How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane by Johanna Stein

Author:Johanna Stein
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780738217352
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

*As painfully detailed in Chapter 3, “Spoiled Milk.”

fifteen

THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

The month before she turned three, my daughter asked me the question that I had been fearing ever since she was a glimmer in my fallopian tube: “What’s Christmas?” she asked. When I opened my mouth to answer, all that came out was a raspy, choking sound. It was more awkward than the time she saw me coming out of the shower and asked me why I was wearing socks on my “kiki.”*

Here’s the thing: as we’ve established, I was born to a pair of dope-smoking, radical hippie Jewish intellectuals in Winnipeg, Canada. As has not been established, I didn’t know a lot of Jews in Winnipeg, Canada, and I knew even fewer dope-smoking, radical hippie intellectual ones.*

My parents were “free thinkers” (when they weren’t stoned, anyway) and felt that organized religion was a “thin construct of a shallow, emotionally enfeebled culture.” As a kid I didn’t have the foggiest idea what that meant (I still don’t), but it didn’t matter because on Sunday mornings while my friends were waking up at seven, pulling on itchy wool dresses and dusty tights for church, I was cocooned in a warm blankie, laughing at Bugs Bunny cartoons while jamming spoonfuls of Count Chocula into my yap. There I was, all those Sunday mornings, gloating at my good fortune with brown marshmallows stuck in my teeth.

And then December would roll around.

Hanukkah would slide past our house without a nod, but I was fine with that. Since I didn’t know any other Jews—for a while I considered them mythical creatures—as far as I was concerned, Hanukkah was the weird, distant, creepy mouth breather of an uncle that you don’t want to spend one night with, never mind eight.

No, my soul-scarring pain belonged to Christmas. My holy grail day, the one holiday I desired more than anything in the world. The songs! The gingerbread! And the trees. All those adolescent pines garishly adorned with tinsel, lights, and big shiny balls, so wrong yet so right, as tasteless and tawdry as a ten-year-old Brooke Shields in high heels and hooker makeup. Oh, Christmas Tree indeed!

But in the Stein household, Christmas was the most despicable of religious holidays. My parents rejected its rampant, crass commercialization, its Judeo-Christian-fascist hypocrisy (their indecipherable phrasing, not mine), though I think they mostly just resented having to spend time with extended family who didn’t approve of their “alternative lifestyle” (i.e., their frequent consumption of pot brownies).

But my parents, God (or whoever) bless ’em, had the presence of mind to recognize that, even though they had their principles, our family was weird enough already. Depriving their kids of presents during the holiday season, well, that was just one toke over the line.

And lo, “Stein Day” came to be.

“Stein Day” fell on December 26 (Boxing Day, a.k.a., “The Great Canadian Fire Sale”), when sometime around midafternoon, Mom, Dad, and the big blue Rambler station wagon would pull into the garage, loaded down with half-price Legos, out-of-the-box Erector Sets, and several bags of Chinese food.

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