Endings and beginnings are inevitably a time for reflection and contemplation. I will not bore you will the endless loops of musings and fancies my mind often becomes lost in, instead I will try to focus on one thought.
What seems universal is not.
Bear with me here.
The thing is, the end of one year and the beginning of the next is also a time to review the old planner and prepare the new one. That process is a story of its own, maybe for another day — because I do it by hand. However, setting up the new year’s planner means looking up and writing down all the significant holidays and celebrations. And when your family is multicultural by nature, by academic curiosity, and by the whims of history, every single holiday becomes the subject of analysis and criticism.
The main question is always — does this specific date for this specific holiday belong in my calendar?
The answer is, more often than not, “yes”, and I find my months marked with many bright highlights.
Once upon a time when I was a child, everything that was not our Russian émigré/refugee holiday was a civilian “day off” when things were closed and roads were clogged and there was no school. And our holidays were an opportunity to not attend school and do something different.
So my childhood was a story of “the universal concept of <name the holiday> is theirs, not ours.”
It wasn’t such a difficult concept to convey, growing up in France. After all, I went to school with children of Algerian and Moroccan parents, a few Vietnamese friends and traditional Jews, and all of us would take days off for our respective and specific grand holidays.
Still, it was sometimes easier for my not-so-European-looking classmates to convey the non-universality of basic holidays than it was for me.
Why?
Because I looked and sounded like any French kid. Same skin color, no accent, no distinctive features.
And yet… I am Slavic, not Latin or Anglo-Saxon or Germanic. And what’s more I was born in France. Of political refugees without a French passport, which meant I wasn’t automatically a French citizen, but THAT was a concept not always understood.
So when my holidays did not fall into step with their holidays (after all, I did say we celebrated Christmas, right? BUT NOT ON DECEMBER 25th??? what was with that???), or when I explained about foods or traditions they knew nothing about, there was a lot of not-always-welcome curiosity. Sometimes it was as if they were looking at a new and enticing dessert. Sometimes, as if they were lifting the lid of the garbage can. Kids are blunt, and not always nice.
In this, do not be like children. Or rather, be like little children, not like teens. Marvel at everything, and never assume that your reality and your order is universal. Yes, the clear sky is blue everywhere in the world, and the sun is warm, the grass is green and cats are supercilious.
But if “blue” is universal, shades of blue are infinite, or else we wouldn’t have art.
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