Tova Bernbaum – Chabad.org
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.