My granddaughter and I followed a small parade of three-year-old girls into the community center. A man walking past asked, “What’s with all the pink tights?”
Basketball practice, I said with a grin.

Nope, it was a class called play ballet, more about jumping around than grand jete. Will there be boys, my granddaughter had asked. Hopefully, I said, though I anticipated the all girly-girl crowd. It did, however, give me an opportunity to advance my feminist agenda and talk about how both men and women make wonderful ballet dancers.

Lately the granddaughter has been dividing her world into what boys do and what girls do. Boys play dinosaur, girls play dress-up, she recently explained. I could have gotten into a big philosophical discussion on that one because I happen to know that little boys do play dress up. Did she not recall that one of her best friends, a three-year-old boy, dressed up as a dancing construction worker for Halloween, wearing both a tutu and a tool belt?

But I didn’t want to burst her pink bubble on this day. She kept saying, “this is so exciting,” as she pushed her feet into magic slippers the color of seashells and joined the others in a gallop around the room.

For the last few weeks the granddaughter’s go-to-color has been pink.

I know the thrill. When I was a little girl I took ballet class. I dropped out because I was afraid of the teacher who carried a big ruler, but I was in it long enough to twirl and bow on a stage in something pink covered with sequins.

Many mothers of my generation, in an attempt to eradicate restrictive gender stereotypes, continued to offer our little girls ballet but also added soccer. We dressed them in overalls and gave them tool kits and said it was fine to get messy. It’s surprising to now be a grandmother and see how some stereotypes defy eradication.

For the last few weeks the granddaughter’s go-to-color has been pink. When she was born her mother encouraged a rainbow of fashion choices and asked well-wishers to please cool it on the pink. The three-year-old has a varied wardrobe, but now that she’s dressing herself she often looks like a cupcake in sneakers.

Still and all, she knows how to throw a ball, not like a girl or a boy, but like a kid from a family of ball-throwers. She pounds nails and makes things at a kids workshop put on by the neighborhood building supply store. She plays with dolls and she knows what to do with a soccer ball and a wiffle ball. She has a play kitchen for creating play menus. And a softball glove — a pink one. She also has a new baby brother whom I’m thinking might be a great addition to the play ballet troupe in another three years.

Parents and grandparents were asked to wait outside until the last five minutes of dance class. We got to watch the teacher invite each girl to choose a long, billowy scarf for the final fling around the room.

The first little girl said pink. The second little girl said pink. My ballerina thought for a moment and said orange. I gave her a private power salute.

This Christmas the Texas daughter and her family will not be coming this way for the holidays so I went to Austin for a pre-Noel visit. I wanted to make sure she didn’t miss anything not being in California. We talked about doing some of our traditional things, maybe go to the Nutcracker or a Christmas concert. But in keeping with the spirit of Austin, a city proud of its weirdness, we opted for new traditions.

First was a Julia Child dinner party where guests were urged to bring recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Our hosts dressed as Julia and Paul, one in polyester knit dress and high heels and his partner in goatee and beret. We dined on dishes awash in butter and cheese and trilled “bon appetit’ in our most flamboyant Julia voices while visions of the real Julia flashed on a big screen next to a Christmas tree.

At another Austin holiday gala we mingled with the pretty people in a cocktail lounge of a downtown hotel where the bar stools are made out of hairy white cowhide. When she lived in San Francisco daughter Sam and her sisters and girlfriends would put on their holiday glitz and take over a bar in one of the city’s hotels. Not yet having a core group in Austin she invited a random mix of women she met through her book club, the neighborhood, the gym and a stepmothers group to dress in their merriest and meet for drinks. They showed up and brought friends. I was the token import, dressed in Wine Country casual and wishing for a pair of cowboy boots.

She’ll be fine in Texas for Christmas. Her new Austin ways mix well with a number of California holiday favorites. She’s made her grandmother’s Russian tea cookies. For Christmas dinner she’ll make the family spinach and walnut salad, as well as some new dish “from Julia.”

