Christmas is special to me in a way that no other holiday is, because my only claim to it is that I am American. My other winter holidays are my birthright: Hanukkah I inherited from my Jewish ancestry, Russian Christmas and Old Russian New Year from my Russian Orthodox ancestry, and New Year I get simply for being part of a society that follows the Gregorian calendar. Christmas, or Catholic Christmas as most of the Russians I know call it, I have no innate claim to. Christmas, much more than even the 4th of July, is my special American holiday.

We immigrated in January 1995, when I was almost four, so our first Christmas in America was at nearly our first anniversary of living in the United States (my and my dad’s—my mom came over six months before us) and I would have been almost five. At that point I had experienced almost a full year in an American preschool. I’d learned the language, I had friends, and I had been fully indoctrinated with the traditions and expectations of an American childhood. Our first Christmas as a family is one of my personal origin stories, one of the small pieces of personal history that make up the core of my identity. As my mom tells it, when Christmas rolled around it was just another day for us. My parents were alarmed and confused that work was closed for the day, and that stores were closed for the day, and most inconveniently my preschool. I was less confused. I asked my mom: “Where are the presents? Why haven’t we invited anyone?” I knew it was Christmas. I had a very good sense of what was meant to happen on Christmas and I was very determined that Christmas should happen as was described to me in preschool and on television. I corralled Mom into getting presents together for my friends and at the last minute we called and invited all my Russian immigrant child friends and their families, my parents’ friends, to our apartment and we had a Christmas party. Mom says there might have already been a tree, since New Year’s was coming up and though most people didn’t decorate their tree until December 31st, people with kids often decorated it earlier. (In Russia, the tree goes up for New Year’s.) We got the presents at Kmart, and Kmart in Chicago on Christmas in the 90s was a mess—Mom says everything was on the floor, literally in piles on the ground and not on shelves, and that we were crawling through the piles on the floor looking for toys that were sufficiently together or whose pieces could be lined back up to make into suitable presents. Somehow we got presents for everyone and we wrapped them. Everyone had a really lovely time—the kids loved their presents and the celebration we were promised by society and the adults loved the company. (In full disclosure I’m not certain that all of the parents fully understood that the celebration was for Christmas; Mom says that as our guests were leaving some of the adults remarked that it was very nice to have gotten together just because, without it being anyone’s birthday or any other special occasion.) I think everyone in attendance was sufficiently newly arrived that it was everyone’s or almost everyone’s first or second American Christmas. This story feels particularly and joyfully American to me, a little island of childhood happiness in a process that I don’t think is easy for any family that goes through it. We were very new here, but we were determined to be Americans; we felt welcome to and all did our best impression of the traditions that were to be our chosen inheritance, a magical first American Christmas.

My strongest memories of Christmas in my childhood are memories of winter in Chicago, the first place we lived when we came to the United States. Until we moved away, every winter I had ice skating lessons at a lesser known outdoor ice rink downtown—it was down a hill and not visible from the street and maybe for that reason hardly ever had many people there. Mom would pick me up with food in the car after school; I ate in the car and then I spent the evening at the rink until Mom was done with work. Skating lessons were late in the evening, so I joined karate lessons by the rink before skating lessons started, or I did homework, or I would skate on the rink on my own, and then after skating lessons were over I would skate on my own or with whatever friends stayed late after lessons until it was time to go home. Those memories are very special to me. I remember the cold air, and skating as fast as I could until I tasted iron in my mouth, and hot chocolate with marshmallows from the hot chocolate vending machine, and the pain of warming my feet up after I couldn’t feel them anymore in the cold, and skating with friends, and skating alone, and the snow falling around me after sundown, the lights of downtown Chicago all around me and the starless night sky above me, Christmas music playing on the ice rink speakers. That is my Christmas tradition, and that is where I am transported by Christmas: by Christmas music, by ice skating, by dark cold city nights, by hot chocolate with marshmallows, by gently falling snow.

The rest of my Christmas memories are the polar opposite, set in Florida. When I was growing up we used to go camping in the Everglades. Those memories are of damp, warm air, of mangroves and of wind and pouring tropical rain, and of going to bed early on New Year’s Eve, vaguely cognizant of cheering and fireworks in the distance signaling the end of the year through a cloud of sleep.

I love hearing about my American friends’ Christmas traditions. Of course there are presents (for Christmas morning, though my family opens them on Christmas Eve because we are impatient), and the concept of Santa, and the nice-smelling tree with ornaments and lights on it and maybe a train or stuffed animals underneath. I really like string lights in general, and I especially enjoy little glass icicle ornaments and the way the colorful lights refract in them. (In the winter I am especially grateful to be Russian, since the Russian winter holidays give me an excuse to leave the tree and lights up through at least the first half of January.) I don’t think my family has ever done photos with Santa, but I have seen the lines at malls and of course seen them in movies. Christmas cards are also new to me as of the past decade, and I adore them. Our lab puts together an extremely thoughtful and elaborate holiday card every year, and last year was my and Cory’s first year sending Christmas cards ourselves. I’d long heard of stocking stuffers, but this year since we moved in with our friend PJ is the first year I’ve gotten to live with someone whose family hung fancy socks up with small presents in them, and gotten to see them hanging up, though I don’t fully understand what you’re supposed to do with them or the timing of it. I’m hoping maybe by next year I will have something of an understanding of the stockings. I’ve learned from Cory that there is meant to be a very large ham for dinner, which I don’t understand or find particularly appealing. This is the first year I’ve heard of and I absolutely do not understand the elf on a shelf. I also don’t understand caroling.

This year’s special new-to-me tradition has been advent calendars (“microdosing Christmas”). Cory and I have gotten a Lego advent calendar for a few years now, but this is my first year that I’ve really leaned into advent calendars and I’ve discovered I really like them—though the exact timing is always getting shifted around. (Doing something consistently every day, starting at a specific day and ending on another specific day, is it turns out a challenge, far too much of a challenge for this or honestly any other time of year.) We have a Lego advent calendar, a dog treat advent calendar, a chocolate advent calendar, and a tea advent calendar, and then I got my family three separate tea advent calendars, a recent out-of-print Lego City advent calendar, and, our favorite so far, an advent calendar with a new metal wire puzzle for each day, increasing in difficulty, whose components can hopefully be put in a nice basket for guests to enjoy once we’ve figured them all out. Advent calendars can also fancily lead to a culminating Christmas or New Year’s present on the same theme. (More wire puzzles, in other words.)

In true capitalist tradition, below are links to the wire puzzles I bought this year. These are links with my Amazon referral code. If you click one and buy something, I get about 4% of the price as commission.

(These photos are the puzzles we’ve opened so far—there are many more in the box.)

• Wire puzzle advent calendar (pictured above).
• More challenging wire puzzles for when/if we finish the advent calendar.
• And additional more challenging wire puzzles.

Each puzzle so far has been two loops that you are meant to separate. They’ve gotten more challenging as we’ve progressed, to the point that we’re starting to feel intimidated by what the end of the calendar is probably going to look like. I am pretty bad at these—or rather, they take me longer than anyone else in the family. My brother Max is absurdly fast. Our parents and grandmother are pretty speedy as well (but not as speedy as Max).

My grandfather on my mom’s side loved wire puzzles; the entirety of my mom’s side of the family grew up on them. I think he would be really excited that we are solving wire puzzles every day. They feel like a joyful way of honoring his memory, a little bit each day all month long.

Merry Christmas!