The New Normal

No, not the television show. (About which ... meh!)

This year we will not have "the family" here over Christmas, but I have been reflecting on what the holidays mean. Our family in some ways reflects the new normal in terms of which holidays are celebrated.

We have some family members who celebrate what most Americans think of as a regular Christmas on December 25.

We have at least one who celebrates the Orthodox Christmas, which takes place on January 6.

We have those who celebrate Hanukkah.

I have family members who belong to Christian churches that intentionally do not celebrate Christmas Day as a religious holiday at all. That is the way I grew up, celebrating the secular holiday but not the religious one.

I remember once remarking to a friend that it struck me as odd that we went to church three times a week, but we did not go at all on Christmas. He looked at me suspiciously: "What are you, Catholic?"

And of course we have family members who do not belong to any religious tradition and don't celebrate anything as a religious holiday.

Sundance and Cassidy, I suspect, keep their own ancient Egyptian belief that cats are divine beings and expect us to celebrate the two of them with snacks and other offerings every day, not just once a year. 

We all manage to sit down and enjoy Whatever, by the way, when we do all get together. (We haven't had to resort to calling it Christmukkah or Festivus, yet.) We try to do this as seamlessly as we put together menus that can accommodate those who need to go gluten-free, those who cannot eat shrimp, those who keep kosher, those who might be vegetarian or whose fast days happen to forbid even fish on certain days. That's what you do. You don't get all agitated or try to force me and John to eat shrimp, no matter what it may do to us. You work to make everyone comfortable at the table. It doesn't always work out without struggle or tensions, but that is part of the new normal, too.

The strange mix of divorce, remarried, partnered, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox Christian as well as Orthodox Jew, atheist, agnostic and haughty feline seems to represent the American reality in 2012.

I look forward to the day when, as a nation, we can all sit down at table together and celebrate it all. Hasten the day!

And, oh, yeah. I have been told that Normal is just a setting on the dryer anyway.