How do you handle the Holidays

Sorry, I know I’ve been away for a while. Life just gets in the way sometimes.

Well, the topic that always seems to come up around this time of year; came up again last week. The topic of “Just how do you handle the holidays?”. It’s probably the second or third most popular question I get.

Why, do people ask you that, you might be asking yourself?

Actually, the answer is very understandable. Not only are we an unusually large family but we are a multicultural, multi-religion family. So, it is a question I tend to expect once people get to know me and know that I’m not offended by such questions.

Just to bring everyone up to speed, I am a typical mid-westerner with blond hair (thanks to my stylist) and green eyes who is from a small town in Ohio. I am often told I’m not what people expect if they have seen my name before meeting me. The reason for that would be my last name. To help build a good relationship with my husband’s family I took his last name when we got married. I didn’t legally change it for many years and four children later, but that’s actually a whole separate story that I’ll tell another time. However, it is a name I’ve grown into and have come to have fun with. Not to give away to much personal information on the internet, my last name is not only an obviously Middle Eastern last name but it’s obviously Muslim. So, when blond hair, green eyed, very pale me walks in the room people are a little confused. I’ve actually had a mechanic at the body shop look at everyone in the room but me calling my name. I later realized that he had walked right past me and looked outside first for some who looked more like he expected. It’s kind of humorous. Preconceived notions always make me laugh.

For many years I had a lot of fun confusing people with my name. My first job out of college I was Technical support representative for a software development tool. There would be time while we were waiting for the tool to finish its task that we’d make small talk with the customers. You know, “What’s the weather like there? Where are you from? etc.” The “where are you from question” came up most often with the foreign engineers and they just made it too easy to have fun at their expense. This is how the conversation would go:

Engineer: “So, where are you from?”
Me: “Ohio”
Engineer: “Where are your parents from?” Smugly, thinking he’s figured it out.
Me: “Ohio”
Engineer: Now a bit confused sounding: “Where did your parents grow up?”
Me: “Ohio”
Engineer: Now really perplexed: “Where did their parents grow up?”
Me: Trying not to laugh “Ohio”
Engineer: Always being polite “Not to be too personal, but aren’t you Muslim?”
Me: “Not a problem; no, actually I’m not.”

This is generally where I’d let them off the hook because they are so thoroughly confused and explain that my husband is from Iran. In 5 years of working phone support only one person ever actually figured it out on their own. That person was another American woman who was also married to an Iranian. They lived in Chicago. Maybe it’s something about women from the mid-west.

Well, not only is Hubby from Iran but he is a Shi’a Muslim. Now here’s where I start blowing the stereotypes out of the water.

1. Hubby is obviously very open minded (he married me didn’t he? See my religious beliefs above and read any of my other posts).
2. He’s also extremely supportive of my career. He knew I was not the Susie homemaker type when he met me and he's okay with that. When we met I actually used to refer to marriage as the "M" word and actually never planned to marry or have children kind of ironic, huh?
3. He cooks and does laundry (again see some of my other posts).
4. He also cleans and changes diapers.

We approach our marriage as a team. What one of us can’t get to the other will. We also play to each other strengths – He’s a better cook than me, so he does most of the cooking (I get to make breakfast on the weekends). I love to shop and actually enjoy running errands, so I most of the grocery shopping and the running around that needs done (with and without a child or two in tow).

I digress, as usual, so, how we handle the holidays is to celebrate both the Christian and Muslim holidays. We approach the time more as a time for family than a time for religion but have taught the children the stories of both Jesus and Mohammed. We will leave it up to kids to choose which religion they follow when they get older. We do stress our morals and acceptable behavior to them but that’s about as far as it goes for now.

We’re in luck, since we live in a very diverse neighborhood, it all works. This is how our street looks. Next door is a family from India who is Hindu, across the street is a Mormon family and another Muslim family lives next to them, who are interestingly enough from Chicago. The Mom from that family is fairly religious (but not pushy) and wears a Hijab (which is the scarf to cover her hair and she’s always in long sleeves and long skirts or loose fitting pants). She and I always have a good laugh when people compliment her English. She’s American born and raised. Those darn preconceived notions again.