The Christmases of my youth were almost Dickensian in their misery: an alcoholic, abusive stepfather; a cowed mother. Some years there were secondhand toys and canned food from a church basket. I vowed when I grew up that I would have Christmases like the ones on the Andy Williams specials -- a mantel festooned in velvet bows and pine cones, caroling, a yule log.

But the man I married was Jewish. The only serious fight of our courtship was over a Christmas tree. I was adamant to have one. "It's like having a six-foot crucifix in the living room!" he argued. But in the end, he saw it was important to me and relented.

In the 18 years since, we celebrate a kind of Christmas Lite. The tree usually isn't put up until a week before and is taken down on New Year's. My daughter and I always select a runty one (a 5-foot crucifix). He gamely crawls under the boughs to tighten the screws in the stand, joking that he isn't genetically programmed to do this. Probably wondering if his ancestors are spinning in their graves.

I bake Christmas cookies galore, and our daughter's stocking hangs above the fireplace, but decking the halls consists of displaying holiday cards on the mantel and not much else. I listen to Christmas songs in the car, where he doesn't have to hear them. There are no outside lights, no midnight services, no tree-trimming parties, no dinners of crown roast and figgy pudding. It's not that he would object to these things; it's just that I'm keenly aware that for him, December feels like a great big party he wasn't invited to.

On Dec. 25 our family celebrates "Jewish Christmas" -- going out for Chinese food and a movie.

Although Christmases have been downsized from my early dreams, I gained a cool holiday I never imagined celebrating. Every year when the dreidels come out, my daughter patiently explains which Hebrew letter is the gimel and which is the nun. Every year, we have a latke party with old friends in which the menfolk make the potato pancakes, but first the womenfolk have to show them how to operate the food processor.

And every year, I marvel at the growing procession of lighted candles across the menorah -- especially on the eighth night, with all the tapers blazing and reflected in the dining room windows. It's a family-centered holiday still largely devoid of commercial hokum.

When I flip through magazines and see the evergreen garlands and gold-tasseled table runners, I'm reminded that I didn't get the Christmases I once yearned for. But I wouldn't trade them for the December I have now, a Dickensian ending of comfort and joy: candlelit and pine-scented.