There’s nothing like the holidays to make you feel different. Especially if you don’t celebrate them like everyone else does. Sure, people say “Happy Holidays,” but what 9.5 out of ten of those people mean is “Merry Christmas.”
True story. I was in this mom and pop card shop outside of Salt Lake City several years ago around the “winter holidays” looking for “holiday” cards that I could send to my Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist friends. You know, something that didn’t have a Santa, reindeer, menorah, or dreidel on it. Something that wasn’t red and green or white and blue. A card with some universal message on it like “Peace and love and good will to all.”
I found a small sample of cards with pictures of children holding hands and smiling, but none of them felt right. I suddenly asked myself, what’s the purpose of me sending these holiday cards, anyway? Is it to acknowledge their traditions, to share mine, or something else entirely?
While I was having this existential debate in the card shop, I came across cards (in the Christmas section, mind you) that read, “Happy Jewish New Year.” Being a good Jew, I knew that there had to be some sort of mistake here. After all, the Jewish New Year is in the early fall. So I approached the clerk with the cards in hand. She said, “Oh good, I had to special order these. Isn’t that nice that you people have your own New Year’s cards?”
Now, I know that this woman, no matter how misinformed, meant well. So I smiled and told her that we do indeed have our own New Year and it comes in the early fall, and that is what these cards are for. I told her that we acknowledge the secular New Year on December 31, too. She looked at me like I was a wacky nut case. I left the store feeling dazed and confused, like I did not belong to the wider world. I just couldn’t buy my cards there.
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