I have never enjoyed the holiday season. I hate the cold, I don't like Christmas music, and I'm not at all religious. The only two holiday songs I like are Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You and Barbra Streisand's Jingle Bells? and even those get old after a while. I never grew up in a house full of decorations. Growing up Jewish, we just lit the menorah, said the prayer, opened a gift and went to bed. Now that I don't live at home anymore, we don't even do that.
However, this year I took it upon myself to get some non-secular decorations and fill my apartment with flashing lights and snowmen. One of my roommates and I made a very successful trip to Target and we bought nearly every type of decoration. We got home, put on some Christmas music, and decorated the entire apartment. We had dreidels hanging from our ceiling fan, a small Christmas tree, and I even made my own mistletoe! For the first time in my whole life, the holiday's didn't feel like some exclusive event that I wasn't invited to, I felt the same joy everybody else was feeling.
But the joy didn't stop after the decorating. My roommates and I threw a little gathering together with some of our closest friends and we all sat around in holiday attire, listened to holiday music, and drank holiday drinks. Nobody got super drunk, nobody got mad at each other, it was really nice. Certainly not a traditional 'college' party, but it was more fun than that. We took cute pictures and some people exchanged gifts and as corny as it may seem, I really felt as though I belonged somewhere.
It was then I realized that maybe I've sort of been a Scrooge for the last 19 years because I never tried to like the Holidays. When you live in America and the prime holiday is Christmas and you celebrate Hanukkah, you tend to feel left out. When people are telling you Merry Christmas on your way out of store rather than Happy Holidays, you're too tired to tell them otherwise. This was the first year that I didn't care if people wished me a Merry Christmas. I made myself participate in something that I had a preconceived negative opinion on and it felt really good. You can't wait for the Holiday joy to come to you, you need to find your own.
For all of my fellow non-Christmas celebrators, don't let the Christmas joy discourage you. You have your own joy to be spirited about.
