Holiday Diversification

Interesting holiday season for me -- not the usual to say the least -- but really terrific. First of all, I celebrated Christmas all last week with my son who is now with his dad for another action-packed Christmas week with family in California. (Thank goodness they didn't fly right into the earthquake yesterday, which would have had me worried as heck, but will leave today instead. Ride those aftershocks boys, you're both Californians so I know you'll be cool. It's like surfing on dirt for you two.) When it comes to the kid part of Christmas, my holidays are done and they were a gift wrap rip roaring success. Better still, I get to play with all his toys in a CLEAN house while he's away -- don't tell him.

To make things even more confusing, I was invited over to a friends' house last Friday night, on Chanukah's first evening for a big traditional menorah-lighting Thanksgiving Dinner. I'm not kidding. Since my friends' daughter was doing a junior year in Florence, Italy program this year and missed Thanksgiving at home, they did a little Chanukah and a lot of Thanksgiving all on the same night with cranberry sauce, turkey and famous family tradition of stuffing muffins (stuffing with crab meat inside all baked up into a muffin shape ... did I get that right? ... whatever the recipe, they were excellent.) This added to a diverse experience of holiday celebrating, topped off by watching the hilarious Comedy Central short film The Hebrew Hammer, a tale of an evil Santa who tries to dispense with Chanukah and Kwanzaa but meets serious resistance from the bad-to-the-bone homeboy dressed like Shaft, but is in fact , the very sexy, very Jewish excellent actor, Adam Goldberg, a nice Jewish boy turned vigilante. The movie is funny as hell.

Add to that a quick trip to Atlanta, where I get to swap cold weather with warm, see my brother and sister-in-law (very long time no see), visit blogger pals, hang with witty writers and when you add it all up, I have quite a Christmas portfolio of diversified and fascinating holiday experiences. I head back today to do some traditional Christmas hanging out with my sister and brother-in-law for the big day Thursday. Oh, yeah, and we've also been celebrating heightened terrorism by decking the halls orange. This lets me add one more layer of holiday excitement, that great shared funky feeling with fellow travelers that if we keep alert, I might just get a chance to turn in some unsuspecting guy in elevator shoes and win the "I caught a holiday shoe bomber" award, letting me spend part of the holidays doing photo ops with Tom Ridge.