Just because I don’t celebrate Christmas, doesn’t mean my family doesn’t have holiday traditions.  All you need for holiday traditions is a creative, dysfunctional family.  My family has a little bit of creativity and a lot of bit of dysfunction.

I guess I’ll go in calendar order, starting with Thanksgiving.  My favorite holiday takes place on Thanksgiving, but it’s not the meal.  I like to count the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as its own holiday.  Every year, my little sister and I wake up really early and eat cookies with turkeys on them as we watch the most magical performance of the year.

 My dad cooks for Thanksgiving.  As the cook on a holiday based around food, my dad has all the power.  And since he doesn’t like turkey, we don’t have turkey.  Having a chicken on Thanksgiving is almost a tradition within itself, but my dad takes it one step further.  Before carving the bird my dad closes his eyes, waves his hands over the chicken and says “Turkey-merkey, turkey-lurkey, turn this chicken into a turkey.” 

I have a bunch of Christmas traditions, but since I don’t celebrate the holiday they are more like December 25^th traditions.  One of my least favorite traditions, that my older sister and I took part in, was working on Christmas.  There is nothing that is more boring than standing around at an empty grocery store, wishing someone forgot the secret ingredient to their mash potatoes, so you can have something to do.  Luckily, that tradition has come to an end now that I’m in college.  After work my sisters, my mom, and I always go to the movie because, let’s be honest, we have nothing else to do. 

My dad does celebrate Christmas, which I think makes my mom kind of jealous because Hanukkah isn't as flashy.   So he has to set up all his decorations in the basement.  He calls it “Christmas Town” and he spends every night in December watching old Christmas movies.  My house does get some decorations.  In case the entire town wasn’t sure of who the Jewish family was, my dad made a six foot tall Star of David out of 2x4 and blue Christmas lights.   But by far my favorite holiday tradition is being tacky: