AJ and I just got back from our town�s annual Christmas Parade. Last year was our first holiday here, and our first experience with the Christmas Parade made us feel like we had moved to Mayberry. I am happy to say that this year�s parade was not a disappointment in that regard. The parade departs from the elementary school a few blocks from our house and proceeds about a half mile down Main Street (yes, it�s really called Main Street) to the center of town, such as it is (a train station, a bar, a mediocre Italian restaurant, a coffeeshop, a bank, a dance studio and a few other small businesses all proudly bearing the logo of the local chamber of commerce).

My husband is suffering from an earache and was unable to come with us (quite convenient, I might add, since today is also the date of another eagerly awaited annual event � the Bears/Packers game. Since we live quite close to the beginning of the parade route, AJ and I walked over there past the staging area. AJ was a little apprehensive until he saw the horses being groomed for their big moment, and then he started to look interested. By the time we passed half a dozen miniature elves practicing their tap dancing, he was a goner. It was not hard to find a place to stand on the parade route. There are so many kids in the parade that there is hardly anyone left to watch. There are no big, slick floats. There are, however, snowplows with wreaths on their doors and winter scenes painted on their blades by local brownies and cub scouts. We shook our congresswoman�s hand. We were showered with candy, much to AJ�s great joy. And Santa Claus himself gave AJ a candy cane, a moment he is not likely to soon forget.

On the way home, riding high on my shoulders, I could hear AJ recapping the events to himself, as if trying to commit them to memory before he could forget a single moment. �We saw reindeer and they had bells and they went ding, ding, ding. And Santa said ho-ho-ho. And he gave me a candy cane. And there was candy. And we saw noises (by which he meant that the police car we were looking at suddenly flashed to life and its siren went off in an alarming way). And there were little boys and little girls. And they were dressed like reindeers and presents and santas. And we saw little girls dancing and doggies and horsies.�

Christmas is definitely going to be fun this year. It�s weird being out in the suburbs, though. It�s so damn homogeneous that no one gives a second thought to whether or not someone might not celebrate Christmas. I couldn�t even tell you where the nearest synagogue is. After living down the street from a mosque and a couple of blocks from at least two synagogues, I find this somewhat alarming. I have a more or less Christian background and my husband is Catholic, although we are pretty non-practicing, mostly due to the fact that my husband doesn�t see the point attending a non-Catholic church and we have yet to find a Catholic church in this area with a political agenda that I can stomach. And neither of us sees the point in attending separate religious services, neither of us being inspired much beyond the habit of church-going formed years ago.

rs536-2000 has pointed out her discomfort with the Christmas season as a Jew. This is something I�ve always wondered about, as Christmas is so unavoidable in this country. And as uncomfortable as it must be for adults, I can�t even imagine what it�s like trying to bring up non-Christian kids in this environment. How do you tell a kid Santa�s not coming to his house when he comes to every other house in the neighborhood? In my current location, there is not only the assumption that everyone is participating in the Christmas holiday, but a complete denial of any other way of life. Kwanzaa? Hannukah? Never heard of them. I find it rather disturbing. AJ�s preschool, which I chose in part because it has no religious affiliations of any kind, has included in its activities this month making Christmas trees and angels. What�s really odd is that I don�t think anyone thinks of these activities as at all religious.

It is to this lack of awareness of the religious context for the holiday that I attribute the attempts for some to include rs536-2000 in their �Christmas cheer� against her will. But it is a secularization that I suspect is only available to lapsed Christians, I think, not to those from other religions, where it is never truly innocent.

So to rs536-2000 and others in the same boat, all I can do is apologize on behalf of the insensitivity of those of my religious background who find ourselves in the religious majority with a lack of awareness of the world.

In the spirit of greater ecumenicism, I would like to recommend this CD, which is rapidly becoming a holiday favorite in the harriet household. Yes, it�s an album of Christmas carols, but funny as hell and these guys can play.

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