The Chanukah Bush and Other Soothing Lies

Elizabeth Zelvin

For most people, the winter holidays bring a certain nostalgia—or post-traumatic memories, depending on what kind of childhood you had. I’m lucky to have had wonderful parents, but some of their quirks and crotchets, which appeared perfectly normal to me as a kid, appear in a different light from my adult perspective.

My family was Jewish, so you might imagine we always celebrated Chanukah. Wrong. My mother later denied this, but the way I remember it (the annual event and the later explanation), my parents realized that Christmas was a lot more fun than Chanukah: stockings stuffed with presents, a glittering tree with ornaments, a pile of presents, and, of course, Santa Claus.

In fact, I know I was a believer, because one of my earliest memories—at four? five? six?—is not of my father blowing the gaff, but of the moment just afterward: my mother saying, “Oh, Joe, don’t spoil her Santa Claus!” Anyway, we always had a Christmas tree, and I don’t think we started calling it a Chanukah bush until we were old enough to appreciate facetiousness.

In fact, the Chanukah bush was and probably still is a fairly common tradition among secular New York Jews with kids.

Our tree was a classic 1950s tabletop aluminum tree, which we decorated with the kind of ornaments you’ll now find in fleamarkets and yard sales and also making a comeback as modern reproductions.

The trees themselves have become collectibles, which you can find on eBay and elsewhere if you google “vintage aluminum trees.” Here are a few, none exactly the squat, bushy model, excellent for hanging ornaments, that lives on in my memory.

I believe I was eight or so when my parents decided it was important to pass on their Jewish heritage by having a menorah and lighting the Chanukah candles. The best part for kids, besides the fun of candles themselves, was the fact that it lasted eight nights, on each of which we got a present. Chanukah was a minor holiday in Judaism until the modern American frenzy of Christmas buying and decorating spurred Jewish families to turn it into something that could at least attempt to compete.

We had stockings, big woolen ones otherwise used for ice skating, until I went off to college at the age of 16, as well as presents on December 25 in addition to Chanukah.

By the time I married my Irish Catholic husband thirty years ago, my mother was denying that any of this had ever occurred. In her conveniently faulty memory, we had always celebrated Chanukah. My husband’s position was clearly stated from the start: “I don’t care what your mother thinks—we’re having a Christmas tree.”

And so we do, along with lighting the candles, eating pot roast and latkes, singing carols (music is another area in which Christmas beats Chanukah hands down), and opening the presents under the tree. My granddaughters, Jewish on my son’s side but being raised Catholic like their mom, will do all those things this year—on Boxing Day. That’s December 26, a holiday we don’t celebrate in America, but it comes in handy when the kids have three sets of grandparents. And on Christmas Day, we’ll probably follow another New York secular Jewish tradition: Chinese food for Christmas.

It's a Holiday

by Sheila Connolly

(Hey, you're supposed to be having a lovely time celebrating with family and friends–what are you doing here? But thanks for stopping by.)


Once upon a time, Christmas was a religious holiday. That didn't mean a lot to me when I was growing up. I had a rather sketchy religious upbringing: my father was Catholic, my mother a nominal Episcopalian, and nobody attended any services (they were married in both churches, to keep his parents happy). Neither was very concerned about passing on their convictions, such as they were, to my sister and me. In my formative early years, I attended a Quaker school, which muddled things even more. So I never had the Sunday school, drag-to-early-service experience.

Which makes it all the more odd that in graduate school I found myself studying medieval art history, and that meant churches. Not just any churches, but the grand cathedrals of Europe, where the builders strove to reach the sky, dissolve the walls, and fill the soaring space with literal and figurative light. Or if you want to take an opposing view, the rich patrons sought to erect large and ostentatious monuments in order to impress their friends and foes and buy their way into heaven. Whatever the impetus, the results are undeniably magnificent.


In any case, I have probably been in more Catholic churches in my life than most Catholics, from St. Peter's in Rome on down to the tiny "chapel of ease" where my Irish great-grandparents worshipped.


Obviously for me Christmas was a largely secular holiday, distinguished by presents and food. My parents and my grandmother were indulgent, so there were many presents. There was also much food, as my grandmother would arrive from New York bearing baskets of absurdly large fruits, bags of nuts in the shell, packages of dried dates, and of course, cookies and candies. It seems quaint now, when foods from all over the globe are available in local supermarkets, but back then it was a big deal.


