My Christmas Lesson: What Really Matters at the Holidays

Be aware before reading, this blog discusses cancer and the dying process.

In 2001, our first married holiday season celebrating Thanksgiving, Chanukah and Christmas in our newly-minted southern NJ interfaith household,

I had it all wrong. But I didn't know that yet.

I was 24. We'd gotten married in August. 9/11 happened that September, rocking our sense of safety. My husband worked at a newspaper during the anthrax mailings. War broke out while we were fishing on the beach. There was a lot of deeply unsettling stuff happening - not to mention suddenly being almost two hours away from my hometown and parents, while my husband worked endlessly covering it all.

I had the anecdote, so I thought. I was going to make a perfect home and a perfect holiday season: to show my love for my husband; to impress everyone (not in a self-congratulating way, but in an "I care enough to make everyone happy" way); to prove I could someday go from being artistic, whimsical, and academic to a perfectionist-level "homemaker" at the caliber of my mother, who always made it look easy, organized, and flawless.

I had it all mapped out. I still have tucked into a cookbook somewhere the handwritten paper that detailed the menu and grocery list. I had notes about "tablescapes", napkin-folds, and God only knows what else. I spent weeks: shopping, preparing, pre-cooking from-scratch gravy and freezing it. As the turkey wings, shallots, and onions sizzled, I clearly remember sitting in my hard-scrubbed kitchen, feeling an ecstatic level of bliss: I was going to rock this and my whole family and my husband's whole family were going to be there to enjoy it all. Everyone would believe I was a grown-up at last.

Then a few interesting things happened: first, a pipe broke, evidenced by a patch of white foyer ceiling wet and brown. When the plumber arrived, my first time working with a home repair specialist and a big dose of new adulting unfolded. "We'll have to search until we find the source, if we get lucky it won't be a lot of ceiling. If we don't, we could be at this for days." "Will this debacle get drywall into my scratch pumpkin pie?" I wondered. We were lucky, the leak was easy to find. In some cosmic way, it was also a foreshadowing of the months ahead.

Next, a couple of days before Thanksgiving, my in-laws showed up. Now, I was blessed with two of the finest humans as my bonus mother and father through marriage. They loved me and I loved them intensely and immensely. Interfaith stuff? No problem. All four parents would celebrate holidays together - solved.

Senior and junior Shinskes at our wedding

To understand what they were really like, picture George Constanza's parents from Seinfeld. Now, turn that up about 10 notches. You get the idea. I loved every minute of it, would almost beg my husband to take me to Long Island to hang out with these funny, opinionated, warm, welcoming Brooklyn transplants I was lucky enough to love. And the Chinese food they'd bring in? Epic.

But, good gravy - not. First, as my in-laws drove to our house while my husband was at work, I spent 3/4 of the day worrying that they were dead on the side of a road someplace because they arrived something like four hours later than planned, no contact.

"Oh, we took the backroads! No tolls!" My father-in-law proclaimed proudly. He was a no bullshit gigantic former moving man. I wasn't about to argue that a phone call might have allowed me to unclench three hours earlier.

My in-laws were travel meanderers who'd stop along the way at any farmer's market or flea market or guy selling non-kosher-but-who-cares seafood out of the back of his trunk if they felt like they could bring us something special. That meant that upon arrival, all manner of varying food-filled bags was thrust upon my kitchen counters, alongside pill bottles, the Daily News, and lots of other "stuff."

The most offensive? Turnips. A giant bag of dirt-covered turnips. "You're making these! These are good!" my father-in-law declared. I didn't know how. My neurotically planned perfect holiday was now full of random luggage, a bottle of mouthwash in the kitchen, and constant loudness. I was intimidated in all ways.

I did my best to focus on the positive: my father-in-law had been living with liver cancer since a few years before I'd met him, defying his original prognosis in ways nobody understood. Turnips shouldn't matter, but boy did turnips scare me. So did my in-laws' reaction to the lasagna I'd spent hours lovingly preparing for the days before turkey day,

"You can't give your mudda spinach! She's on COUMADIN!" my father-in-law barked. I thought I might actually die. "How'd April Dawn go?" "Oh, super sad. New Basics spinach lasagna disparagement."

I really was so clueless when it came to what mattered.

On gobble gobble day, both families got there. Nobody got into any sort of big fight. My house was filled with the warmth and joy I'd dreamed about. Oh, and the garbage disposal broke and clogged my sink the morning of; I forgot to take the saran wrap off the apple brown Betty and I had to throw it away - quietly crying for a minute, alone, standing over the garbage can from sheer exhaustion; and I ended the night by getting a searing coffee ground in my eye while cleaning up. "Only you," my husband laughed as he wiped tears from my cheeks. I was so glad that day was done.

But, I hadn't learned yet.

My perfectionism continued. I started making exacting "first Christmas together" cards, and had just the right menorah ready, It was all happening.

Until we got the call only a few days after the raucous Thanksgiving. My father-in-law's esophagus was bleeding again. We hadn't known that when he gassed it, wryly smiling and waving goodbye as he pulled out of our little driveway to go home from the holiday, that he'd never drive to our house again.

