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Health & Fitness

Gift

               As the holidays marched in this year with their usual bravado, donned in ribbons and garlands and boughs of emerald holly, I felt swept somehow into something foreign. I peered at my relatives laughing over the menorah, watched my parents and brothers wind with vigor through the saturated sidewalks of Michigan Avenue, and wondered why tradition itself seemed so new.

                My family is fortunate enough to celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah, so when I was younger The Holidays were something of an enormous, kid-friendly thrill ride. I bided my time from January to November, dutifully pulling on swimsuits or nibbling on cherry popsicles, all the while dreaming of the mystical sleigh ride brimming with presents that would bear me through falling tinsel snow.

                The ride began Thanksgiving Day. On Black Friday, I began my Wish List. It was a solemn procedure, and required weeks of research and my very neatest penmanship, but I took pleasure in knowing that it could be exchanged for what I wanted most. Though I was unconscious of the fact, my holiday spirit and the holiday spirit of most kids revolved around an axle of presents: planning, hoping for, and receiving the things that called to us from bright boxes on toy store shelves. My wish list was in progress from the lighting of our Christmas tree to lighting the menorah. Even the bustle and show of the holidays seemed, and I took them as, a gift for me.

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                I came to that time years ago now when the curtains were drawn back and the stage hands revealed in mid-rehearsal, and the holiday season lost a considerable portion of its magic. Presents, however, although I feel silly admitting it, still held the same excitement as they had when I asked for dolls’ dresses rather than a dress for myself; they were tangible and still held the mysticism of wishes coming true.

                For the past few years, however, and more distinctly this year, I have felt this change. As I received my Hanukkah presents this year, which were exactly what I had asked for and would have caused much excitement on Hanukkahs past, I found myself not examining what I had received, but glancing over to my brothers across the room to see them smile as they opened their own gifts.

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                Yesterday my brother came into the dining room, where I was eating breakfast, sighing like a freight train. Our family brought home a Christmas tree last weekend, and I glanced up at it and suggested that he play some Christmas music. As the music began playing (our Christmas music is more of the Rock-and-Roll variety) he began to bob his head, and, as I had hoped, to smile and dance. Of course I got up to accompany him.

              So we don’t lose the holiday spirit as the years pass; “Gift” simply takes on a new meaning.

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