For my husband and me, most of our families are gone now, and our siblings live in states sufficiently distant that it's not easy to get together. Every year I honor my own family holiday history by retrieving the tarnished blown-glass ornaments from the attic and hanging them on the tree, reminding myself of where they came from and when I first remember them. My husband brought none with him to the marriage, and can't even remember any family tree traditions, although of course we've added plenty since we've been together. I even cherish the plastic Joe Montana that my sister sent me one year (we lived in the Bay Area during the 49ers' glory years).


Even though I may not call myself religious, I still feel a compulsion to celebrate something at this time of year. Whatever organized religion may tell us, December is still the time of the solstice, when the days begin, imperceptibly, to grow longer again. I've been lucky to visit Stonehenge and a number of other stone circles, large and small, and it's humbling that those ancient, pre-literate cultures knew that there was something magical about the solstice, and built their own monuments to celebrate it. Organized religion just borrowed from them.


We believe that the sun will return, crops will grow, and life will go on. That's worth celebrating no matter what you label it. Happy holidays, whatever you choose to call them!

Murder for Christmas?

by guest blogger Krista Davis

Some people might think it’s peculiar to write about a murder that takes place around the holidays. After all, it’s the hap-hap-happiest time of year. I love Christmas. The decorating, and shopping, and baking -- the whole thing. I even like stringing lights outside with fingers stiff from the cold. I look forward to feasting on roast goose with friends and family and curling up by the fireplace with hot chocolate and a good mystery.


As we grow up the joys and disappointments of the holidays no longer come from the packages under the tree. They move up to a bigger and less predictable source, the behavior of our families and friends. We look forward to the warmth and pleasures of family, but we dread dealing with the mother who drinks too much or the husband who is having an affair. Competent, respected adults shudder at the thought of the holidays with a parent so critical that they’re reduced to insecure, angry adolescents again. How does one cope with a parent who says not to come home unless the daughter has lost weight?


Earlier this year I was walking along a street in Charlottesville, Virginia with Liz Zelvin. She told me (and I hope I’m paraphrasing you correctly, Liz) that one of the first things her clients have to learn is that they can’t control other people. I think it can take a long time for us to reach the point where we understand that. We can’t make someone love us, or force them to stop drinking, or lecture them to a size two. All those things have to come from within the other person.


Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop us from trying. For some reason, the holidays seem to amplify our expectations of perfection. None of those problems are new. The husband’s affair, the mother’s drinking, the poor relationship between mother and daughter all existed long before the holidays, perhaps for years. Yet we still expect people to be the way we wish they were when it comes to the holidays.


Add the stress of finding this year’s must-have toy, sewing a costume for a pageant, baking cookies for the office cookie swap, attending boring parties with a spouse, cursing at tangled lights, and dealing with a turkey everyone forgot to thaw, and it’s amazing that there aren’t more yuletide murders. Of course, mystery writers love the combination of unrealistic expectations and stress!


In The Diva Cooks A Goose, domestic diva Sophie Winston has a chance to relax because her brother and sister-in-law, Lacy, are hosting the big family celebration. Lacy is a perfectionist, the type who makes lists for everything. She planned ahead and has everything under control until Christmas Eve, when the Christmas presents are stolen right out from under the tree. Poor Lacy. That’s only the beginning of holiday disasters for her family. When her newly separated father arrives with a date, more than one person is ready to commit a merry murder. While Lacy copes with parents she can’t control, Sophie is on the trail of a killer, and when she finds him, she plans to cook his goose!

I wish you and yours a warm and loving holiday season. May your celebrations be festive and may the only murders be properly confined to spellbinding mysteries.

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Krista Davis writes the Domestic Diva Mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime. The first book in the series, THE DIVA RUNS OUT OF THYME, was nominated for an Agatha Award. Her most recent book, THE DIVA COOKS A GOOSE, launches on December 7th!

A Christmas in London

Elizabeth Zelvin

My husband and I are having a quiet Christmas Day this year, opening presents, eating a good brunch and a good dinner, and zoning out in front of the Christmas tree. Oh, and lighting red and green candles and saying a b’rucha for the fifth night of Chanukah in our ecumenical household. So I’d like to take you back three years to our Christmas in London in 2005.

Several years ago, my stepdaughter married a Brit whom she met on the Internet, after a prolonged transatlantic courtship. (You can listen to my song about it, Online Loving, to get an idea of how that went.) They currently live in Bromley, a suburban town in Kent within commuting distance of what I want to call the Big Teapot. So off we went to London for the holidays, neither of us having visited England for thirty years or so and both with our minds crammed full of English history and English literature.

