My family traces its lineage to the British Isles, Germany and Scandinavia, but to this very day I’m unclear as to whether the post-pagan Christian preferences of my ancestors ran toward Catholic or Protestant churches.
Given that my grandmother’s maiden name was Marx, there may have been a few Jewish branches on the family tree, too, and even if gentile, these might explain my political orientation as a European-style social democrat marooned in America, where you can indulge in any flavor of politics you like so long as it slots into one of two major parties.
I’d like to think a few non-believers just like me slipped their iconoclastic genes into the family mix. If so, they probably remained sensibly quiet about it, thus surviving to tell the tale.
It is possible that some of my ancestors may have been among the German Catholic immigrants to America who formerly celebrated December 6, St. Nicholas Day, as the day for giving gifts.
Without a religious upbringing to speak of (neither parent regarded the topic as relevant, for which I’m eternally thankful), St. Nicholas Day made no impression on me whatever until December 6, 1991.
At this time I was posing as a teacher of conversational English at the university hospital in Košice, Slovakia, which comprised the eastern half of Czechoslovakia (since 1993, Slovakia has been an independent nation). It was my first holiday season spent abroad, and a compelling experience in spite of my non-religious comportment.
Here’s something I wrote at the time, lightly edited but otherwise unchanged.
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A Christmas Dispatch from Slovakia ‑ December, 1991.
There’s a good chance of a “White Christmas” in Slovakia.
The winter’s first snow has come and gone, and although we didn’t get very much, it was enough to add a cheerful hazard for pedestrians in the forms of sleds, multitudes of them, some of old‑fashioned wood construction, others of molded plastic.
More sleds than I’ve ever seen have appeared as if by magic from closets and storage rooms, to be pulled by their brightly outfitted young owners and steered at breakneck speed down any and all available slopes, inhabited or otherwise.
They had been charging down the wide sidewalk that leads from Festival Square and ascends the low ridge to the hospital complex where I teach, and the snow on the walkway had been firmly packed into an icy surface that defied sure footing, and the reason I know all this is...Read more
