So, I was thinking of the question posed by Momversation on Twitter: How do you make the holidays work when you are in an interfaith marriage?

Well, let’s see. Are we making the holidays work here at the Murray household? Let’s consult my five-year old daughter, Reese.

ME: Hey Reese, you know Easter’s coming up, right? Let me ask you, what are we celebrating when we celebrate Easter?

REESE (thrilled to have the answer): Eggs, of course!

ME (somewhat stumped, but undaunted): Hmmm. How about Passover, what’s that all about?

REESE (on a roll, victorious): People passing things!

ME (wind just a bit out of my sails): Ohhhhkayy. How about Christmas, what do we celebrate then, honey?

REESE (yelling like a winning game show contestant): Santa!

At this point, Reese is hooked; she is looking expectantly at me, waiting for the next easy question, the softball coming her way that she knows she’s going to smack out of the park. She’s glowing; she can taste the win.

ME (just the merest bit defeated): Hanukkah, Reese? What’s that holiday commemorating?

REESE (never more assured): CANDLES!!!

So I guess, the answer would be no, we’re not making the holidays work over here in our Jewish/Catholic/Polish/Irish/Possibly Agnostic household. And yes, I know Polish and Irish are cultures, not religious affiliations, but they’re all wound up in our identities it seems; my husband, the possibly agnostic part of the equation, takes his Celtic-ness quite seriously. “Erin go braugh” is not taken lightly around these parts –it’s something he subscribes to religiously, religion or not.

And me, the un-bat mitzvahed Jew raised by two secular Jews, has little spiritual base from which to add to this deity-free mix. My own fault, of course. My own lack of initiative. I simply know this: I am Jewish, and if my kids want to be, they can be Jewish too. As to what that means exactly, your guess might be as good as mine. I only know that when I actually make my way into a synagogue and shake the dust from my soul, I feel like I belong there. It’s familiar in a way that transcends the word: as though the Hebrew words being sung and voiced are ones I’ve heard before. Lifetimes before. The shoe simply fits.

And for my husband, it would appear that going spiritually barefoot is in order. He doesn’t affiliate to the religion of his childhood, Catholicism, nor to my Judaism, however slackerly my practice of it might be. He doesn’t find the need for religion, honestly. He thinks it can be devisive. Brutal even. And, truth be told, he is the finest person I’ve ever known; perhaps there are some souls that have evolved past needing subscription to organized religion. Maybe instead he should begin his own religious practice: I would call it Kindness and Decency. That is, in fact, what he practices daily.

And while that all might be well and good, there are still two young children and Easter Bunnies and Santa Clauses and Passover seders and Hanukkah menorahs to be dealt with, and there’s nothing that makes me feel more like a sham, like a poser of the worst order, than celebrating just the Easter Bunny part of Easter or just the chocolate gelt part of Hanukkah. I want to be able to give my children more than the icing of the holiday; I want to give them the cake. But, as of yet, we’re not sure what flavor the cake is. Or even, whether there is a cake.

So until either I get off my tuchas and take the spiritual reins, or my husband finds us some newly discovered take on the Golden Rule that includes latkes and corned beef on rye, we are permanently stuck in the perimeter of these holidays. We are stuck, as Reese reported, celebrating bunnies and candles and passing each other things. Instead of what I wish we could celebrate, which is the meaning behind all of the window dressing. I wish, with my whole heart, that we were all on the same soul page.

But if that doesn’t happen, even if that never happens, we will egg hunt and Santa sit and menorah light. We will continue to believe in what we’ve always believed in as a couple, as a family: in being good people, in raising good people. In giving back. In being your best. In treasuring the every day and seeing its unique special opportunity for wonder and promise. In having good intentions first and foremost. In doing no harm.

I suppose that’s something worth celebrating after all.

Geralyn Broder Murray is the author of The Light at the End of the Diaper Pail.