From that call forward, everything changed. Our lives became about shuffling between NJ and LI for hospital visits. Endless constant worries. Trying to get multiple doctors to talk to one another. ICU visiting hours. Crap heavy cafeteria meals. Missed work meetings. My poor husband, trying to juggle his still fairly new job against being there for his folks.

They'd just get my father-in-law stabilized, and think he was back on the upswing; then, he'd bleed again. He came home, he went back to the hospital. We'd crawl through the Outerbridge Crossing as fast as we could - which was painfully slowly - to get back out there. I sat next to his hospital bed alone on one of those trips while my husband and mother-in-law tried to get answers from the latest doctor. My father-in-law was so jaundiced that as a few tears of frustration left his eyes, somehow even the droplets looked yellow. I silently held his enormous hand after he'd yelled at me for no good reason - venting in my direction for just a second, all that he was powerless to stop. A woman mopping the floor admonished him "You shouldn't talk to that poor little girl like that!" He and I stared at each other wordlessly; he smiled at me. I laughed. I appreciated that lady's care, but I also sorta wanted to punch her in that moment. Hard.

And then, the worst Christmas Eve ever preceded by days at the hospital. My husband and I crept into my father-in-law's room. He was sleeping in a way that looked not good. Medical notions bandied about prior that he had been misdiagnosed, such was his atypical longevity, were smashed when the nurse approached us. "All his vitals are bad. His blood levels are terrible. We don't know how long he has. We think this is it."

We stayed until they kicked us out.

That night, us newlyweds clung to each other in bed in my brother-in-law's childhood bedroom. His poster of Elvira hung above us on the ceiling like a dark angel. We both sobbed and held each other so very tight. I couldn't take away my husband's pain.

"How can this be Christmas?" I thought. "How?"

Between slobbering gasps, I said to my husband, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." Dumbfounded, he said "Why are you sorry?"

"Because I had it all wrong!" I blurted. "None of it mattered! The food, the decorations, the recipes, the napkins. NONE of it mattered. I'd give all of it up to know he wasn't going to die tonight." I was weirdly inconsolable while I was trying to console my husband.

I was getting it the hard way: ideas of perfection - at the holidays or otherwise - are meaningless. When push comes to shove, the only thing you'll really want is the people you love. Everything else is a store-bought illusion.

The next morning, we got to the hospital crazy early, expecting a coma. Some kind security guard let us in at like 6:30 a.m. Neither of us will ever forget what we saw. It was an old Jewish guy's Christmas miracle, truly.

There sat my father-in-law, upright in his bed, happily eating a hospital-issued chocolate and vanilla swirl ice cream cup, like he was sitting at Shea watching the Mets lose. He was fully awake and totally coherent. As we stood in the doorway of his room, he raised one of his giant hands to wordlessly wave hello. Our shock was written on our faces.

Finally he said, "What the HELL is the matter with you two?" Ray ultimately came home. He characteristically defied every "four-year idiot" who'd counted him out that Christmas Eve. He passed New Year's and the death of my grandfather in January. He blew by Valentine's Day. He was around to insist I take change for a pay phone with me into the city when I left his house on St. Patrick's Day. He wished me a happy birthday on April 1st. In his last weeks, he suddenly said, "Pistachio." His one-word request for one more cup of ice cream.

My father-in-law, Ray, snapping an Army selfie

And then, mid-April on an unseasonably warm spring night, he left us. I was on a break from the vigil, briefly asleep on the couch across from his in-home hospital bed, my husband and mother-in-law sitting with him. Suddenly, someone shook the Hell out of me. I'll never forget it. I bolted awake and was stunned that nobody was on my side of the room. I'll go to my grave believing his spirit woke me up - in so many ways. I saw him take three long breaths and go to the other side. I thought he looked like Big Bird in that moment, beak pointed toward chest. Slumbering. Nothing but a hard-earned peaceful departure.

My father-in-law would be the first to say he wasn't an educated man. I will tell you, he was both a smart man and a good teacher.

Not a Christmas goes by where I don't remember that 2001 Christmas Eve. And most of all, I remember the lesson.

I will always be grateful that I got the message young as a result of those months and moments, terrible and beautiful: the only thing that matters about the holidays is love. It's the only thing that matters anytime.

As we end off on Chanukah and approach Christmas this week, as we're tired and shopped out and work-crunched and hors d'oeuvres recipes obsessed, take it from a person who learned over those hard days years ago and in the intervening decades.

You're already getting it right. Paper plates are just as good as fine China. An unlit wreath is fine. If you give your kid the gifts of time and love but you can' t afford to give her the big-ticket material stuff, you're giving her more than enough - you're giving her the best.

To borrow from our Beatles. "All you need is love." Duh, duh, duh, duh. All you need is love, love. Love IS all you need. And love is what that really matters at the holidays.

Happy Chanukah. Merry Christmas. Joyous Kwanzaa. Happy 2026. However you do you, please go easy on yourself. Take your foot off the gas pedal for a minute. Look at the lights. Remember those you only hold now in your heart, not in your arms. Hug the ones you're lucky enough to hold. Throw an extra marshmallow into your hot chocolate. Sneak away from it all and do one little thing that's only for you.

It's all going to be ok. I promise. It's all enough. And so are you, wherever you're at. Whatever you're at. You're getting it more right than you may think.

Spend your energy on love.