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December in Israel was bizarre. I mean, totally and utterly warped. At least it seemed that way to me.

To start with, it snowed. That’s right, snowed! Dad and I must have brought some cold Canadian karma with us across the Atlantic, because one morning early in the month I looked out my window and saw the ground covered with white. I swear, you could have knocked me over with a feather right then and there. If I had known snow in the Middle East was even a remote possibility, I would have brought my ski jacket with me.

The intersection below my window was exploding with honking horns that morning. Man, if you thought the Israeli drivers were crazy in normal weather, you should have seen them skidding around on the wet snow. It wasn’t pretty.

Marla showed up on my doorstep an hour later wearing mittens and brimming with excitement.

“Isn’t it great?” she gushed. “Doesn’t it remind you of home?”

“Um, I guess.”

But it didn’t really. Back home, the first snowfall had meant the beginning of the Christmas season. Here, it meant nothing.

Forget the bomb shelters and double-flush toilets; my single biggest culture shock from this move had to be the absence of Christmas. It had been Mom’s favourite time of year. In the years before the accident, she would spend the entire month of December getting ready for the holidays. Our home would always be decorated with greenery and tinsel and a huge tree and the outside of our house would be covered with strings of tiny, multicoloured lights. Sure, it was hokey, but I liked it. And of course, we weren’t the only ones. Malls across the city were adorned with ribbons and garland, carols were blasted 24/7 on the radio, and most of the streets were lit up with Christmas lights.

But there was none of that here in Israel. Heck, we didn’t even get a school break.

At least Dad managed to track down a place that sold Christmas trees. But it wasn’t the same. One warm Sunday, we dragged home a straggly looking spruce, propped it up in the living room, and decorated it as best as we could. Not exactly easy considering we’d left all our ornaments back in Toronto with Aunt Louise and Uncle Matt.

“We’ll make our own this year. C’mon … it’ll be fun!” Dad urged, showing me how to string popcorn and make garland out of coloured construction paper. “This is how they did it in the ‘olden days.’”

I seriously doubted that the pioneers used tinfoil to make their Christmas stars, but I rolled my eyes and went along with it. Really, what choice did I have? We were almost halfway through the year and things were still tense between me and Dad. His pathetic tree just made me miss home. And Mom, too. I knew if she’d been here, she would have found a way to make Christmas special somehow. Dad was trying his best, but his best just wasn’t good enough for me. Let’s face it: without Mom, we were lost.

And the thirty-first wasn’t much different. There was no Dick Clark, no corny singing, and no confetti at midnight. You see, New Year’s didn’t exist here — at least, not the New Year’s I’d always known. The Jewish New Year was celebrated back in September with apples and honey and ram’s horns. Called Rosh Hashanah, it’s so different from the New Year’s I was used to that I didn’t even realize what it was until it was over.

Of course there was Hanukkah, which I guess was nice in its own way. I mean, what’s not to like about chocolate coins and candles and spinning tops? Marla invited me to her family’s Hanukkah party. It was fun, but the smell of frying oil from the pancakes and donuts made me nauseous.

And the snow? It melted after only a couple of hours — just enough time to remind me, yet again, of everything I had lost.