Holidays Begin at Home
When my wife and I were raising young children, it was easy enough to decide where to spend the holidays. While our more intrepid friends treated school breaks as opportunities to see Europe or tour national parks and Civil War battlefields, we seldom left our home in Connecticut.
Some parents aim to show their children the world. We’ve considered a full night’s sleep—for us or the kids—a parenting victory. Vacations weren’t for adventuresome backpacking. They were blessed respites from the morning breakfast rush and carpool. As a result, since our firstborn arrived in 2006, we’ve spent every Hanukkah, Passover and national holiday at home.
Now that our youngest is old enough to travel easily, and we could go somewhere, I have little desire to. Hanukkah begins Sunday, and I have been thinking how much I value home-based traditions. I haven’t given my children the gift of seeing the world, but I like to think I have given them something equally valuable and far less costly: the pleasure of staying put.
(snip)
It isn’t only Hanukkah we repeat, year after year. Passover Seders are at our house. At first, we hosted because it was logical: We lived between both sets of parents, and as vegetarians we wanted to be able to eat from the menu. It’s a lot of work, and I once hoped we’d alternate. But now I’m glad for the regularity of it all. The same traditional foods (my matzoh ball soup, my wife’s flourless chocolate cake), the same Haggadah (Richard Codor’s illustration of the Passover story).
(snip)
Judaism isn’t a celestial religion, lifting us into the clouds. Nor is there any commandment to spread the religion over the face of the earth. We have no obligation to travel far and wide, to make religious pilgrimages. Rather, we are directed to make Jewish families, and then to make their homes centers of Jewish life.
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