Monthly Archives: December 2014

Hanukkah, Christmas And The Best Of Both Worlds

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Fact: Christmas can be oppressive for us Jews especially when we’re children. It seems everything out there is Christmas. Every TV special. Every house decorated with streams of ethereal lights. Santa in every commercial touting all the great new toys his elves are toiling away at when he’s not at the mall letting kids sit on his lap and ask for presents. Stockings. Tinsel. Incredibly beautiful indoor trees housing stacks and stacks of presents. Candy canes. A grandmother that was run over by a reindeer. The Nutcracker. Rockefeller Center. A date that doesn’t move around each year. An eve.

What did we have? 8 nights of lighting candles and saying a prayer. An electric orange menorah in the window. Dreidels. A boring song about dreidels made out of clay. Delicious latkes (ok, I can’t complain about that one). Chinese food on Christmas Day. There were presents, of course. In our case we’d get a big one on the first and last night of Hanukkah and small things in between. The holiday couldn’t even figure out how it wanted to spelled!

I wanted Rudolph. I wanted Frosty. I wanted Santa. More than anything I wanted to cover our house and bushes with a fantastic array of twinkling lights. Each year I’d beg my parents for lights, but the closest we came was a paper “Happy Hanukkah” to hang in the window that no one could see after dark. My parents felt for me for I’m sure they were envious as kids as well. They’d put presents by the chimney. They had one of my dad’s best friends dress up as Santa just for me.

“You’re not Santa!” I said in my brattiest tone. “You’re Mickey!”

As an adult I so appreciate my parents for trying especially since Christmas now seems to start before Labor Day making it even more onerous for Jewish people. Which is why I’m so happy for Sienna who gets to experience both holidays even though Christmas is a bit wacky (my wife’s parents are of a Christians but of a sect that doesn’t celebrate the holiday, so my wife didn’t even have Christmas growing up. She does now).

Sienna stares at our menorah (my late grandmother's) as the window reflects our little Christmas tree

Sienna stares at our menorah (my late grandmother’s) as the window reflects our little Christmas tree

Sienna gets to enjoy the power of both holidays. She gets to help Mommy trim our little silver Christmas tree covered with blue lights (silver and blue – the colors of Hanukkah). She gets to help Daddy screw in the electric menorah’s lightbulb for 8 days. Perhaps next year we’ll move on to actually lighting candles as well. She can watch holiday themed Sophia the First, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Jake and the Never Land Pirates without feeling like an outsider. She gets to revel in Santa’s ho-ho-ho and jiggling belly and enjoy the big Christmas tree in our building’s lobby while also pointing out the building’s silver menorah. We listen to her sing herself to sleep. Sometimes it’s a the Dreidel song. Sometimes it’s a Christmas tune.

She celebrates with her parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and great-grandmother during Hanukkah, 5 kids running around the house opening presents, spinning dreidels, eating chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil. Meanwhile her aunt, uncle and cousin are driving up from Louisiana for a special Christmas visit and we’ll spend Christmas Day with my wife’s family. And boy does she get presents. So many presents we’ll probably need a second apartment in which to store them. But what I love, what I experience through my daughter, is not feeling left out. I feel her soaking in both holidays on an equal plane. She loves evenings when both the Christmas tree and menorah alight basking our living room in a festive glow. For her, “Happy Holidays” truly means “Happy Holidays.”

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Sienna and one side of the family pose for 4 generation Hanukkah picture

Religion has yet to play a role in the holidays. I’m not religious. I’m an agnostic, but I somewhat follow Jewish customs. My wife is spiritual, but not religious. We have plenty of time before we have to deal with the religious angle and I’m curious and a bit fearful of what will come.

But for now Sienna gets the best of both worlds (or at least the worlds of Christmas and Hanukkah). She gets to enjoy her dreidels and candy canes; trees and menorahs; presents and presents. It’s a joyous time of year for her and a jubilant one for her parents. I for one have banished holiday envy from my heart as I give a Hanukkah gift to my wife and receive a Christmas gift in return.