If we were looking for a Dickensian Christmas, we were a century too late. The Brits don’t eat roast goose anymore: the centerpiece of Christmas dinner is a turkey. Nobody came caroling to the door of our Bayswater hotel (on a little square off Queensway, down the block from the Whiteley’s shopping mall that figured in Elizabeth George’s What Came Before He Killed Her, to my retroactive amused horror when I read it later). And our attempts to “do London” were hampered by the fact that the whole city shuts down on Christmas, not for one day but for three: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. Forget museums and theaters, and on Christmas Day itself, the Underground doesn’t run at all.

Thanks to the Internet, we were forewarned, so we did our museum and theater going before and after the holiday and had all our plans in place long before Christmas Eve. We even attended a pantomime, the traditional holiday entertainment we’d read about all our lives, which is so weird that the fact that kids are brought up on it goes a long way toward explaining the fabled British eccentricity. I don’t think my husband has recovered yet from the spectacle of Ian McKellen, his beloved Gandalf, camping it up in a dress as Aladdin’s mother, the Widow Twankey.

But on to the holiday itself.
On Christmas Eve, we went out to visit the kids in Bromley, starting early so we could catch a train back to London before the railroad shut down. There was a festive outdoor mall with lots to buy and trees festooned with strings of what the Brits call fairy lights, all blue in this case and making a fine display against a spectacular sunset. We ate dinner in a Mediterranean restaurant and got to pull our first Christmas crackers. Another revelation: everybody in the UK actually wears his or her gold paper crown. In public.

On Christmas Day, we had our holiday dinner at a restaurant in Drury Lane with what in Yiddish we call the whole mishpocheh: the extended family, consisting, besides us and the kids, of my stepson-in-law’s parents, most of his many brothers with their wives and partners and a child or two, and my stepdaughter’s other parents, ie my husband’s ex and her current hubby. One of the brothers picked us up by car, solving the day’s transportation problem.

The kids had picked another Mediterranean restaurant, this one looking even more like a Turkish bordello with dark red velvet draped everywhere, a lot of glitter, and dim hanging lanterns. Probably because we were in the theater district, we were serenaded by a group of players in Restoration dress, including a King Charles II in full dark curly wig. Everybody got along fine. The only near contretemps was when my husband had to kick me under the table as I apologized to the Brits for current US policy. I hadn’t realized his ex’s hubby was quite so far from us on the political spectrum. It was Christmas, so I was good and changed the subject.

Boxing Day was best of all. I started the day, as I did most mornings there, with a three-mile run in Kensington Gardens while my husband slept in. We had a mid-afternoon reservation for tea at Claridge’s. Research on the Internet had suggested this magnificent old hotel was a better bet than the Ritz, where the teas have become so popular that customers are overcrowded and rushed through. We were treated like royalty at Claridge’s and had a leisurely, sumptuous tea with finger sandwiches, scones, and pastries. My favorite moment was when our server shook his head over my choice of tea on an extensive menu. I was dying to try Silver Needles, a white tea that until recently only the emperor got to drink. The leaves are picked only two days of the year by virgins with golden scissors (my memory may exaggerate, but not by much). “Unfortunately, madam,” he said, “that particular tea goes best with a fine cigar.” I chose another tea.

We then strolled down Regent Street, another fairyland of blue lights, where all the shops were open to bargain-seeking Londoners and those returning their Christmas presents. We went into Hamley’s, a toystore I’d read about in novels, and bought a Paddington Bear. (Well, two, but one was a very small one.) We ended up in Trafalgar Square, where we had tickets for the perfect concert: Boxing Day Baroque at St. Martin’s in the Fields.(Yes, there were taxis: we got back to Bayswater with no difficulty.) The kids still live in Bromley, and if the dollar ever goes up again, I’d be glad to spend another Christmas the exact same way.

The 12 Days of Christmas for Writers

Tired of dropping hints about what you’d like for Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or just “because it’s winter and I’m cute?” Print the following list. Highlight your favorites. Hand it to your significant other, your kids, your mother. And if you have any other suggestions for writer gifts please share them in comments.

Four lucky readers are getting Christmas gifts from Poe's Deadly daughters:
Auntie Knickers
Lucinda
Helen K
Penny T
are the book winners from Wednesday. Please contact Sandra Parshall with your mailing information: sandraparshall@yahoo.com.


(Special thanks to Debby Ridpath Ohi—Inky Girl and Lynn Viehl—Paperback Writer on whose blogs I first saw some of these items mentioned.)

1. Books. Writers like to read as much as we like to write. (Some days we like it more.) You’ll get brownie points if you know what books we’d like to get, but ask and we’ll be happy to give you a list.

2. An Alphasmart Keyboard. They’re tough. They’re portable. They’re lightweight. They run for ages on batteries or one charge.


