SJG Family Folklore, from, who else, my brother John: "My memory may be faulty, but before you were born Mom bought a Christmas Tree once and only once. I think the estranged brother was 4 and I was 1. Grandpa saw it and refused to come in the house. I believe Dad had to literally drag it outside to the trash." The only shanda here is that John didn't embellish this story more, and that I wasn't alive to see this incident as it unfolded in our first house, high atop the little town of Beverly Hills. The young and impressible SJG would've loved a Giving Tree that gave more than apples and branches. Yet the rapidly aging, not to mention, very wise SJG is a harsh judge of such blatant commercialism. Oh, please. Who am I kidding? How fun would it be to find a Star of David-crowned, pretty tannenbaum in my living room just once? That's right, I said it. I'm talking once!
When we moved to Westwood in the early '70s, plenty temple-going families on the block went through a brief Xmas tree phase, not that they'd admit it now. Even John and I got swept up in the mania, and fashioned a Hanukkah Bush out of a ficus tree, hanging handmade foil decorations on every leaf. Every day, we checked for gifts, but the bush brought forth bupkis. So we returned to our beloved annual ritual, checking every closet and drawer in the house till we found where Mom had hidden our Hanukkah presents. If there's a tradition lovelier than that, let's hear it.
12-12-18
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