Some holidays, like fine wine, seem to improve with age: The more I celebrate
them, the more meaning I find in the customs and rituals, as the older and (I
hope) wiser me finds different ways to relate to the same events.
Then there are those holidays that loom large in childhood but fade in
importance over time. It's not that I don't care about them; I just don't have
school projects and assemblies to remind me of a holiday's imminent arrival, so
it's not until my niece or nephew brings home flowers made of fruit leather that
the bell chimes in my head and I find myself saying, "Hmm, Tu B'Shevat again?
Where does the time go?"
When I was growing up, Tu B'Shevat was a day I looked forward to, if for no
other reason than that it meant snack bags of exotic fruits like carob and figs.
I vaguely understood that it was a new year for the trees and had something to
do with nature, but I didn't really dig too deep into the meaning of the day.
All I knew was that it was a time to indulge in rare fruit, and I was more than
happy to oblige.
As I got older, those school-issued bags of fruit disappeared, taking my
observance of Tu B'Shevat with them. The end of snack bags was probably a good
thing (carob can be very hard on the teeth) but saying goodbye to Tu B'Shevat
was a sad casualty of growing up. It's a strange irony that a day that
celebrates nature and the lovely world G-d created should be so prominent in
childhood and so overlooked in our older years. After all, I think it may be the
grown-ups who really need to take a moment to appreciate the splendor of this
intricate and varied universe we live in.
Children already have an innate sense of wonder when it comes to nature. They
see beauty, mystery, even spirituality in the little things that adults often
write off as uninteresting or insignificant. I remember how as a kid I used to
gather bouquets of dandelions to give my mother, who always accepted them with a
bemused smile. It didn't matter to me that they were weeds; everything that grew
from the ground -- the leaves, the trees, the poisonous mushrooms -- seemed
beautiful and kind of miraculous. Even the smell of skunks appealed to me in an
intriguing, so-bad-it's-good kind of way.
Nature is also what led me to a real belief in G-d. Granted, the concept of
one G-d had been drilled into my head from before I could remember, but it
wasn't until I was sitting in class in elementary school one day that I actually
felt His presence. I had been thinking about the origins of everything around
me, from the desk I was sitting on to the clothes I was wearing. I could trace
everything back to nature, but I hit a brick wall at when I tried to figure out
who planted the first seed. And that was when I realized that there was some
higher being who set everything in motion, who created this gloriously diverse
universe with millions of different species and subspecies, all working together
to form a kind of kaleidoscope of life.
Now I'm older and I've learned much more complex arguments and "proofs" for
monotheism. I've also learned that a dandelion is just something that needs to
be uprooted to make way for the "real" flowers, and that a skunk's odor is to be
feared rather than embraced. But I miss the simple faith in G-d I discovered as
a child, and the love I had for His world.
So I think it's time for the adults to take back Tu B'shvat. Well, we don't
have to take it, exactly. We can share it with the kids. But the point is,
nature is not something we grown-ups should take for granted just because we're
busy people who don't have time to play in the mud anymore. At the heart of Tu
B'shvat is a celebration of the world in all its glory and complexity, and a
holiday like that has no age limit. Just think: we could be living in one of
those futuristic science-fiction universes where everyone dresses in the same
space-age suit and the architecture is all uniform and austere. Instead, G-d in
His infinite kindness gave us a smorgasbord of tastes, sights and smells to
appreciate and enjoy.
This Tu B'Shevat, let's linger a little longer over a sunset, or to bite into
an apple with renewed gusto. When the snow starts to fall, don't mutter
dejectedly about how it will delay your commute to work. Instead, take a moment
to revel in how that blanket of white fluff sparkles in the sun. Think back to
the time when a snow storm was a cause for joyous celebration, because it meant
sledding and hot cocoa and days off from school.
For my part, I will hang out in the suburbs, breathing in the fresh aroma of
skunks on the prowl.
