to Christmas tunes on the radio, but I might pop on some of The Leevees to set the mood.
We'll call them holiday lights and talk about how in the darkest months of the year during a pandemic, more light is what we all truly need. That said, several years ago, Asher did ask, “Mommy, why don’t we have any lights up on our house?” I happily responded, “We will, sweetie. As soon as Chanukah comes, we’ll have eight days of special lights to share with our neighbors.”
