Not Getting the Christmas Spirit

Attending a Jewish Day school, the little Goofs are shockingly ill informed about certain basics of other religions. I keep telling them that most people in America are Christian and celebrate Christmas, but the see it as an odd exotic thing. I have attempted to rectify this by exposing them to key aspects of the Christmas culture like the Charlie Brown special and by singing Christmas music (actually I do this year round regardless.) The little Goofs think this is blasphemous.

In fact the only Christmas specials they have taken to are the movie Elf which is in fact really funny and the unbelievably bad animated feature Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer which features this profoundly awful musical number. Clicking this may cause bleeding from the ears. Naturally, despite my best efforts, this has become the Christmas anthem for the little Goofs.



So, with this knowledge deficiency in mind, when we received an invitation to a Christmas party I dragged the little Goofs along. I told GoofGIrl - who really is horrified that exposure to other religions might eat away at her soul - that part of the party is decorating the Christmas tree. Crafts of all sorts are very much, her thing.

So we went and the little Goofs ate far too many cookies, were bored by adults standing around and talking, and thus got into the spirit of Christmas.

GoofGirl took a turn decorating the tree and she liked it, except for one thing. Christmas ornaments are apparently made from glass no more than one molecule thick. So when she inexpertly tried to hang an ornament and it fell from the tree - it shattered. This happened several times, I did my best to surreptitiously clean up and dispose of the ornament corpses. Since there was a pile of felt (and hence unbreakable) ornaments I suggested she switch to them. She dropped the glass ornament she was holding back in the bin - and it shattered.

We took the hint. GoofGirl was onto something, we shouldn't fear Christmas - but we shouldn't get too into it either. As Jews we have so many (too many?) holidays. We just spent a week celebrating because some guy found some quality olive oil 2300 years ago. We don’t need to get into anyone else’s holidays – we’re full, thank you.