School Photos and religion

Rosa's scanner is broken so I can't post the school photos just yet but they are cute! Actually she did take one home and scan it for me, she even touched up the photo. Now you can't see the black and blue on the side of Sam's head from when he fell off the couch or the stamp of the frog that's on Zack's hand from school that day. I'm not going to post it just yet, since I think it may be our holiday card photo. I can't seem to get a good photo of both the ones. We have quite a few were one looks great and the other doesn't or many were they both look okay. I want one where they both look great. Maybe I'll be sending New Year's cards.

Sue is frequently shopping with the boys as she run many errands for us. One day last week I came home to find Christmas cookies with santa, trees, candy canes and wreaths on them. I didn't notice them until after she has left for the day. I did think to myself, tell Sue not to buy those anymore. When Mich got home she was less calm about them then I was. She said doesn't Sue know that we don't celebrate Christmas in this house. So the next day I asked that Sue take the cookies home and not buy anymore Christmas cookies for our house. A couple of nights later Aunt Robert is having dinner with us and he says, I just want to let you know that Mich is nuts about those cookies. So that started our big discussion about the cookies. I guess I must be nuts too since I think that Christmas cookies have no place in my house, not ones bought by me anyway. I'm fine with celebrating Christmas with other people, it's a lovely holiday but we don't celebrate it. So I was trying to come up with a reverse example, like to Christian/Catholic people ever buy dreidel cookies. Probably not, probably never. I think that people that celebrate Christmas just don't consider that other people celebrate something different. I'm sure they do but why do people have to say Merry Christmas to me. Strangers trying to be nice for sure but can't they say happy holidays like I do. Maybe that should be my reply to the Merry Christmas, they'll say Merry Christmas and I'll say Happy Chanukah. I'm going to try that. It's not like I live in a place where their aren't any Jews. We are surrounded by them. Sam doesn't even know that the man in the red suit is Santa. We were in the diner having breakfast. They have a freaky life size (well dwarf life sized) Santa that sings and gyrated to Christmas music. Sam said to me, can I go make that man play music. I said sure, so we are watching this santa do it's thing and a man walks in and says, you like Santa, I bet he is going to bring you something very special. Then he went into the diner and we left to go to school. At the point that I was with the man then only think I could think why the f do you assume that we have anything to do with Santa. Not to mention, what does he know about how special of a gift Sam will get.

We have been talking a lot about family traditions around the holiday season. It totally sucks that my cousin got married to a Catholic guy so they decided to pick a new religion since she wouldn't be Catholic and he would be Jewish. My brother just married a Catholic girl and I hope that they work out their religion issues prior to having kids for not things are just odd. My brother says that he doesn't feel Jewish, his wife probably would have gone along with the Jewish thing if he cared but since he doesn't well they are doing their own thing. What that means will be seen. For this year it means they have a tree and all sorts of Christmas decoration. My brothers says that he won't have his children raised in a religion that has a cross but he doesn't care what his wife does. So, basically we have no Jewish family except my family. That makes us a little sad. Everyone is willing to play along and come to our house and eat latkes or endure a Seder or break fast but it's not their thing. Just like we are happy to come help decorate your tree or search for eggs. So we are going to make a great effort to celebrate each night of Chanukah and start our own holiday tradition. More to come for sure.