My Wife Mixes Up the Holidays

As the Times indicated the other day in its annual piece on mixed-religion couples, some people get agonized about intermarriage. I suppose I’ve been myself or why would I be so hung up on Jewish identity? My gentile wife is different. She studied anthropology, and a lot of religious ritual is mythology to her, both fluid and important. The other day she called up my niece and nephew, the products of intermarriage, and shouted, "Happy Hanukah!!!" Then asked with delight what they had gotten on each day. Later I heard her telling my niece that she had passed her note on to Santa. (At Thanksgiving, my niece had written out her requests very solemnly, and my wife had folded the note with the same piety). The call ended after my wife said, "OK now, I’m going out to feed the reindeer!"