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Jesus is the Reason for the Season

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I learned about Jesus from a piece of red construction paper. I was in the fourth grade. It was the last day of school before Christmas break—which Mom called “winter vacation”—and we had a party in Social Studies.

Propelled by peppermint candy canes, we darted about the room, freshly-made cards in hand. We left drifts of glitter in our wake as we cast our red ballots on each other’s desks. By the end of the period, the results of the vote were there for everyone to see—the most popular kids sat before colorful, shining piles.

This was back in the ’80s, you know, when teachers weren’t worried about sweets or low self-esteem.

I sat down to a sprinkling of cards. I was relieved—it wasn’t a lot, but at least my desk wasn’t empty.

I picked the one on top up. It was red and had a big cross on the front, which, at the time, didn’t mean anything to me. It just looked like an over-grown “t” that someone had covered with glue and sprinkled with gold glitter.

Inside, silver ink read: “Don’t forget, Jesus is the reason for the season! From: Stacy.”

I turned around and looked at Jesus Sanchez in the back row. He had straight hair, black and silky, parted in the middle. It drooped down and touched the corners of his eyes, which sort of reminded me of an Eskimo’s. Not that I’d ever seen one—we lived in North Florida—but I’d seen pictures.

Jesus’ desk was empty, except for some crumpled cellophane wrappers. It was weird to me. If Jesus was the reason we got two weeks off of school, it seemed like he should have gotten the most cards—fantastic ones, with lots of glitter.

I looked around the room. No one else was staring at Jesus. Maybe Stacy hadn’t told them. Maybe it was a secret.

Before I had time to read the rest of the cards, our teacher handed out a sheet of paper with questions. She said it was for a test we’d take when we returned from Christmas break. Was I White? Black? Asian/Pacific Islander? Hispanic? Other?

White.

At home, did I speak English? Spanish? Other?

I felt myself hot with embarrassment as I checked Other and wrote French.

I saw Stacy at lunch. She was sitting at a table with all her friends, blonde like her. I thanked Stacy for the card. And then I bent over, cupped my hands around her ear, which had a cluster of small red and green bells hanging from it, and whispered, “I didn’t know about Jesus.”

“It’s OK,” Stacy said. “Lots of people don’t. Sometimes even people who do know about Jesus forget about him.” Her voice sounded strong and clear. Her friends nodded at her wisdom.

I stood up straight. “Well, thanks for telling me,” I said. I turned to walk away.

“Hey, you want to sit with us?” Stacy asked me.

I did. But I felt sad for Jesus because of what Stacy had just told me. “Shouldn’t I sit with Jesus instead?”

“Jesus is with us all the time,” Stacy said.

I didn’t understand. I’d never seen Jesus with anyone. He was always alone at lunch, except for when I sat with him.

Jesus was alone at recess, too. Everyday, he loped through the playground, his steps heavier than his small body, and then plopped down on a swing. The other kids got mad and yelled at him, “If you’re not gonna use it—move!” He never did.

The kids shouted, “Hey, don’t you speak English?” and Jesus was silent. I wondered if he didn’t understand or if he didn’t answer because he didn’t want to.

I knew how Jesus felt. I’d had people ask me questions I didn’t want to answer, too. Like when someone from school would come over to my house to play and they’d say: why are you poor? Do you have a dad?

“Come on, sit down,” Stacy said. She leaned against the friend who sat to her left. The girl on Stacy’s right scooted over a bit. They’d made room for me.

I imagined myself wedged between them, tight. We would share food and they would invite me to slumber parties in big houses with parents who wore khaki pants. Next year, my desk would be full of cards—cheerful and bright. I’d take them home and put them up in my bedroom. When I was lying in bed at night, I’d look up at them, glittering like stars.

Mom was waiting for me at the bus stop when I got off.

“The school called,” she said.

I knew that leaving Jesus alone for lunch was a bad idea.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I should sit with Jesus more. I’ll sit with him every day. I promise.”

“Jesus? Who is Jesus? You mean hey-soos? That little Mexican boy in your class?”

“His name is Jesus,” I said.

“Honey, it’s hey-soos in Spanish.”

“Oh,” I said. Things made more sense. “Then who is Jesus?”

Mom repeated my question back to me. She always did that when she couldn’t figure out how to explain something and was buying herself a little time to think.

“Jesus,” she said, “was sort of a magician. But now he’s dead.”

“A magician? What did he do?”

“Supposedly, he walked on water. He also turned water into wine. And he fed a lot of people with one loaf of bread.”

The food and wine didn’t interest me, but the walking on water bit did.

“If we had a pool and Jesus was alive, maybe we could ask him to come to my birthday party,” I said. It was a silly thing to say, and I knew it, but I wanted to make my mom laugh.

She didn’t. “Jesus,” she said, “is not for us. We’re Jewish.”

