Celebrating holidays with kids

Yesterday I was reading Nilsa's post about her Passover and Easter celebrations, and I wrote a comment about this, and then I realized I wanted to talk about it more in depth, so now I'm going to turn it into a post.

Growing up with a Jewish mother and an Anglican father, both of whom were decidedly non-religious, the religious holidays we celebrated were Easter, Christmas, and Chanukah. All three were very non-religious. Easter was pretty much just about the candy--I don't remember fancy family dinners or anything, just the bunny and the egg hunt in the morning. Chanukah involved gifts, but the part that really stood out for me was the lighting of the menorah and the singing of the blessings. And the focus of Christmas was pretty evenly divided between gifts and a big family dinner.

Torsten grew up with Christian parents, one Catholic and one Protestant, but neither devout. They celebrated Christmas and Easter. No Jewish holidays, obviously.

We will definitely celebrate Christmas with our own kids, and Easter too, at least when they're little--though I'd like to involve a big family dinner and not just an egg hunt. I also want to celebrate Chanukah but I don't know the blessings and am a terrible singer, so I think I will leave it to my mother to teach the blessing to our kids.

But then there are other Jewish holidays and traditions that we'd like to incorporate into our kids' lives, even though neither of us is religious at all. I always felt a little awkward about only celebrating Chanukah, which is actually a minor Jewish holiday and really has only gained prominence because of its proximity to Christmas, as far as I can tell. Yom Kippur is the most important of the Jewish holidays, but it's a somber holiday requiring repenting and, traditionally, fasting, and I have to say that I'm not really interested in celebrating that with my kids.

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, which is nice, but as far as I can tell it just involves a day of rest, which is not the kind of thing that your kids will really remember fondly, you know? And there aren't many other Jewish holidays that I even know about.

So, that leaves Passover. I've participated in seders before, and I think they're really fun and memorable and exactly the kind of tradition I'd like to build with my own kids. Not so much the religious aspects, namely the studying of the Haggadah, but the big, long meal with friends and family and very specific food and drink associated with it. Basically, like special Jewish Thanksgiving. I like that. And I think we'll try to do that when we have kids.

But the other thing that Torsten brought up, that I thought was really lovely, was the idea of the Sabbath dinner every Friday night. He has a close Jewish friend with whom he lived for a few months, and they always had Sabbath dinner on Friday nights, and it's something that he remembers very fondly. It was a time for people to put the stress in their lives aside and just sit down and have a relaxed, peaceful dinner. It was a time to eat good food, forget about the work week, and catch up with people that you might not get to see as much as you like. I am definitely on board with that.

But what I'm wondering is, who will we have Sabbath dinner with? Maybe we'll make friends with our neighbors, or maybe meet some parents when we have kids of our own? Because right now we really don't know many people in Denver, and while so far that hasn't bothered me, it does make me a little sad to think that I would hardly know who to invite if we were to host a Sabbath dinner. And they don't necessarily have to be Jewish, either.

But I suppose that will come with time. And in the meantime, I can teach myself to make matzoh balls, or something. Or focus on saving enough money to buy a dining room table up to the task of holding Sabbath dinner to begin with.

What about you? What holidays did you celebrate growing up? And which do/will you celebrate with your own kids?