Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Happy Shadduchus


We were invited to some friends' house two Saturdays ago. They are news friends and this was our first time over. We were married by Jane, the lady of the house, who will have their first baby in five weeks. She and her husband, Brian are such a great couple.

The invitation, which came in the form of an evite about a month ago, said we were going to celebrating the "Shadduchus" holiday. Neither one of us had ever hear of this holiday. I assumed it was a Jewish holiday, since there are a lot of them I still know nothing about. The evite offered some information about the holiday. Shadduchus is normally celebrated in the first weekd of December (they were celebrating early this year since their hands will be full with their brand new baby in December). Shadduchus is celebrated by eating only sweets and desserts and nothing else from noon until bedtime, and its official colors are green and purple! We asked around to find out whether this was a really fun Jewish holiday we somehow had managed to miss all these days, but to no avail.

No one seemed to have EVER hear of Shadduchus.

Finally, I asked the hosts. It turned out that Shudduchus is completely, totally, and 100% made- up!! Jane and Brian are from very diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, and they wanted to have a day of celebration separate from each of their cultures and backgrounds. They also wanted it to be hassle free and without any cooking, so they decided to have the guests brings desserts and sweets to the party. The green and purple came about because the first year they had a Shudduchus party, the paper plates that happened to be on sale were green and purple!!

What fun! We loved the idea so much. And the party was totally fun. People came dressed in green and purple w/ platters of candy apples, brownies, choccolate chip cookies, cupcakes and other fun goodies to eat. The hosts provided real hot choccolates (made from choccolate bars) w/ marshmellows and other no alcoholic drinks. The other thing that was required was that each guest bring $5-$10 and the name of their favorite charity. The money went into a bowl and the names of charities were written down on small pieces of papers and put into another bowl. At some point our hosts pulled a name out and the entire money collected went to that charity.
Is that a great idea or what????

So, the two of us, also of such different backgrounds, countries and cultures are fast at work brainstorming for a made-up holiday of our very own. We're toying with the idea of having our own Shadduchus holiday and interpret it as we wish, but nothing's been decided yet.
Do you have any idea? If so, please write and let us know. We want something fun, hassel-free, different and CLEAN, so get your minds out of the gutter, put your thinking caps on and let us know what type of made-up holiday you would have!!

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