3. Desktop Whiteboard. This will save your writer lots of paper which will save her lots of money and the planet lots of trees. The whiteboard is fun to play with and your writer can feel virtuous while she’s using it.

4. Magazine Subscription(s). The Writer, Romantic Times Book Review, Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine are just a few the writer in your life might like.

5. Dragon Naturally Speaking. Give your writer a break at the keyboard with this voice recognition software which can be trained to recognize voice and speech patterns.

6. Books on writing. Give some inspiration: Bird by Bird from Anne Lamott, On Writing by Stephen King, How Not to Murder Your Mystery by Chris Roerden, The Artist’s Way from Julia Cameron, Write It Down, Make it Happen by Henriette Anne Klauser.

7. A massage session. Some massage therapists have portable massage chairs or tables and will come to your writer. (Warning, a good massage can be addictive.)

8. Writing tools from Levenger include planners, organizers, pens, briefcases and more. How about a note card bleacher for organizing notes, a Thai book rest, or the Lapalot lap desk for working in bed or just about anywhere else?

9. Cafepress offers a great collection of t-shirts, mugs and other fun items, including Debbie Ridpath Ohi’s Will Write for Chocolate T-shirts and mugs.

10. McPhee's action figures include Poe, Shakespeare and (my favorite) The Crazy Cat Lady—complete with six cats.

11. Chocolate. (Enough said.)

12. Time. Take the kids or the dog for the afternoon and give your writer time to write. Cook dinner, do the laundry, clean the bathroom and give your writer time to write.

Reading and the Holidays

Elizabeth Zelvin

Holiday shopping season is upon us, and not only do books make wonderful presents (to give and to receive), but books also played a part in shaping my perceptions and expectations of the holidays. I suspect that this is true for many people.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the great opening line of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women: “ ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.’” Yes, all the way back in 1870, there was no surer way to disappoint a child than not to provide Christmas presents. Thanks to Alcott’s high moral Transcendentalist principles, what the March girls actually do is quit complaining, decide to put their annual one-dollar spending money into presents for their mother instead of treats for themselves, and end up giving away their festive holiday breakfast to an impoverished immigrant family with too many children. Generations of American girls have internalized the lessons in that story.

I can’t remember the name of the 1950s children’s book in which the family had a tradition of reading Dickens’s A Christmas Carol aloud on Christmas Eve, but the idea of such a tradition has stuck with me all these years. I also remember that the youngest boy was in the choir, and there was great tension about whether he would be able to hit the high note in his solo, “Glory to God in the highest,” presumably from Handel’s Messiah. (He did.) I shouldn’t have been paying attention to Christmas at all as a kid, but my Jewish parents were so afraid we’d feel deprived if we couldn’t participate in the general fuss that we decorated what we facetiously called a “Chanukah bush” and got stockings stuffed with presents on Christmas morning. Today, I’m sure there’s an abundance of books about Jewish families celebrating Chanukah and other holidays, but I don’t remember any back then.

In my ecumenical present-day family, we celebrate both holidays. I must admit that rather than reading aloud, we watch movies made from the great books already mentioned: Alastair Sims as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and the Gillian Armstrong version of Little Women, which my husband and I both like in spite of the the terrible miscasting of Winona Ryder as Jo. I recently learned that an old friend from college and her family read Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales aloud every year. So I know that the tradition of holiday reading does survive.

No gift list in our family is complete unless it includes at least one book. Bookstore gift certificates are also a guaranteed successful present, but I, for one, am not happy unless there’s at least one fat hardcover by a favorite mystery author that I wouldn’t have bought for myself under the tree, so I can curl up on the couch with it at some time during the long, lazy day. Books are the present of choice for my stepdaughter and her husband, who live in London, because we can order just what they want from their amazon.co.uk wish lists and have them shipped free. Talk about books I’d never order for myself! And one of the great shopping pleasures these days is buying books for my granddaughters. In the 21st century, there are children’s books about everything. On my last visit the almost-two-year-old had me read her one entitled It’s Potty Time, with separate illustrated editions for boys and girls, and it’s only one of dozens on the subject.

What books are on your holiday gift list? What books, if any, shaped your image of how holidays should be?

Holidays . . . How do you relax after the tree goes up?

By Lonnie Cruse

The holidays have finally officially arrived at our house . . . well, after much hemming and hawing by yours truly. Drag out the household decorations/don't drag out the household decorations? Put up the tree/don't put up the tree? Have the party/don't have the party?

Why all the hem and haw? Our tree from the last several years was huge (over seven foot) and it rotated--don't ask me how. (Yes, I bought the rotating tree stand, but no I don't understand how it worked.) To add to the problem, some of the pre-lit (pre-installed?) lights died and had to be replaced, plus last year the tree got caught in the curtains by the window as it rotated and several ornaments went flying, breaking one of my faves, sigh. Okay, I realize that was probably too much information. But if you are thinking about buying a rotating tree, think again.

