Christmas. It’s not for everyone.

When I was five years young Bobby Aquino was my best friend. The Italian Catholic Aquino’s were also our next-door neighbors. After Thanksgiving, a pine tree would materialize in their living room.Soon thereafter ornamental baubles and glitter would sprout from its green branches. As the days went by I noticed more and more mysteriously wrapped boxes under the tree. 

I’ve always been a wonderer. So I asked Bobby.

“What’s up with the tree and all those boxes under it?” 

“Christmas is coming. Don’t you have a tree? Don’t you get Christmas presents?”

“Ahhh No...”

So I began a campaign of kvetching (Yiddish for nagging) to my father Sid. 

“Where’s my Christmas presents? Why don’t we have a tree in the house?”

Sid ignored me at first. BUT! I’m a persistent whiner. Eventually Sid had enough. He wanted peace restored in the Sambur household. He thrust a package into my skinny arms.

“Jeffy! We are Jewish! We don’t celebrate Christmas. It’s not our Holiday. This is a Hanukkah gift. Its a Jewish holiday. Understand? Now come. We will light the menorah. Your mother will fry up some potato latkes for us to eat. Later on, I’ll teach you how to play dreidel.” 

Years went by. I grew up. Somehow I managed to score a career as Northern Colorado’s only Jewish firefighter. Come Christmas time, things got awkward. 

“Jeff! What will you be doing on Christmas?”

 “I’ll try to score a shift of overtime. If not I’ll work a time trade for another day off in the summer.”

“Don’t you want to be off on Christmas?” 

“No, not really. It’s not a Jewish Holiday. It doesn’t have the same meaning to me as it does to you.” 

Sometimes I had to elaborate on this trivial factoid.

“You know there’s an Old Testament and a New Testament. Right? Well for the Jews, our story ends with the Old Testament.” 

To a few of my fellow firefighters, this was a revelation.

Maybe by now, some of you might be thinking I’m a devout Jew. I’m not. I stroll into a Temple about as often as I do a Church or Mosque. In other words, nearly never. The few times in my life I experienced anything close to religion, I was alone on a mountaintop, in a canyon or another wilderness type setting in between. 

This doesn’t mean I never got into the Holiday spirit. I did. I invented an offshoot of Seinfeld’s Festivus. I named the secular holiday Kwanhanumas. Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and Christmas. It was an instant Fort Collins, CO hit. We’d meet in a neighborhood bar the week following Thanksgiving. The invitation encouraged the participants to bring holiday knick knacks, whether it be a menorah, dreidel, Christmas tree ornament or stockings. Unfortunately, we never had anyone show up bearing Kwanzaa swag. Conversations were quite animated. There was no gift giving. There was no guilt giving either, unless the miscreant wasn’t buying a round of drinks or appetizers.  No one ever tried to convert anyone else. We told stories. We laughed a lot. At the end of our celebration of humanity, we hugged. 

Isn’t that what religion should be all about?

I now have a dream of resurrecting Kwanhanumas in my new hometown of Durango, CO. Until then, I’ll probably continue to lay low during the Holiday Season.

I hope all of my readers (including all those Russian, Polish and Ukrainian Trolls) had a joyous, safe and healthy Holiday Season regardless of how you celebrated it.

Happy 2020,

Jeff

Last photos: This is how I spent Christmas Eve. I did a fly by with Fluttering Wandering Butterflies. Two landed on me. I’ll accept that as a good omen for 2020.