Happy Holidays!

We are a multi-cultural family and so the holiday tree signifies a number of things for us. My husband is of Russian/Jewish heritage. In his former home country, they celebrate the New Year much like the Christian American Christmas, with a tree and gift-giving. My heritage is extremely diverse, but I grew up in Central Pennsylvania, an area heavily influenced by the German/Dutch culture and a large part of my ancestry stems from those people.

We are not religious (that does not mean we are atheist either) so I suppose our holiday celebrations are somewhat secular, but it's what we do. We celebrate Christmas (I know, how dare we partake in a celebration that we are not religiously involved in! *cough* Saturnalia *cough*) and we celebrate the New Year and we celebrate the Jewish festival of lights, Hanukkah. We leave our tree up until January 13th. It's usually falling apart by then, but we keep him, in honor of the old Russian New Year. Hanukkah starts at sundown on the 11th this year so I'll be sure to post Menorah pictures, but until then, this is our tree!

As a child, my sister, my mother and I would ride horseback out to the family Christmas tree field, and pick and cut our own tree and drag it back behind the horses. Living in NYC makes it a bit difficult to continue that tradition, so instead I take my kids down to the parking lot by the mall each year and we pick out and buy a tree there.

It's much more beautiful in person, of course, but we don't go all out with tinsel and ribbons and bows. I prefer it's more simple beauty :)