Family Traditions

Sarah Shapiro (Commentary, Dec. 26) writes of her father, Norman Cousins, whose traditional Christmas celebrations were for him a “liberation” from his parents’ “Old World ties and Jewish tribal bondage.” She, in turn, has reclaimed her Jewishness and congratulates herself that her children will not have to face the once “magical” but later “confused identity” that she experienced.

If her family’s past is any guide to its future, it would seem that her children’s heritage, rather than Christian or Jewish, is rebel.

ELAINE HAMILTON

Port Orford, Ore.