White Christmas, Part II

Christmas in our family is very tradition-oriented. Each year we arrive, and sample the vegetable platter, while the main food is arranged on the kitchen table. Each household has been bringing its respective dish for over 30 years: Grandma Lou brings macaroni salad; Auntie Darlene, Chinese chicken salad from Rascal's; my mom, strawberry Jell-O ® with walnuts, bananas, and real strawberries. There are also homemade pickles, shrimp cocktail, rice, ham, turkey, potato salad, and casseroles, among other dishes. Yes, familiarity, stability, and eating: that is what Christmas represents to my family.

Enter Jennifer. Jennifer is not a relative by blood: she married into our family. Jennifer is white. Now there are plenty of non-Japanese members on both sides of my family: Hispanics, Chinese, Caucasians, maybe even a distant Jew or two. But Jennifer's racial difference augments the myriad other ways that she is foreign.

As it happens, E!'s "50 Fashion Do's and Don'ts" provided background noise at a Christmas Eve party I had attended the previous day, and Jennifer seemed eager to catapult herself into iconoclastic fame by violating every one of the "Don'ts" I had overheard during moments of conversational inattention. A "holiday" sweater tucked into her pants (the waist of which was pulled up to her armpits), a Santa hat. Sigh. "See the good in everyone," I meditated to myself.

Then it was time to eat. Every year the line forms around the table as people circle clockwise to pick up their food and then sit themselves in the living and dining rooms. I think it's good that we move clockwise for several reasons: it is Christmas tradition; everyone is accustomed to the practice so it avoids confusion; the clockwise direction is metaphoric. As we circumnavigate the table, our bodies move in a circle to represent an unbroken familial chain; a circle is continuous, and, like our Christmas gatherings, unchanging. The clockwise direction also symbolizes our harmonious movement with time: although the sacraments are the same every year, we recognize that with each Christmas, another year has passed.

Enter Jennifer. "Let's go around the other way this year. It's more efficient," she demands. Subsequently, she and the eldest of her brood sweep counterclockwise (counter-culturally , counter-intuitively, counter-decorously) around the food. Woe betide the upstart woman who would try to overturn over three decades of Japanese-American holiday ceremony for a nominal gain in efficiency! Honestly, as if in all those years our family hadn't perfected the art of the Christmas buffet...

Imagine, dear reader, the sheer chaos created by such an undertaking. People are confused, the line backs up, and poor Uncle Hodge (who just recently recovered from a stroke, and is moving around the table with the aid of a walker) is nearly toppled over in the ensuing calamity. From the back of the line, I hear disgruntled mumbling: "What's the hold up?" and "We're hungry." Whatever minimal gain which might have been rendered from this debacle is clearly outweighed by the befuddlement and near injury it caused.

In spite of this fiasco, the rest of the day turned out relatively well. Christmas gifts were distributed; all the member of my generation pick up the gifts from under the tree, decorated by handmade ornaments, and deliver them to people of my parents' and grandmother's generations.

Then came the annual game. Auntie Miye usually takes charge, and plans something each Christmas. One year it was Scattergories®; sometimes we just share what we've done since the last time we were together. This year she passed out a list of nine or ten questions, and then picked a few that she thought would be most interesting to answer. "If you could be any animal, what would it be and why?", "What would you do if you won the lottery?", and "If you could be any famous person or historical figure, who would you be?" were the winners. We went around the room (clockwise, naturally), allowing each person a chance to answer.

"I have heard the most deplorable conditions described by my high school students," I began in response to the second inquiry. "Their campuses are filthy, teachers are indifferent to students, school violence is prevalent, textbooks are hopelessly out of date... if I should win the lottery, I would open a charter school or two in neighborhoods in need of decent education." A round of affirming smiles and agreeing nods commend my altruism and insight.

Enter Jennifer's voice (from the kitchen): "I would do the same thing!" And for a moment, I have cause to like Jennifer. "Maybe I should have given her the benefit of the doubt," I muse. "A fellow teacher who really cares about her--" but before I can finish my reassessment, she continues her thought:

"I would do the same thing. I'm always saying that I'd like to open a charter school. That way I'd have my own classroom, and I wouldn't have to take my things down off the walls at the end of every year."

Sigh. Maybe it was just too naive to expect compassion from a woman who almost felled 85-year-old Uncle Hodge.

I was a little unsettled when I didn't see the chocolate mini-cupcakes (with mini chocolate chips inside, bespangled with red and green frosting in the shape of mistletoe and berries) on the dessert trays, but I found them later in large tin trays. Half the reason for coming was those chocolate mini-cupcakes. You may laugh or frown at that comment, but I only get the chocolate mini-cupcakes once a year, and I suspect they're laced with opiates. You just crave them for days once they're gone.

Lunch consumed, gifts distributed and opened, dessert finished, we gather up our belongings (both those we came with, and those newly aquired) and go.

Exit Jennifer.