conundrum -

This holiday season my wife and I will not both be home for Christmas. Instead we will celebrate our first year of marriage on separate continents. As we are different races and religions, there are usually challenges we encounter at this time of year, so maybe being 7,000 miles apart will make it easier. We’ve actually resolved the big conundrum for me–the Christmas tree.

I don’t care if you call it a Hannukah bush or an ordinary tree; it is a Christmas tree, pure and simple. It represents the birth of Christ and it’s not just a secular symbol. But, it matters to my wife, so we resolved the issue by agreeing, like so many mixed religious couples, to celebrate both Christmas and Hannukah. Since my boys were raised Jewish, and my younger son just became a Bar Mitzvah, it really isn’t an issue for me anymore.

This Fathers Day, being recently remarried, I don’t have to face it wondering what to do and who will teach my boys to remember and respect me. But, in previous years, while I was encouraging them to make or buy Mother’s Day and birthday cards for their mother, who had abandoned them, there seemed to be no one to help them with the same task for me.

This is no feel-sorry-for-myself reflection, but a conundrum many single parents face when their birthdays or other holidays come about. I was vigilant in reminding them to remember their mother and her mother, not because she deserved anything from them, but because it taught them to respect parents, other relatives, and learn the right thing to do when they got older.

Tag Archives: conundrum

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