We spend every Christmas in the desert. Palm Desert. Home to movie stars, great restaurants and lots and lots of Jews. It’s like New York City except with palm trees and golf carts. The Professor and I have been going out there for a week at Christmastime with our same friends since before we were married. What started as a vacation for four single working professionals escaping L.A. grew into a 16-year tradition with a family that we all created.
Exhausted from work, we used to show up and sleep for a week, taking conference calls in between dinners and movies. Then when the kids were little, we'd spend the week on death-prevention patrol. There is nothing relaxing about a two-year-old near a pool. Now we have kids that feed themselves and schedules that we have slightly more control over. Our Christmas week has become a resort vacation with everyone hiking, swimming, playing tennis, and new this year, horseback riding.
I go back and forth about being sad that we don’t observe Christmas the way I grew up— with traditional food, by a fire, awaiting Santa and all of our relatives, dressed to kill. Instead we wear bathing suits, drink margaritas and play Scrabble. We order Chinese take-out and watch movies. So what I have is not what I dreamed it would be. I always imagined myself cooking big dinners at home and filling stockings in the middle of the night while my children were nestled all snug in their beds. I never thought I'd be tossing it all in the trunk of my car before driving the Pines-to-Palms Highway where I put my children to sleep in a condo on a golf course. My 12-year-old asks Santa for cash and my eight-year-old knows more about Hanukah than the birth of Christ.
Letting go of Norman Rockwell and embracing Woody Allen is not the magic I would have guessed, but what fun is Christmas if you already know what you’re getting?
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