Last year we stayed in New York for Christmas for a change. And this year we’re doing that again. Here’s what I wrote last year. It still feels new and exciting to be here at Christmas.

We’ve decided to stay in Brooklyn for the holidays. Well, it was my
idea. I told Hepcat I needed  to be here instead of on the farm, the
walnut farm, in Northern California.

It took days to get up the nerve. I knew Hepcat wouldn’t take it
well. He looks forward to our visits to the family farm he grew up on. Our twice-yearly trips make him feel grounded; they connect him to his
past. They’re also a much-needed chance to spend time with his mother,
his siblings, their children, and other members of his family.

For as long as we’ve been together, we’ve spent the holidays out
there. That’s a lot of years and a lot of Chirstmases with my husband’s
family. I don’t even know what the holidays are like in New York with
my family anymore.

I must say, Christmas in California is pretty special: a real
goyisha treat for a Jewish girl from the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
There’s a tall Christmas tree festooned with family heirloom ornaments.
The house, fragrant with mulled cider and eucaplytus branches, is
decorated with colorful Mexican folkart Mexican nativity creches. There
are hot cinnamon buns on Christmas morning.

Best of all, my kids get to spend days on the farm with their
cousins in a
kind of free-form indoor/outdoor existence that’s so unlike life in
Park Slope. Climbing a fig tree, taking walks in a walnut orchard,
lighting sparklers in the backyard, it’s all part of the Christmas they
know.

So I finally blurted it out one night before dinner in the kitchen.  "I don’t think I can go to California this Christmas."

There was a stunned silence.

I offered up my reasons like non-sequiters: My work. Teen Spirit’s New
year’s Eve gig at the Liberty Heights Tap Room. Our new niece, Ducky.

Hepcat  immediately looked disappointed but he seemed to understand.
"Well, I guess that means I’ll be going to California with Teen Spirit and OSFO,"  he said.

Teen Spirit, who was standing by the sink, cleared his throat, "Um, Dad, if
you don’t mind I think I want to stay in New York with mom," To which Hepcat replied,

"Well, I guess it’ll just be me and OSFO."

"I’M NOT GOING WITHOUT MOM," she shouted from the dining room where she was working on her homework.

"Well, I guess I’m going alone," Husband said sadly. "I’m sorry, Dad," Teen Spirit aid, giving his dad a big hug.

By morning Hepcat had decided that he was going to spend Christmas in Brooklyn with us.

"I don’t want to go without my family."

So it was decided that we will spend the holidays in Brooklyn.
Together.  We’ll have to figure out what to do here: reinvent our
holiday ritual as we rediscover New York at Christmastime.

Ice skating in Prospect Park, Christmas decorations in Dyker
Heights, fireworks on New Years Eve at Grand Army Plaza, after the show
at the Liberty Heights Tap Room…

It just might be fun to do something a little different.

–written in 2005