Anyhow, a friend has been after me to host my annual ladies' luncheon/ornament swap. The luncheon is usually potluck, usually fairly fattening, and usually relaxed and fun. The ornament swap usually dissolves into a cat fight over who gets to go home with the best ornament, and I usually lose. But my momma didn't raise any dummies, so if I don't get the ornament I want, I find out who brought it and where they got it, and off I go on an ornament hunt. Where was I? Decorating for Christmas.

So, up goes the tree, but what to put on it, given that I've been collecting ornaments for forty-five years or so? Ornaments made by my kids, made by me, given to me, and whatever I could manage to hang onto at the annual ornament swap. No way this new tree would hold all of them without toppling over. No way I could go through all of them and weed some out. Time for plan B. Meaning use ONLY the vintage glass ornament balls I've collected the last few years along with the new bubble lights hubby got me last year.

I have some of the "vintage" bubble lights, by the way, but anything that old would be risky to plug in. And I'm particularly aware of the danger of lighted Christmas decorations this year, as is everyone in or near Paducah, KY, thanks to a three story tall, lighted Christmas tree that set the local Michael's craft store on fire. Thankfully no one was hurt but the store is still in pretty bad shape. And I'm still in mourning until they reopen. Sniff.

With the tree decorated, sans the rotating stand, out came my collection of snowmen to decorate the house, but I did scale back in that area by leaving most of my Santas in storage. Maybe they'll get their chance next year?

Anyhow, the Christmas sugar cookies have been purchased (I gave up baking and icing hundreds of them at a whack when the last bird flew out of my nest) my cinnamon coffee is snuggled in the cabinet ready for use, and I have two new Christmas themed books to read. Not to mention watching my favorite Christmas movies. All of this frivolity after I visit the chiropractor, of course.

So, once the tree is up, the other decos are out, the storage boxes are once again hidden away, the coffee is hot and the cookies are on a plate, the muscle relaxer is near at hand, what is your favorite way to recover from all the reaching, lifting, shopping, wrapping, baking? Read a good book? Listen to Christmas music? Favorite Christmas movie? More Christmas shopping trip? Praying for snow? All of the above?

It's that time of year???

By Lonnie Cruse


The Holiday Season. Shopping. Parties. Family and Friends. Cookies. Fudge. Decorating. Fighting the Cold Weather. Fighting the Cold in Your Nose. Fighting the Crowds. Wrapping. Baking. Cooking. EATING.

Writing? When??? Tough time of year for writers. If you are writing a manuscript, when do you find time? How do you find the concentration? How can you write the tough, gritty scenes, the tear-jerking scenes, when all around you are celebrating and enjoying the season?

Or you've written a manuscript but you can't submit it anywhere now because most agents, editors, or publishers take December off to, um, enjoy the season. How do you handle that? Even the printers take time off, so getting books for your events in December can be tricky. And even though books are a popular gift, sales do tend to drop off around now. Sigh.

What if, like me, you have a book coming out this month? How do you promote it, write another, and do all the seasonal stuff? It isn't easy. And it's not a lot of fun.

To date, I've written not a word since, uh, well, I can't remember when. Not a syllable on the next book. I'm soooo far behind, I'm ahead. Well, I did get a manuscript critiqued, polished, and ready for submission early next year (eeeek, can next year really be less than 30 days away???) But I'm not writing. Or promoting my series in print. I'm promoting the daylights out of my new book that came out this week, Fifty-Seven Heaven. Crossing my fingers and praying that it sells well. But I'm not writing. Well, not on paper.

So what's my point. I have one around here somewhere. Let me look . . . oh, there it is.

The holiday season is tough on writers. Did I mention that already? Tough to focus. Tough to hang in there. But we do hang in there, and eventually we focus again. And we write again. I said I wasn't writing, not on paper. But I'm writing in my head. Laying the story out. So when I'm done overdosing on peanut butter fudge and sugar cookies, I can come out of my stupor and write the story. I've already hit one snag in my head, trying to figure out how I can have my amateur sleuth call the cops without having her meet with the law enforcement character from my other series (both are set in the same town.) I know some authors have their characters from separate series meet to solve crimes together. Mine refuse to work together. Puts them in a snit if I even contemplate it. So I'm working that out. Meanwhile, I think I'll have another chocolate covered pretzel and think some more.

Anyone else having this problem? If so, how are you handling it? Sugar overloaded minds want to know.