A Very Kefi Christmas

"It is a miracle if you can find true friends, and it is a miracle if you have enough food to eat, and it is a miracle if you get to spend your days and evenings doing whatever it is you like to do, and the holiday season—like all the other seasons—is a good time not only to tell stories of miracles, but to think about the miracles in your own life, and to be grateful for them." —Lemony Snicket








There are many things that have afforded me great success in this world-- I'm a white person from the US who went to college and is employed.  To 99.99% of the rest of the world, I wasn't just born on third--I came onto Earth an inch from home plate.

Few things have made me feel as privileged as this past weekend, when my family got together to celebrate a pre-Christmas Extravaganza with me before I headed back to DC to work both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  It was an amazing 36-hour love fest that featured all of the people I hold dearest, from the family with which I was born to the mish-mash of folks I have chosen over the years to count among my people.  

The Kefis have always believed in a big, fat, decorative Christmas, but our winter holidays have not always been as movie-esque as this one was-- those years that began when the oldest of my siblings became a teenager and ended when the youngest of us left adolescence behind brought as much angst and posturing around the holidays for us as they did any other family.  We worked hard for our practically-perfect pre-Christmas, and it made me think about how wonderfully lucky we are if, as adults, we can move past the family squabbles about presents and table turf that our complicated world increasingly encourages, and remember how truly magic Christmas can be, if only we bring to the table with us best wishes for each other and a healthy sense of humor about ourselves (making Christmas a champagne-only event doesn't hurt, either).

It is, of course, more than happy circumstance that my family gets to enjoy holidays like these at a time when so many families are splintered by the demands of our world.  In some other post at some other time, I will wax and wane on how closely linked happiness is to privilege.  But, for now, let me say without hope or agenda--just because it's Christmas, and at Christmas you tell the truth--to me, we are perfect.