As a kid, I remember having to spit out a piece of bread I absentmindedly sampled at the grocery store. I had forgotten for a split second that it was Passover. It's easy to forget when your religion is not the norm.
No matter what religion you follow, you can't ignore the Christian holidays. There are pastel-colored candies everywhere during Easter. There are Christmas songs that follow you wherever you go during the winter months. "It's a Wonderful Life" seems to be on TV all the time. There's the Easter bunny and Santa Claus.
My mom decided to take my sisters and me to see Santa at the mall one Christmas season. "Ho, ho, ho! What do you want for Christmas, little girl?" he asked. "Well, I'm actually Jewish," I told him. "Me, too," he said. A Jewish Santa Claus — now, that's America for you.
It's almost natural that I know about Lent and coloring Easter eggs, but how many people know what matzo brie is? You make a matzo brie, or fried matzo, kind of like the way you make French toast, but with matzo cracker instead of bread.
One of my Jewish friends told me someone asked for fried matzo while she was working in the Owen cafeteria. One of the cafeteria workers thought this meant putting a piece of matzo in the deep fryer. She felt bad for the guy so she offered to cook him the real deal.
I felt ostracized when I kept Passover in the dorms. I had to go into the corner of the cafeteria where they kept a very limited Passover food selection box of matzo, American cheese and a couple cans of tuna. Sometimes they didn't even have matzo out and I'd have to ask a cafeteria worker to "let my matzo go."
On Friday, I went to a Tigers game that fell during dinner hours. I only had time to eat a bowl of matzo ball soup beforehand. I was hungry, but my selection of food was limited to fries, while there was supposedly a fish hot dog selection for Catholics. I can't imagine that the fish dog was a big seller, but I didn't see a matzo pizza or macaroons for sale. That would be pretty funny if the vendors walked by yelling, "Get your Cracker Jacks, peanuts and macaroons right here!"
I was waiting for the bus to campus Sunday for about 10 minutes until I realized CATA didn't have service because of Easter. I don't have a car so I called up a Jewish friend.
On the way there, we discussed being the "other" in a predominantly Christian country. She recalled how she dreaded Christmas because for her, Christmas was cleaning day. Her mother would get the day off work and they would clean the house from top to bottom. We talked about not being able to play with our Christian friends when we were kids because they were at home with their families.
There were always days off from school during these holidays, but teachers were usually less understanding when it came to giving time off during the Jewish holidays. We would have to make up the work, while there wouldn't ordinarily be homework assigned during Christmas and Easter.
For anyone not of the Christian faith, the Christian holidays are a time when you feel different. When I was younger, I wondered why people wished me a happy Easter. Why do they just assume? Now, I've grown accustomed to just saying, "thank you." You don't notice when you're the norm, but when you're on the outside, you know you're different.
Melissa Talon is a State News arts reporter. Reach her at talonmel@msu.edu.
