What are you doing for Christmas

Well... I'm gonna pay some bills, put away the decorations, vacuum.

I don't mind when people who don't know me ask, I just tell them we celebrate Hanukkah and the conversation usually just stops there. I don't mind when people wish me a Merry Christmas, I know that what they are wishing is for an extra special joyous time, not an attack on my religious beliefs. I don't judge others for celebrating Christmas.

It's the people who know and still ask. Do you think we have a non-Christmas tradition? Wouldn't any tradition on Christmas then be a celebration of Christmas? For us, it is just another day. We get up, do our chores, this year with it being on a Friday, we are getting ready for the Sabbath.

You don't need to give me any of those sad "poor you" looks. My kids don't miss out on anything, we already had 8 nights of celebration. We are just coming down from our holiday excitement. The first couple of years we chose not to do the whole Christmas thing was a little weird, but now that our new traditions are pretty set, I don't even get a little tingle of "I miss Christmas". In fact, looking from the outside in, I don't miss the madness and guilt of doing Christmas. As a kid it was fun, but as an adult and parent, the time and expense and were pretty stressful. Don't miss that at all.

So we made all the obligatory phone calls, will go to the inlaws later and then start our Erev Shabbot celebrations that we do each week. That is what we are doing.