Holiday celebrations

When I sit down from time to time to summarize our lives, it often seems that like a sit-com, our lives follow themes from one week to another. Clearly, the theme of the past week or so was holiday celebrations. Paris has shifted into full swing Christmas preparation. Without Thanksgiving to mark the beginning of the Christmas season, the stores begin their marketing at the first hint of cooler weather. As I mentioned, this is especially apparent in Ella's school where many activities for the next few weeks revolve around that theme. Ella asked me if I would talk to her teacher about it. So, after looking up a few key words in the dictionary, I raised the topic on Thursday. The teacher could not have responded in a nicer way. She immediately said she completely respected that we are all different and that any Christmas activities that Ella does not feel comfortable participating in, she could do an alternative activity. She made it very comfortable and easy. It was clear it had just never occurred to her that someone wouldn't celebrate Christmas. She asked if we celebrated Ella's birthday, and when I explained that we just didn't celebrate Christian holidays because we were Jewish, she seemed a little embarassed for not having realized that sooner.

On the agenda for that day was making paper Christmas trees. I suggested to Ella that maybe she could make a regular tree instead and decorate it with apples. She decided instead that she would make a menorah and decorate it with Jewish stars (solid Jewish identity, that kid). That afternoon, Ella came home so excited. As it turned out, when the other children made Christmas trees, the teacher offered Ella the opportunity to come with her to the photocopy machine and photocopy a witch (another subject they have been "studying"). Ella colored the witch and the teacher hung it up by the door of the classroom. Rather than feeling left out and isolated (as could have happened), Ella ended up feeling very special.

This coming Thursday is a regular workday (in fact, I am going to be attending a conference here in Paris on childhood obesity). So, on Saturday, we celebrated Thanksgiving with Harley, Anne, Gabrielle, and Calypso Davis. (The actual date of the holiday is rather secondary to us compared to enjoying spending time with people we care about). Despite being French, Anne made a perfect Thanksgiving dinner (turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn muffins), getting a lot of the supplies from an American grocery in the 7th called The Real McCoy. We brought the apple pie (an American one with a lattice crust despite the French culinary training I've been getting!) and chocolate chip cookies. Along with a couple of bottles of French wine (no point to going overboard with the American theme), including a bottle of the Beaujolais Nouveau which came out this week (and is pretty good), it was a perfect Thanksgiving meal. The kids, as always, had a wonderful time playing with their "adopted cousins" allowing the grown-ups to sit around a leisurely dinner table for almost 4 hours with hardly an interruption. We asked the kids what they were thankful for. Ella said she was thankful for having a "spaggatical" that we could spend in Paris. Jonah said he was thankful for muffins. Hope you all have as happy a Thanksgiving as we did!