It’s snowing, isn’t it?
Tags: Narrative Nonfiction, Judaism, Narrative, Divorce, Christmas

Snowfall reminds me of all the things I cannot have. As a Jewish child, it is that illusive luscious Nutcracker shade of Christmas — my house smells like stale vegetable oil for a week while my friends’ homes smell like what I imagine is magic. The snowfall suggests the supernatural climax of Christmas morning, the mystical impossibility of a stranger eating cookies topped with royal icing and inedible dragees, leaving gifts of substance under a sweet smelling tree. The velvety purr of Christmas suggests family, hair bows, taffeta, awe and to me as a most precocious child, ice skating in Vienna.

When I marry a Gentile, I am constantly trying to create a home with the magic I wanted from the Christmas I never had. It is never about the gifts — it is always about the platters of food, the glistening, jewel toned foods. The mountains of cookies, the gossamers and the sugared cranberries. It is the anticipation, a reason to get dressed up to stay home. It is the velvet bows, the traditions. It is about building traditions of our own. It is about warmth and security.

Divorced now, I think of him when it snows. I think of our tedious long walks through it, the promise of chocolately Norwegian Porters incentivizing my cynical city feet to keep putting one in front of the other. The romance of the heavy snowfall in the seaside New England town we call home for so long is not lost on me, but my preference is to gaze upon it, not glide through it. My boots are always pretty but they are never warm.

There is nowhere he looks at me like he loves me more than after these walks, sitting across from me at a warm pub that make him feel like he is home in England. He prefers my watery eyes and rosy cheeks painted by the cold to the synthetic red lips and over accentuated cheekbones I wear as armor every other day of the year.

I don’t think his parents like me for the first nine years of our marriage, but the final Christmas we spend married, we spend with them — at their small, but ever inviting house on the English seaside. His mother plies me with gin and tonics at all hours of the day, spending daylight on long walks to the pub like only the English do, and evenings with crosswords, a little drunk in front of the television. The snow falls unexpectedly during that trip and we walk miles home through this tiny village late night as the snow dances upon us. In that moment I briefly consider leaving our life, having a few kids and staying here forever. I am constantly, quietly pursuing magic.

I never find Christmas while I am married. It doesn’t matter how ornate the tablescape, how tall the croquembouche, how lush the living garlands. It feels forced, superficial and always disappointing, resulting not in the magic I am perpetually pursuing, but a larger pile of dishes in the sink.

My first Christmas as a single woman I take myself to Rome where a handsome Jewish waiter asks me on a date in broken English on Christmas Day hours after I find myself moved to near paralysis sitting within the ornate walls of the Great Synagogue. That night I board a train and ride through the darkness, waking up to snapshots of storybook villages to meet a friend in Vienna where we go ice skating and drink mulled wine and eat ornate pastries in buildings that look like gingerbread houses. Ice skating in Vienna, it turns out, is a lot like ice skating in America, pushy parents, crying children, poorly sharpened rental skates.

I no longer crave the magic of Christmas. Years ago, deep in my marriage, I make the realization that the true magic is in my home, the one that smells of stale vegetable oil. This home acknowledges human perseverance and real miracles that bring light to the darkest times.

The flames that flicker on my menorah become both more relevant and more magical every year, this year they are particularly powerful. At my wedding all those years ago, my grandmother reads from our favorite story, The Velveteen Rabbit:

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

This year, the seasonal crystalline facade is beautiful, but it is not magic. This year I realize that magic only truly presents itself in what is real.