Throughout high school, college and my early twenties, I exchanged holiday cards with my friends every year. Christians got Christmas cards, Jews got Hanukkah cards, and Christians-slash-Jews got semi-humorous cards about celebrating two holidays at once. I never thought to not send cards; that was just what well-behaved girls did, like wearing slips under skirts.
And then, at some point, the exchanges stopped. I can’t identify exactly when it was, but there must have been a November when I walked past a Papyrus store and, for the first time, for some reason, did not go inside. Simultaneously, it seemed, neither a result of my behavior nor the cause of it, I stopped receiving cards, too.
I think in part it was because the further from childhood my friends and I got, Christmas grew in importance while Hanukkah returned to its rightful place as a minor holiday. Now that we were grown-ups, the Christmas-celebrators had to figure out how to fit live trees into their apartments and purchase grand and often difficult-to-source presents for each member of their extended families. The non-Christmas-celebrators got to look on in bemusement and eat latkes.
December is a complicated time to be a Jew in America. I annually find that once the holiday season hits full swing, all the Christmas gushing, tree-trimming, “what do you want this year?” asking and red and green everything makes me a little… bah humbug. I start getting more sympathetic to Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge than an Occupy-friendly writer should. But I’m not strictly Scroogish: I frequently vacillate over just how strongly I want to signal my nonparticipation in Christmas. Do I want to say an emphatic “Happy holidays” back to the presumptuous “Merry Christmases,” because I’m in a defiant mood? Usually. Conversely, do I say “Merry Christmas” back to peoples’ gentle “Happy Holidays” if I’m feeling conciliated and ready to grant joy to others in exchange for their acknowledgement of me? Or do I just smile and act aloof about the whole thing overall?
I want it on the record that Christmas is not my tradition or holiday. I get grumpy when the seasonal aisle is all red, but I also laugh at the excesses of those blue, star-of-David displays. I don’t want people making the same kind of fuss over Hanukkah that they do over Christmas; that makes me feel dishonest about a minor holiday. While I dream of my dad’s latkes and enjoy lighting the menorah, I can’t pretend that Hanukkah for us is as huge and insane as Christmas is to our non-Jewish friends. It isn’t. You give each other diamonds and huge toys, at least according to the thousands of commercials I see on TV. We give each other gloves and books. You squeal over fruitcakes and puddings; we say “pass the applesauce” and kvetch about work the next day. (You want to make a giant fuss and give me time off for Passover? Go for it.)
What makes this Christmas different from all other Christmases? For the first time, I have had to explain my typically unspoken understanding that this all-encompassing holiday is not ours.
Whenever my 7-month-old daughter, Lila, and I take walks, I name and explain everything we see. In recent weeks, that has included the pretty Christmas lights adorning our neighborhood stores. My daughter is dazzled by the decorations, especially our building’s Christmas tree. It’s ironic, since Lila’s musical taste skews incredibly Jewish, from “Tree of Life” to “Oseh Shalom.” Then again, perhaps it’s logical. Lila is enthralled by shiny objects, and she’s always loved lights. She’s never seen a Christmas tree before, and it must be confusing that all trees live outside, except the one in our apartment building’s lobby. So, I do my best to explain everything in terms an infant can understand. This tree is pretty, and we can admire it, but it’s not our tradition.
Dear Susan Katz Miller:
Most of the points you make in your recent HuffPo piece, “8 Reasons My Interfaith Family Celebrates Hanukkah and Christmas,” make so little sense, from where I sit as a Jewish mother, that I feel compelled to respond. I am aware that by doing so I am wading into the roiling waters of touchy issues around intermarriage and the choices interfaith families make.
1). You write that you see “no theological conflict between Judaism and acknowledging the birth of a Jewish spiritual seeker who stood up for the poor and oppressed and changed the course of history (that would be Jesus).”
Perhaps you ought to brush up on some of what distinguishes Christianity from Judaism. Where to begin? All of mainstream Judaism says that there is a conflict between Judaism and accepting Jesus as the redeemer. Jesus and his disciples departed from Judaism so radically, in their rejection of Judaism’s basic tenets, that they birthed an entire new religion. How does that not count as a theological conflict?
Today is Christmas. As someone who is in the process of converting to Judaism, — and blogging about it here — this is the first Christmas that I won’t be celebrating. Since just after Halloween — when the Christmas decorations started appearing all over stores, and when the Christmas music began playing everywhere from Duane Reade to Barney’s — I’ve been “in training” for how to mark the holiday as a Jew.
Two years ago was the first time in my New York life that I picked a fresh Christmas tree from a seller on the street. I was living with roommates on the Upper West Side and my Jewish partner amused me by patiently waiting for me to select the perfect tree, barter with the seller, and lug it home, over our shoulders. She watched as my roommates and I acted like small children with twinkles in our eyes as we decorated the tree with white lights and carefully selected ornaments. When we were finished, we admired our handy work with glasses of wine in hand. I casually asked her if she’d had a tree growing up; she had not. Why would she? She’s Jewish.
If I’d known that that tree would have been my last tree I would’ve taken more pictures of it. Instead I thought nothing of it as I took it down a few weeks later.
A post-Hanukkah, pre-Christmas epiphany has guided me to a new understanding about Jews and gentiles: While we both love a deal, there’s a difference in how we snag it.
I arrived at this inter-religious realization at the tailend of this holiday shopping season, when newspaper circulars, emailed promotions and Facebook ads tell us to buy, buy, buy. As if we actually needed any instruction in that department. Sales promotions attempt to take the pain out of holiday spending with a promise of free merchandise — stuff we really want but really don’t need — if only we first jump through a number of hurdles.
I was ready to jump through those hurdles for three free pairs of socks offered by an outdoorsy retailer. And yes, I said socks.
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