Mixed-up holidays

“Mom, can I stay home from school on Christmas Day?” my preteen son asked, poking his head around the corner into the kitchen, where I was busy preparing dinner.

“No,” I replied while continuing my preparations, “You have a math exam on Wednesday.”

“But, they will let me make it up if I miss it,” he replied. With a completely straight face, he added for good measure, “It is what Jesus would want.”

I stopped dicing vegetables for our stir-fry, turned and looked at him, asking, “Do you have some sort of direct line to saints and prophets that I don't know about? Do you seriously want me to believe that this is what Jesus would want you to do?”

Looking a bit like a cat caught with a canary hanging out of its mouth, he nodded earnestly and reiterated, “Really, Mom, it is what Jesus would want.”

Trying to stifle my laughter, I looked at him and said: “Let me get this straight. You want me to believe that Jesus, a Jewish man whose teachings are followed by Christians, wants some little Muslim boy to skip a math test and stay at home on Christmas Day?”

“It was worth a try,” he said, shrugging, and walked back into the living room to continue his math homework.

To his credit, this was one of his more inspired attempts to grasp the coveted mental health day. However, it did make me think about how my son and I combine traditions from our shared Muslim background as well as my family's Christian heritage. Raised a Muslim since birth, my son knows about other religions from discussions we have at home and his interactions with friends and family. My side of his family observes Christmas, and every year they send small gifts for him to celebrate this holiday that is important to them. When my son was younger, before he started school, we spent several months of each year in the US visiting my family. We tried to be with my mother for Thanksgiving and Christmas when possible, because both are significant holidays for her. As a result, he grew up knowing about both Muslim and Christian beliefs, rituals and holidays. From his Jewish friends in Turkey, he has learned about their own traditions and holidays.

Although we are Muslim and he has been raised in our faith, I feel it is important for him to know people of other religions and understand the similarities between different beliefs. On special occasions, he has attended religious celebrations of other faiths as an observer so that he can experience first-hand how others worship. To have a balanced view of the world, it is important to learn and observe for oneself and not rely on what someone else may say. I want him to learn to question, think and analyze for himself instead of blindly accepting what another person may say about a religious, cultural or ethnic group.

Like most other expat parents, I struggle to find a balance in teaching my child to have respect for others and see the person for who they really are instead of judging any particular person based on their religion, ethnic background, socio-economic status or any other criteria that does not reflect the individual. The result is that we sometimes have mixed traditions in our home -- some Turkish, some American, some Muslim and even a handful of Christian traditions. The Christmas decorations that I put up in our home do not have religious significance for me, but instead, serve to make me feel closer to my family. They also remind my son of the other side of his family, the one that he rarely sees because we are so far away and our holiday schedules are different. To me, it is comforting when living so far away from my family to have a few items in our home that take me back to my own childhood and the traditions that played an important role in my life when I was growing up. These material things cause me to pause and reflect on what I want my son to remember from his childhood when he is grown and has children of his own. A warm, loving family, traditions that are passed down, and rituals that are observed together.

While my son's argument for taking a day off school failed in the long run, I have to give him credit for trying. From past experience, he knows that before he sits down for breakfast, he will get to open gifts sent by my family. But as soon as breakfast is over, he has to get dressed and go to school. As much as he may try to con his way out of a school day, the reality for him is that Christmas Day is just another school and work day here in Turkey. Regardless of what my son proclaims Hazreti İsa would want him to do to mark his birthday celebration, my son will be at school, taking the dreaded math test. To his disappointment, I do not foresee any mental health days in the near future.

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