Are You Christmas or Are You Hanukkah?

That's the question a friend of ours used to ask the other kids at school when she was a kid. She would then proudly say, “I’m both!” Well, we’re both in this house and I am starting to think it is a pain the ass. I used to think it was very convenient that we didn’t have to negotiate where to spend the holidays like some other friends(more true when we lived in the same area as our families). Christmas and Easter with my family. Hanukkah and Passover with the husband’s. Easy peasy.

This year we are staying here and our families are coming to us. First of all, you might wonder why the husband’s family needs to visit when we spent Thanksgiving at their house. You weren’t wondering that? Oh.I was. Well, since you may have been wondering, they say they HAD to come for a friend’s 60th birthday. I know that Hanukkah would not usually merit a plane trip. I KNOW it. Passover is a much bigger deal to them. Christmas is my Passover. Hanukkah is their Easter. Get it? If you don’t, I can’t explain.

Last night we had a huge Hanukkah celebration--lit candles, said a prayer, the whole bit. On Christmas Eve, we are having the whole world to our house, my mom, my brother and the in-laws, plus some friends, their parents, etc.

Before (like in my twenties) double the holidays meant extra parties. But now that I am a full-fledged grown up with an actual child to prove it, I realize that I am in charge of parties and double the holidays just means double the work. Bah Humbug.

Did I mention I have a cold? I have a cold. I'm also a very bad patient.

Death Cab

Recently, the husband and I went out with our non-parent friends to see a rock show! I am actually going to start this post with a long “I used to be cool” sentiment. I was cool (actually, I was always a dork who was sometimes mistaken for cool). My coolness manifested itself through my superior music taste and when I lived in Seattle in the 90’s (Grunge? Perhaps you’ve heard of it??) my favorite cool girl activity was going to rock shows. And I did. A lot. Maybe “rock show” is an overstatement since my musical taste lies squarely in the wussy rock category (i.e. Bell & Sabastian, Elliot Smith, The Shins, Wilco, Magnetic Fields etc.) In the last few years (truthfully, my penchant for going to shows waned long before parenthood. Once I entered my thirties, arriving for a midnight show appealed less and less) when I went to a show, I felt familiar pull of nostalgia and enjoyment. I often turned to the husband or the friends to declare how I love going to shows and why don’t we go hear music more often?

So when a friend told me recently that she had tickets to one of my favorite bands, Death Cab for Cutie, I jumped. Death Cab has enjoyed quite a bit of commercial success of late, so having tickets to a sold out show seemed exciting. We dropped off Quinn with other friends…you know, the kind who also has a baby and don’t mind hanging out with our baby. We skipped dinner with the group in order to put Quinn to sleep and then arrived for the 9pm start of the band. While I could write one of the annoying “I knew them when they were unknown” posts, which would include information about small rock clubs and loose uneven performances, I won’t. Because the 33 year old me was quite happy that their popularity meant comfortable assigned seats and a start time guranteed to start on-time at 9 instead of “around” 11 or 12. So…was it a rock show when that’s how we saw it? Also,and this is neither here nor there, it was quite disturbing to see how perfectly we fall into a certain wanna-be-hipster-but–we–are-really-yuppies-in-chunky-glasses-in-their-30's demographic. Said demographic can also be found at Belle&Sabastian, Wilco, Magnetic Fields etc…performances.

When the show ended at 10:30, and I RAN (in my Chuck Taylors and designer jeans and also completely sober) to the car to get home to the baby. Death Cab was incredible, but polished. And I was too far away to see it well. We hardly saw our friends since we arrived for the band and left as soon as it was over. But we were out! And it does count as a show because even the band, gazing at the crowd, encouraged us stand and dance even noting as if they weren't sure, “after all. It is a rock show.” If Death Cab says so than it was.