I even get my festive lights.

My Safe Place

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The theater’s always dark. Sometimes it’s empty. Sometimes it’s packed. Sometimes you’ll see dribs and drabs of people scattered throughout. Sometimes they talk or look at their phones which irritates and forces me to shush them. Often I’m alone, but sometimes not. My Sno-Caps are usually gone by the end of the trailers. My small Diet Coke makes it about halfway through the film. The movies is not a means of escape. My mind remains present. Always critical. Always analytical. I don’t get swept up in movies. I’m too busy appreciating or disliking editing, cinematography, score, acting, directing, etc., but this doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy what I watch. It doesn’t mean I can’t get blown away by something truly amazing up there on the screen. I also worry too much about what others think of the film and my opinion of it. Too often my opinion gets lost in this obsession to be right. Regardless, what’s most important is that when I’m in a movie theater my anxiety level decreases to the point where I can breathe.  The movie theater is my safe place. Just being there releases the choke hold anxiety has on me. Even if it’s just for a little while.

Not too long ago my wife and I met with our financial advisor because we’re having money issues. He chastised me for going to the movies. “You know you can just wait for it to hit cable or Netflix or on-demand? That’s what I do.” His words slapped me and in that moment I hated him.

“You don’t get it!” I wanted to yell. “I don’t get that same sense of relief, of freedom. “I’m a stay-at-home dad with depression and anxiety issues. Sitting those 2+ hours in a darkened theater helps my chest loosen. I don’t have many hobbies. I don’t spend money on clothes or collections. I’m with my daughter every single day. Isolated. Alone. Doing my best to mask my depression and anxiety. I love her so much, but sometimes I need out. I need a dark room with a large flickering screen. The more anxious I get (and I’ve been highly depressed and anxious the past 6 weeks) the more I want that darkened theater. The more I want to see Wild, Whiplash, Birdman. The more I want my Sno-Caps and small Diet Coke. Seats that aren’t always comfortable. I DON’T CARE!! DON’T TAKE AWAY MY SAFE PLACE!!”

I hadn’t realized the movies is my sanctuary until we met with our financial advisor. Not until I felt it yanked away. I feel safe with my wife, but sometimes I can’t see her eyes or feel her hugs past the chest constriction. That’s when I need to get out. To get in the car, drive to one of my regular theaters and let my mind follow Eddie Redmayne’s Oscar-caliber performance in The Theory of Everything or the positively mind-blowing editing work in Birdman as my chest slowly decompresses. That’s when I need my safe place.

Elaine, my wife, told me that when I had my last nervous breakdown I was too afraid to go back to the movies. I don’t remember this at all. She thinks it’s because I was too afraid to let myself enjoy any aspect of my life. Instead I lay in bed shaking and crying and stuttering until one day I moved to couch and planted myself in front of the television. I don’t know when I returned to the cinema. Maybe I finally heard the calling of the gorgeous Landmark Loew’s 1930s movie palace just blocks away from us in Jersey City, NJ, a place that feels frozen in time. Red velvet walls. Golden staircases. A giant screen on which you can watch anything from silent features (complete with an organ accompaniment) to 80s classics like The Goonies. At some point I went back. At some point the movies became my safe place.

Now in Queens, NY, as I continue to slog through my depression and anxiety, as I raise Sienna to best of my abilities, the cinema remains my Fortress of Solitude even if I happen to be with someone or the theater is packed to the gills. I crave those evening when Elaine comes home at 6 and I can catch a 7:30 show. The darkness, the trailers, the Sno-Caps, the small Diet Coke, the film, the seats, the screen. They all combine to alleviate my anxiety for a few hours until those credits roll.

I can’t give it up. We’ll have to budget accordingly, but I can’t give up the movies. It’s too important to my mental health. I’m thankful Elaine supports me on this and in fact is the one who pointed it out. I’m lucky to have such an understanding wife who knew immediately that the financial advisor hit a nerve that sent my mind to the edge of an abyss – no more movies…EVER. She is the one who called the theater my safe place. And so it is.

What’s your safe place?