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EIGHT
DAYS OF HANNUKAH
December 25th, 2005
My son and I are shopping in the only
supermarket open, picking up onions for the latkes, juice and more
gelt because it is now four pouches for a dollar. The cashier
wishes us a Merry Christmas. I tell her Christmas is not our
holiday, but we will certainly have a happy Hanukkah.
December 26th, 2005
My children watch Dora help Santa
Claus deliver presents. The wild animals celebrate Christmas. Even
the moon is a Christian. On another show Santa advises little Timmy
to stay away from fried foods.
December 27th, 2005
At the movie theater my son is asked
what Santa brought him. Santa brings us grief, I say, he is a
byproduct of one religion in a country of dozens.
December 28th, 2005
Relatives come over bringing my
children gifts that they say Santa left at their house by mistake.
What happened to the workshop at the North Pole, I ask, when did
Santa Claus start buying plastic toys from Walmart made by other
children in Bangladesh?
December 29th, 2005
When you play strip dreidel your
options are to take two articles of clothing off, put half on, do
nothing or put all of them on. You win if you end up completely
dressed in someone else’s clothes.
December 30th, 2005
Some trees are out on curbs now. My
children are content to play with toys they have already gotten but
with coaxing we get them to open another night’s worth. I wonder if
they will last to the eighth night.
December 31st, 2005
I told my mother in law that Santa
Claus is a lie invented to sell children on the American capitalist
system, that poverty and wealth determine how good your children’s
presents will be, not their behavior. Whose god does it serve to
teach your children that being poor is naughty, wealthy nice?
January 1st 2006
Already I have been asked how my Christmas was
thirteen times. You know how this plays out. Some just say Happy
New Year, but really, this isn’t our new year either.
Brett Axel is a devout
Unitarian Universalist, a social activist and poet living and
writing in Utica, New York with his two partners and collective
five children. He is the author of three collections of poetry,
most recently, Rules (Minimul Press, 2004) and the editor of the
political poetry anthology, Will Work For Peace. His first
novel, Not Okay, has been in search of a publisher for two
years.
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