I LOVE CHRISTMAS!

I love Christmas!

There. I've said it. After years of repressing my Christmas glee in the name of an inter-faith marriage, I am outing myself. I'm running around with a red scarf around my neck, cheerfully doing errands and handing out homemade marmalade to everyone I meet. I even say "Merry Christmas" which is so not PC.

I LOVE CHRISTMAS! It is a MERRY time. Be MERRY. Not a concept most of us get to practice in the hurry-up 21st century.

How can I be merry? There's so much to get done!

Take a minute to remind yourself: it's all fun. It will all get done. The line will move forward. The traffic will subside. Dinner will get on the table. The gifts will get wrapped and you will make some people happy. Others will never be happy no matter how mighty your effort. Remember: we can't change our families, only the way we respond to them.

We're having a party tomorrow with booze and food and music and singing. I like to think of us as 21st century Fezziwigs--any ghosts peeking in the windows will smile and nod and say, "They're keeping Christmas very well...but where's the tree?"

There's still no tree in our inter-faith home, but you can keep Christmas very well without one. The mantels are decked with greens and holly and pine cones (horizontal Christmas trees!). And if you look out the back window, the holly tree is bursting with crimson berries proclaiming the solstice to be here.

Merry Christmas everyone! Oh, and Shabbat shalom.