Friday night is the first night of Passover, which is a super-duper major Jewish holiday. I'm making matzah kugel and chopped liver to bring to a good friend's Seder, which is Passover's ritual dinner. Go ahead. Make all the disparaging chopped liver comments you want—more for me.
On Sunday, however, we'll be baking an Easter cake to bring to some other good friends' Easter dinner. For years, we've hidden eggs in their garden, which is the British word for backyard, and after 15 years of hanging around with these Brits, I can even understand the one from Manchester. It's a proper Easter dinner, as they like to say, and my husband, the former Altar Boy, always appreciates their baked ham.
Passover and Easter always are vaguely near each other, since they both follow a lunar calendar. Pay attention now. Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full Moon after the vernal equinox. Now hang in there. Passover is on the full moon of the month of Nissan, which occurs every spring, somewhere around March or April, depending on the Hebrew calendar, which has either 12 or 13 months. When it has 13 months, which is 7 times every 19 years, the 13th month is called Adar II, which is when all movie sequels premiere in Israel.
But I drift from my point which is that Jews and Christians are very good at astronomy.
Actually, my point is to explain why I'm having a multi-religion weekend. My husband and I are in a "mixed marriage" (Catholic and Jewish), although the other parents in the Cupertino Chinese Language Immersion Program just thought we were the white couple.
The South Bay is the perfect place for a so-called mixed marriage. Here, such couples are commonplace. Here, people seem to revel in diversity. I'm reminded of a weekend a while ago when I went to a Persian New Year celebration (once again involving that crazy vernal equinox) sponsored by a local Baha’i community group. The evening’s post-dinner entertainment was a Salsa lesson, taught by an African-American man. The next day, I stopped at the Indian market around the corner to pick up fruits and vegetables and a few samosas. After dinner, which was Thai carry-out, my daughter finished her Chinese homework.
Ah, I love living here, especially when astronomical events mean two fabulous dinners in one weekend.