Her tree is decorated with familiar ornaments. I spotted the tiny rocking horse made out of red felt that her grandmother gave her when she was two. And she still has the music box covered with Santa elves from when she was a baby. It’s pretty beat up but still produces a jaunty “Jingle Bells.”

Christmas is not always so portable. There were two Christmases that I spent without any family. They were the years my husband and I lived in Germany and although our daughters were in California I looked forward to the two of us having a cozy, festive holiday in Europe. The first Christmas my husband, flying from Nairobi to Frankfurt, ended up stuck at an airport in London, leaving me with the cat. Some friends took pity and asked me to dinner, and the traveler got back late that night but in time for dessert.

Another Christmas the two of us took the train to Italy to a small mountain village where it snowed and was perfectly festive until Santa took a slip on the ice outside the hotel on Christmas Eve. A cab driver, heaped in holiday good will, took him down the mountain to a hospital to have x-rays on his back. He was okay but they kept him overnight for observation and I returned to the hotel to drink Chianti with the ghosts of Christmas past.

This year the family will be at home for Christmas, both in California and Texas. And God bless us everyone for Skype.

Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol, Ca. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com

Maybe this will be the year for good wishes, loving thoughts and no gifts. When Santa, the spirit of Christmas formerly known as Mr. Big Box, slips only a few envelopes under the tree.

Envelopes not with gift cards but with little notes inside that read something like, “A donation has been made in your name to (some worthy cause) and whose selfless efforts will lead to greater peace and harmony than by my going to the mall to buy you something you can’t afford to buy for yourself and I really can’t either.”

It could be our good karma Christmas. A day on which we gather with our family and give out good cheer but nothing that comes in a box with a gift return slip taped inside.

This no-gift option is something that Father Christmas and I are thinking of presenting to our immediate kin. It will have to be decided soon because we are a gift-giving family. We have tried downsizing. We’ve set price limits. We’ve drawn names so that we only give to one person. Then we amended that plan to allow side presents for everyone else in the form of stocking stuffers. But sweaters and salad bowls don’t fit inside even jumbo stockings. So people went ahead, bought big and stacked their over-sized items on the floor under the appropriate stocking, taking us back to the old days of piles of presents for all.

There isn’t a Santa we know who isn’t short on jingle this year.

But without presents, why get up before dawn on Christmas morning to dive under the tree? Could we still have our ritual without the main attraction? We could sit around in our pajamas and play our favorite Gladys Knight and Mariah Carey Christmas albums and still indulge in the Christmas morning menu of bagels, lox and cream cheese and some form of brandy to splash in the coffee.

Still, rituals are hard to break and no one wants to be called a Scrooge but really (and I’m rehearsing now) everyone’s on a tight budget. There isn’t a Santa we know who isn’t short on jingle this year. Yet our family is lucky to be among the employed and the housed, and we still have our health and can buy lox. But there is a growing band of needy out there. So let’s suck it up this year and share with those who don’t have a choice where to put their money.

But what do we tell the grandkids? Do we announce, “Well, Christmas is really about spending time together so have a bagel” or do we make an exception? There is the Christmas story told in our family about one small child so overwhelmed by the number of gifts piled up around her feet that she started crying and kicking them away. That child, now the mother of two, has already requested that we please keep it to a minimum.

How about this new twist to the family ritual? We choose our favorite local agency or organization that constantly gives to our community – a school, library, women’s shelter, clothes closet or food bank and write a modest but meaningful check. We go lean with the kiddies but still get to scope out the cool new things painted red with wheels at the toy store and thereby contribute to the local economy.

And for the adults, I’m thinking books. Real ones, to encourage the art of reading and writing, to save our independent book stores and to preserve that other ritual that sometimes takes place over Christmas, when things go quiet and you take yourself to a cozy chair by the tree, open your book and a new story begins.