Bringing back the magic

I used to hate the holidays.

OK, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. Still, for years I just couldn't get into the holiday spirit like everyone else this time of year, because December just wasn't kind to me.

It started in kindergarten, when my dad was murdered in a terrorist bombing of an airplane four days before Christmas. I tell people my family was lucky, because we're Jewish and we'd already celebrated Hanukah that year, but it still cast a pall over the holiday season for years to come.

In elementary school, I always felt excluded from the "holiday" party, with its color scheme of reds and greens and soundtrack of Christmas carols. I felt even more excluded when school resumed a few weeks later and people were talking about their great new Nintendo games and I got to talk about my lame new board games.

It especially didn't help when my babysitter told me about "Hanukah Harry" one year, a bastardized version of Santa Claus that I saw right through and only made me feel more excluded.

I started getting better presents in middle school for various reasons, but the meaning was still being sucked out of the holidays. After years of religious school, I had heard the story of Hanukah enough times to know it was completely unbelievable, and the eagerness I once had for lighting the menorah had begun to fade.

By high school, I'd completely given up on religion. Lighting the menorah was merely a formality, a ceremonial tradition that stood between me and my present for the night. It got to the point where my sister and I started looking up the sunset time on the Internet so we could get our presents as soon as possible.

High school was also when I started going to the movies every year on Christmas, a holiday my roommate last year referred to as "National Jews Go Out to the Movies Day."

The holidays had lost all meaning.

Then, two years ago, I flew back to Memphis, Tenn. for winter break. For the first time in months, I saw my friends and family.

It was great seeing my 6-year-old cousin instantly decide the stuffed Husky I gave her for Hanukah was her favorite stuffed animal, and her older brother loved the UW football I got him too.

I had fun when I caught a Grizzlies game on $1 concessions night with my friend Steg, and I enjoyed regaling my friends with tales of the great concerts I'd been to. Many of my friends and family were baffled, because they'd never seen me as happy as I was when I told them about life in Seattle.

I still saw a movie on Christmas, but it was New Year's, my current favorite holiday, that cemented the magic returning to this time of year.

My friend Krista and I went to New York City for New Year's, and we had a blast. From ice skating in Rockefeller Center to watching the ball drop in Times Square, everything about that trip was memorable.

Last year was more of the same. I saw my Jewish cousins thrilled to track Santa's progress on the Internet on Christmas Eve, and begging me to go home so Santa could bring them their presents. IHOP and aimless driving with Krista made Christmas night far better than usual, and the following night I caught my high-school friends' band's final show with Steg.

In fact, it wasn't until last winter break that I even knew I was capable of having fun in Memphis.

So once again, I find myself in the still-unfamiliar position of looking forward to the holidays. I'm looking forward to seeing my mom and sister, my cousins, Steg, Krista and all my other friends and family. I'm looking forward to catching a University of Memphis basketball game or anything else entertaining that comes along.

The thing I'm looking forward to the most, though, is next year.

That's the great thing about this time of year. It's a time for celebration and reflection, a time to appreciate the year gone by and anticipate the year approaching.

I know some of what next year will hold for me -- turning 21, graduation and entrance into that mythical "real world." But there's so much I don't know, and that's what I can't wait to find out.