Holiday Shmoliday! It’s Christmas!

I have to admit that I am a sucker for a festive lighted and bedecked exterior, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s. Any earlier, and I am overwhelmed by the to-do list for too many holidays. And once the new year has begun, I am ready to begin anew, too.

I admit a preference for the tasteful over the tacky: the individual twinkling white lights outlining a perfect naked tree over the giant inflatable snowman with the hot-air generator below; the wire reindeer on the lawn over Santa’s entourage on the roof; candles in every window over every window outlined in red and green lights. But I’ll take any of it over none.

Growing up Jewish, we used to beg for a tree. “Please? We can get a short one and call it a Hanukkah bush!” But Jews didn’t do that—then. Lucky for us, my sis and I fell in with goyim; since I moved in with my boyfriend 22 years ago (the last eleven of which we have been married), I’ve had my own Christmas tree; my sister has an expensive and realistic fake. And our parents, though they have not broken down and brought any pines into their home—the children are gone, after all—have begun collecting ceramic plug-in Christmas trees, like the kind made in plaster-craft workshops, because, well, the children are celebrating Christmas, too, now. (These are never put away and are often aglow during summer dinner parties.)

I’ve been collecting Christmas ornaments over the years. Some are dollar-store trinkets like the glass motorcycle for my husband and the sparkly white snowflakes that hang in our windows. I have swirly hot pink icicles and frog princes, hand-blown balls, and other irresistible beauties. I’m not particular with my lights. I don’t think “tasteful white” would be my preference, though; I am often drawn to trees with purple, red, and white lights. I like the little ones, rather than the large-bulbed strands, though at times, I find them warm and fuzzy and nostalgic. And, while I like the amusing and kitschy trees my friends have designed in the past (adorned with only barbie-doll heads and bubble lights), that’s not for me.

My husband, who really takes little interest in the holiday season—though he does help wrap the lights and play George Winston’s Winter over and over and over again—contributes only one item to the tree each year. He does it, usually, in the dead of night on Christmas Eve. At some point in his Christmas shopping, he buys a pack of tinsel, hides it from me, and drapes it delicately over the limbs of the tree. It’s not because he wants me to believe that Santa has come or that a miracle has occurred. It’s because I don’t like it. But he’s good about the application: there are no clumps; it’s not over-applied. He likes the way the tree lights dance on the waving silver strands. I can’t deny him this small joy. Besides, I am too busy being grateful that it’s not a thick rope of gaudy gold garland.

I like it all—from the Noelco Santa, advertising harbinger of the holidays, to the stockings on the fireplace. I like the shopping deals and the glamorous holiday sweaters (please, no Santa Cats, though), the mall displays and the special magazine issues on cookie decorating. I even look forward to the pull-outs in the New Yorker—special ads from car and liquor companies that require assembly.

If pressed, I could probably find a few things to dislike about Chanuchrismakwanza*. But nothing irks me more this season than the debate over the name of the Christmas Tree. You won’t find too much intelligence behind the objection to “Christmas” Tree. Popularized in England after Prince Albert’s gift to Queen Victoria, the Christmas Tree was not for just any holiday that fell around December 25th each year.

Nothing has ever been correct about political correctness.

People aren’t equal, and neither are their holidays. They are different. To paraphrase the evil villain in The Incredibles, if everyone’s special, then no one is.

Christmas, to me, is special; perhaps its having been the forbidden fruitcake all my life has enhanced its appeal. Still, no matter how I feel about the holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus (a dude born in the year 3761), my allegiance is still to the festival of lights symbolized by the candlesti—I mean menorah. (It would be a candleshtick anyway.)

Whatever you celebrate, I wish you a peaceful and joyous season. And please: let’s not forget what these winter holidays are all about**.

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*Chanuchrismakwanza is in order of by age and should not be known by any other names, including Chrismahanukwanza, Chrismahannukwanza, or Chrismahanukkwanza.
**Presence.