The Holidays: An Ideal Season For Self-Loathing

What's wrong with you? Probably everything. Ahhh the holidays.

Eat a lot of sugar, wear something sparkly that itches, and stand around thinking about all the shiz that's not right in your life. THEN WELCOME A NEW YEAR OF ALL OF THAT GLORY.

Bullshit. That's a silly trap. You want to be miserable, I'm not going to judge or stand in your way, but don't worry about that holiday hoopla you feel excluded from because it's all fake, anyway.

Adult expectations for wondrous December events are slightly misplaced. That's a kid thing. It's the end of the year and we have a lot to look forward to: MLK Day, tax returns and shoveling snow. Feel better, you're loved, grumpypants. Speaking of Christmas, I happened to be hanging out at a Christmas Fair buying raffle tickets to win scratch offs and bicycles and scored an assignment as a middle school sub.

Today I filled in for a teacher at a parochial school and had to muscle my way through her normal academic classes (which were fine), but then also cover her religious instruction classes and take the kids to mass. Towards the end of the day, upon much 8th grade student prompting, I admitted to being Jewish and a shocked hush came over the room. I heard a variety of responses:

"I heard Jewish people are really mean, but you are the nicest sub!" Where did that stereotype come from? That's a new one. Landlords? Joan Rivers? Can't be sure, but I'll ask THE JEWS at our next meeting.

"Are you even allowed in the church? Did they let you in? How did you get into mass?" I admit that I did feel a bit itchy, but ultimately did not burst into flames. Maybe their detector is broken?

How did tweens come up with those impressions, is probably the scary part.

More fun was actually getting through their religious textbooks without inserting anything new, as tempting as that was. When a student asked me if animals have souls, I suggested a conversation with the parish priest because everyone tended to have different opinions on that matter. Her theory was that animals weren't implicated in original sin and therefore automatically went to Heaven. Is original sin boning? I don't really even know. Animals totally bone, but I didn't tell her that. When they asked me if Jesus was real, I suggested a conversation with the parish priest. When they asked me if I'd seen Jesus, another student interrupted and insisted that Jesus was in the room with me, to my right and to my left and I briefly wondered if this was what Edward Snowden was talking about.

Explaining to 6th graders why Jesus was so important in the transformation of Passover was tough without Christian Bale (side note: Jesus has nothing to do with the real Passover), but at least I'm dispelling some myths about Jews not being nice or allowed in churches one tiny young mind at a time. Sometimes it's just so surprising the things people let me do just for showing up.