How I learned about Christmas

I grew up in a Jewish section of Brooklyn. Christmas was not a holiday celebrated by my Jewish family, though we were quite secular. My early images of Christmas came from television and things people wrote. In Mr. Kent's seventh grade English class at Cunningham Junior High School in Brooklyn, Marnie Mahoney wrote an essay about what her family did on the holiday. So unusual was its content that she was asked to read it to our class. It was very detailed, and my early knowledge of Christmas customs was based on her composition.

Marnie and I were good friends, but we have not seen each other for upward of forty years. Some months ago, she googled my name, wrote a brief email, and we had a brief exchange. I thought of her when I was stuffing stockings, and I wrote saying I remember her essay. As a professor of law, Marnie does more technical writing these days and does not remember the essay.

Turns out that Marnie and her husband have a house in Asheville, North Carolina, an hour's drive from here. So when the kids go home this holiday, we're getting together.