Winter In Chicago Under Two Very Different Faithful Blankets of Snow

Close your eyes and bring back the scents of the holidays you celebrated growing up with your family. Holidays especially in December. Every holiday has a certain “smell” to it. Goodness, I’m 35 years old and to this day my son’s Halloween candy smells just the same as my old pillow case sack full of chocolates did, when I “Halloweened” as a young one.

Scents make a holiday a memory. Good or bad, the scent stays with you forever.

In Chicago, you have to be very aware that certain things may complicate rekindling those old scents during the Holidays. The complications? Wind. Snow. Nose hairs. Frozen tongues stuck to poles.

Snowflakes can make a holiday. Snow falls can break it, at least in Chicago, because it can be 70 degrees on November 14th, and then in a matter of Black Fridays and plumped out pumpkin pie, the weather can shift so fast you’re stuck sending your sons to the bus stop wearing two different types of gloves that you have yet to wash because you just can’t get it together after 30 years in Chicago that the weather changes instantly.

Winter in Chicago causes delays. It causes families to miss one another due to airport cancellations. Stuck cars. Family members working late hours plowing the streets. Salting the streets-if you’re lucky enough to live in a suburb where they haven’t gone from salt to sand, thanks to the economy.

Yes, winter in Chicago can really jack up your holiday plans, especially Christmas. But ask any fellow Chicago lover, that has spent at least 10 years in this skyscraping tundra, they will always smile when you ask about winter, weather, and Christmas here. Why? Because we are adaptable to change. You have to be in this city.

I think that is why it’s been so simple to have two very different faiths celebrating under the same month, shifting from blue and white to red and green—as the snow falls outside with lovely happy flakes—and then BOOM, white out conditions.

How can you make it work? Be good with change. Be okay with frozen nose hairs. Understand that you may not get to see your mother-in-law this Chanukah because the flight from West Palm Beach to Chicago has been canceled because, yes, you guessed it—weather.

It makes raising children in an interfaith household very simple. Faith is very important in this house, especially around the holidays. You can have latkes and fruit cake on the same table; it’s cool to be kosher. You can wrap gifts with dreidel donned wrapping paper, and stick those very gifts under the Christmas tree. It’s perfectly fine, and by far not complicated in this house, to be both Christian and Jewish.

Our eyes are used to the weather outside of our warm interfaith household, and in order to be adaptable, you have to be open to change. Open to learning more about things unknown. Just like the weather here. You are always learning something new.

You’ll see the Star of David glowing peaceful beams of Chanukah lights up top our Christmas tree. Donny the singing Dreidel runs out of batteries faster then the train that runs around the tree skirt at the bottom of the Christmas tree. You know, where the blue and white Chanukah wrapped gifts are placed? The kids can sing Silent Night after saying the proper blessings as they witness their Dad light the candle each night, for 8 nights. They will bring you two books to read every night during the month of December; All about Chanukah and what the people “in that time,” had to do to survive, as well as the Story of Jesus’ Birth, and what those individuals had to do to adapt as well.

So, as you can see, if you were to make it here for Chrismukah, assuming your flight from Boca Raton hasn’t been canceled, you’ll be greeted to unique smells of Christmas cookies and latkes will greet you. You’ll learn more about adapting, and by opening up your senses to new smells, and sights, you’re not only teaching by example on how simple diversity really can be reconciled, but you’ll be begging for my Matzoh ball soup recipe, and my white chocolate covered pretzel turtle apples. That is, of course, if your nose hairs aren’t frozen.

Being a part of Chicago at Christmas, and at Chanukah, being a part of the weather of flakes and blankets and blizzards of winter, make it easier to be open-minded. After all, who in their right mind really wants to co-exist with sun one day, and snow the next? Only in Chicago…

Who would have thought that a little Irish Christian Girl brought up in a well known religious town would end up married to a Man that not only grew up in Miami, but was a wild man and Jewish? Talk about Holiday overload. Thankfully, it works. How? Ask One Crusty Mom-E later, because according to her, “I’m still thinking about what it was like to go from a private grade/middle school to an all out public school (gasp! People smoked cigarettes!).”