My birthday is November 28th. This date has influenced my view of family celebrations. As you may realize, November 28th occurs in close proximity to Thanksgiving, and at the apex of the pre-holiday shopping season of Chanukah and Christmas. My birthday was greatly affected by this temporal location.

First of all, my parents tended to minimize my birthdays. Like most Holocaust refugees, their concern was to rebuild their lives, not engage in superfluous revelry. By today