One Day at a Time
FreiFem2011BlogsFreiFemcredit: visualpanic
There’s something lovely about the structure religion provides, with its marked seasons and regular holidays. It can be like living in a house, with rooms designated for all of your living activities, that you spend your life wandering through, your movements reassured and guided by the familiar walls and hallways and small spaces open to you.
But there’s also something lovely about escaping that house, and having time loose and free, to savor day by day or run through your fingers week after week, to slow down and take notice when you want, to close your eyes tight and wait for it to pass when you can’t stand it.
Outside the streets are crisp with the first autumn chill. We aren’t going to make it to the beach a second time this season. I packed up my maternity shorts and am digging through the mountain of boxes that contain my material life, trying to find something warm that I can pretend fits my body.
I got my hair done the other day, and the woman doing my shampoo was a secular Israeli. “Are you going to fast on Yom Kippur, with the pregnancy or new baby?” she asked, when she discovered I was Jewish. “We don’t observe Yom Kippur,” I told her. “Not even Yom Kippur?” “No.”
Autumn feels empty without the large holiday edifices shaping the months. I do miss the honey on Rosh Hashanah. I do miss the yummy wallowing of tears on Yom Kippur, the masochistic guilt of feeling shitty for my sins. I do miss the pupiks in the chicken soup my mother used to make for Sukkus, or the adventurous discomfort of sitting outside in our coats, puffing clouds of breath over bowls of savory fricassee.
But it’s nice to be free of the impending dread of a “court appearance” that I used to take very seriously. It’s nice to be free of the confines of the holidays, which, one after another, quickly lost their meaning and became tiring and boring. It’s nice to have just today, this moment in time, to choose to dedicate to thinking over the last year, planning the next, or doing neither and instead obsessing over door handle choices in our renovations or taking a yoga class or reinvigorating my creative batteries with a good read or savoring a big dish of ingudai tibs. I love the freedom of today being unlinked to the season and all its associations. It’s just one day at a time, and it’s up to me how I choose to play with it.
9 Responses
Do you Celebrate Halloween ???
Halloween like Sukkath is basically a Fall harvest festival
Most of these holidays came from season changing
Chanukah / Christmas
Passover / Easter
I would hope you celebrate the season changing
Anonymous: Why? What’s significant about the seasons changing that warrants celebration or recognition. FreiFem’s point is that she can choose to celebrate or recognize or ignore whatever she wants, whenever she wants. That kind of freedom is exhilarating and scary at once.
“But there’s also something lovely about escaping that house, and having time loose and free, to savor day by day or run through your fingers week after week, to slow down and take notice when you want, to close your eyes tight and wait for it to pass when you can’t stand it.”
I have figured out a way to do both. On my terms, of course.
I guess you dont celebrate 4th of July , New Years eve and Thanksgiving either…
Holidays are for a reason, people need a break, You cant work 365 days a year
FreiFem:
Are you ever inspired to mark national holidays, for reasons other than taking a break? (See anonymous comment above.) Do you think you will with your kid(s)?
Yes, I do celebrate holidays – Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Day I Got Into College are some of my favorites – but they are self-constructed and self-imposed. I am free to reinterpret them each year in a way that honors my current reality.
I don’t have any problem with religious holidays – Jewish or Christian. I went to a Seder this past spring and I celebrate Chanuka and/or Christmas. I don’t have any problem with other people celebrating Tisha Baav or Kwanzaa or Diwali. This post is simply a musing on what’s right for me, now, what I enjoy and appreciate – but also miss, with my current choices.
So i guess according to you its Wrong to go to a Parade , Eat a Turkey and Watch Football on Thanksgiving
Its also wrong to go to the Beach have a BBQ and watch Fireworks on July 4.
If you take the religion out, secular holidays have their own rituals.
Fine you dont want to hear Shofar, Dip Apple in honey and throw some bread in the water, but its really no different than going to the beach, having a BBQ and watching some fireworks.
Anonymous above:
Where in the article did FreiFem say any of it was wrong? She was speaking from her own experience of being relieved of the obligations, and in case you didn’t read her comment above, she has no problem with others celebrating Jewish holidays (or any other holidays).
What would have been a better criticism is TOO MANY holidays in a row with too much restriction.
You might find you enjoy throwing some bread in the water, you might enjoy hearing some horns being blown.
What you dont enjoy is 7 hours being Bored in Shul and being locked in the house for the rest of the time.
On Thanksgiving people have a 2-3 meal and go home, they dont have to see their relatives that they hate anymore, the kids can go somewhere.
One Big meal everyone can take, but one after the other is way too much.
There is a reason we have seasonal holidays, Of course in 2011 the seasons mean less to us than before because we are not farmers, but they mean something
Fall equinox is the start of a new school year, Start of Football season (Important to many) Days get shorter, It gets colder outside.
Winter Solistice the days begin to get longer again and the snow will begin shortly
Spring Equinox, Everyone loves Spring , its a new begining for everyone. People do get happier, it gets warmer outside. The flowers bloom etc