“Well, he still could have come to my party. And why can’t Jesus be Jewish, too? What if he wanted to be Jewish?”

“He was. But, that’s beside the point. The school called.”

We were at our house then, which wasn’t really a house—it was one half of a sagging, wood-frame duplex. The neighbors’ entrance was on the side, so whenever I was outside, I pretended that the whole place was ours. I imagined that I didn’t have to sit in front of the kerosene heater in the hallway to stay warm in the winter. I pictured a home with a bathtub instead of a stand-up shower. And I pictured a dad.

Mom unlocked the door and we went inside. There was our apartment: kitchen-dining-room-living-room-in-one; a short hallway that led to our rooms—mine big enough for a twin-sized bed and a desk, hers for a double-bed and armoire.

My mom sighed as though she sensed, or shared, my disappointment.

“Alma,” she said. She sat down on the futon, which was black. “We are not French-speakers.”

“But you speak French to me. And I have all the books.” My mom made her living, however small, teaching French to preschoolers at a private school. Her home was conducted a bit like an extended lesson. She bought me “Good Night, Moon” and a host of other titles and would only read bedtime stories to me in French. Much of the day went in French, as well. Especially when she was in a rush and I was dragging along—she snapped her fingers and said “allons-y!”

“Yes, but we’re English-speakers. English is your first language. Now there’s a mess at the school. They said that, technically, they’re supposed to put you in an ESOL class.”

“What’s that?”

“Your friend hey-soos probably goes to one, dear. It’s for people whose parents don’t speak English. So now I have to take time off of work to go to your school and prove to them that, yes, I am your mother and, yes, I speak English properly.”

And just to make her point, she said all of this in English.

With my new understanding of Jesus, not to be confused with hey-soos, I was nervous to show Mom the card Stacy gave me. So I waited until she had poured herself a glass of wine, changed into jeans, and pulled her long black hair into a spiraling ponytail. I knew that meant she was relaxed.

I took the cards out of my backpack—which, like most of my clothes, was a hand-me-down from the other teachers at Mom’s school—and tiptoed out to the living room.

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear,” she said, in that tone of hers that was both amused and annoyed. It was that voice she used that meant “I love you, but I want a little time alone.”

“I have something to show you.”

She was in one of the pair of butterfly chairs—black, like the futon. She was sitting Indian-style with a magazine in her lap, the glass of wine on the coffee table in front of her. In that moment, my mom looked so young, so small, so fragile. I worried Stacy’s card would upset her, would throw her out of the chair, out of her delicate cocoon.

“Never mind,” I said. I turned to go back to my room.

“What is it?”

“It’s nothing, really. Just some cards friends made for me at school.”

“Let me see,” she said.

I stepped forward and put them on the magazine.

“I see there’s one here from hey-soos,” Mom said.

“Yeah, I couldn’t read that one.”

“I could take it in and show it to the Spanish teacher at school.”

“No thanks, Mom. I don’t want to violate hey-soos’s privacy.”

Mom laughed.

And then she stopped as she flipped open Stacy’s card.

“Alma? What is this?”

“Oh, that’s from my new friend.”

“Well, I don’t like it. Not one bit. It’s not nice.”

“Why not?”

“She’s trying to convert you.”

“Convert me to what?”

“To Christianity.”

“I don’t think so, Mom, because she’s talking about Jesus there, and if Jesus was a Jew, then I don’t think she’s trying to convert me.”

“Alma. Jesus was a Jew, but we don’t follow him. And the people who do are Christians, and you’re not one of them.”

“But if he was Jewish then why can’t we follow him, too?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

I stared at her.

“OK,” she said. “Because we’re still waiting for the messiah, and when he, or she, comes, we’ll follow him, or her, instead.”

“What’s the messiah? And how come you don’t know if the messiah will be a boy or a girl?”

My mom took a sip of her wine and said, “There are rabbis that can’t answer your questions.”

“What’s a rabbi, Mom?”

“You don’t really need to know that right now.” She put the magazine and cards on to the coffee table and stood. “Come with me.”

I followed Mom to her room. She opened her armoire and took out a wooden box. She lifted the lid and turned the whole thing upside down, dumping the costume jewelry out onto the bed. She stuck her hand in the box and used her fingernails to peel up an edge of the false bottom.

Mom pulled a gold necklace out and held it up. A funny pendant that reminded me of a dog dangled from the thin chain.

“It’s a chai,” she said.

“What is it? What does it mean?”

“It means alive in Hebrew. But don’t tell your teachers that I speak Hebrew, too, or I’ll have more explaining to do, I’m sure.”

“OK. Who is alive?”

“I don’t know. You. Me. God. Whoever you want to be alive is alive.”

“What about Jesus?”

“Except for Jesus. He’s dead.”