A Jewish Christmas Story
I grew up in a household that refused to celebrate Christmas. Here’s how I navigate the holiday season.
When I was seven, my best friend brought her Christmas present to school on our first day back from winter break.
“It’s a bell from Santa’s sleigh!” she told me. I smiled politely, knowing the harsh truth. My parents had ingrained in me that Santa wasn’t real as soon as I was old enough to grasp the concept of Christmas.
I grew up in a moderately observant Jewish family that celebrated Shabbat every Friday night and kept Passover every spring. Determined not to lose themselves to a Christian-dominated society, my parents maintained a strictly no-Christmas household. Stockings and ornaments were a no-go during the winter holidays. Presents came in small doses throughout the eight nights of Hanukkah, not in one night under a tree.
In a year when anti-Semitism has boiled to the surface– too much to brush off–, I’m taking the time to explain my experience of the winter holidays to non-Jewish friends. It’s hard to describe the pressure that comes with a society-wide pause to daily life that you’ve been taught to disregard. The wreaths, warm lighting and hot drinks are comforting–a favored American tradition. The gift-giving, though aggressively capitalistic, is exciting. To reject any of these rituals, especially as someone born and raised in the United States, is alienating. To embrace them makes me feel a mix of guilt and imposter syndrome.
My parents’ no-Christmas rule was complicated by the fact that my mom was half-Christian. She grew up with a Jewish father and Christian mother, choosing to undergo an official conversion to Judaism when she was 13. Each December, we visited her family in Ohio and attended a Christmas party at my great-grandpa’s house. I stood in the living room eating deviled eggs while fielding comments like, “I hope Santa comes even though there’s no snow this year.”
Part of being a Jew who doesn’t celebrate Christmas is honing your approach to interactions like these. I responded with a smile and “I hope so too!”
Each December, 7.6 million of us decide how to approach the red and green wave that consumes the U.S. Families figure out whether to celebrate Christmas and how to approach the holiday outside the home. Hanukkah became popular in the 1800s as an alternative to Christmas, but American Jews have adapted many different approaches to the winter holidays. Some Jews have embraced Christmas, either celebrating it straight-up or incorporating it into their rituals like Hannukkah bushes and the myth of Hanukkah Harry. Others, such as my parents, see these practices as acculturation and keep their festivities strictly Jewish. After so many centuries of marginalization and subsistence, why cave to the commercial pressures of a Christian holiday?
No two Jewish families are the same when celebrating the winter holidays. My household celebrated all eight nights of Hanukkah when I was growing up. My parents sometimes hosted a party for the occasion, inviting relatives and friends to light candles, eat latkes and spin dreidels. My roommate, also from a Jewish family, grew up celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas. I remember a Jewish classmate in fourth grade whose family didn’t celebrate Christmas but put up a Hanukkah bush and incorporated other adaptations of Christian traditions each year.
During my first winter break in college, I decided to get a Christmas tree from the plant store where I’d worked as a high school senior. I decorated the foot-tall evergreen with a single ornament; the thin, supporting branch buckled with its tinsel weight. I joined my family to light the candles on our menorah every night of Hanukah that week, but before bed, I admired the tree on my bedroom windowsill. I’d always loved Christmas trees, and I could have one without giving up the traditions of my upbringing.
When I tell people about my holiday experience growing up, I often hear some iteration of “You can celebrate Christmas without being Christian.” This is true; Christmas in the 21st century is practically a national, secular holiday. But that doesn’t make my parents’ approach to the day wrong. Deep-rooted, hegemonic forces have shaped the modern iteration of Christmas. Considering this makes it easier to understand why one Jewish family might celebrate the holiday zealously while another might avoid it with just as much dedication.
I’m hoping this year that my fellow Jews can respect each other’s approaches to Christmas without judgment–non-Jews are devaluing us enough already. But I’d also like non-Jews to recognize the incredible variety and complexity of the Jewish experience. “Happy Holidays” can mean a menorah for some and stockings on the fireplace mantel for others. Both approaches are valid.
