A Jewish Christmas Story

It’s that time of year again. The Christmas decorations have come out. Each year it gets easier for me as someone who did not grow up celebrating Christmas. I cringe a little less when people say, “Merry Christmas.” I still remember my sister and myself asking if we could have a tree and my mother always responding, “As long as we are Jewish, we will not have a Christmas tree.”

I still remember sitting in the empty movie theatre with my father and sister on Christmas day.

Yep, we grew up with Channukah, the celebration of lights. Fortunately, my Barbies had Christmas. They had a green paper tree and red paper stockings that I stapled together. They might have had a menorah too. Some of you already know Channukah is a minor holiday where you eat greasy food to remember the miracle of oil that lasted for eight nights instead of one. The fact that Channukah is in the winter led to gift giving as if it were a Jewish Christmas, but it is not. I’m sure if Channukah was in the spring, we would give out Channukah baskets full of chocolates and blue and yellow eggs.

I don’t know what they do in France as it is a closed community. But in the US, doing gifts makes Jewish children feel like they have something major going on during Christmas too, even if they don’t. Today, people think the Jews have been given some kind of equal rights because stores sell Channukah loot. But, the most important holidays are nowhere to be found.

Channukah has turned into something commercial just like Christmas, Easter and Halloween. Paper plates with Channukah symbols, dreidles, the whole lot. But in Israel, it is a mere lighting of the menorah and some red jelly-filled doughnuts. Being in Israel during Channukah is refreshing. You aren’t around any of the Christmas hype unless you head to Nazareth, Bethlehem or Jerusalem. You have to go looking for Christmas if you want it over there.

However, in the US and France, Christmas is a big holiday and I tend to feel left out. It's true that little by little I'm starting to feel part of it. People say, “Oh, but Christmas isn’t religious at all.” And now that I’ve experienced it, it definitely is not a religious experience.

Still, it doesn’t mean the whole world grew-up celebrating it. Everyone talks about the magic of it, and since I’m married to someone who grew-up with it, I have had to become more open-minded and less judgmental. In fact, I’ve realized I can be included if I want to be. No one is stopping me from participating. Quite the contrary, everyone around me is encouraging me to be part of the celebrations!

The truth is, I never thought I’d accept a Christmas tree into my house. A Christmas dinner with the in-laws was fine. The idea of a tree in our house was symbolic of accepting Christmas into my heart and it nauseated me.

After our first little girl was born, my husband slowly began to prep me. He’d say things like, “You know, we might have to have Christmas for our kids one day...” Sometimes he’d say, “Sunny, I don’t think we have a say in this matter.” He thought it would be mean to deprive them of it. Plus, he had grown up with Christmas in his family so it would be as if I were ignoring his upbringing if I denied this holiday in our home. That seemed unfair especially as he had embraced my Jewish roots and culture with open arms.

My sister, on the other hand, had been waiting for Christmas her entire life. As soon as she married her Christmas-celebrating beau, her tree went up. Diane was born for Christmas. She was not meant to be born into a Jewish home where you patiently wait to open one gift per day. Not for her. No. That is exactly why one unforgettable night, she did not wait patiently. One Channukah night, she was displeased with her gift. “I don’t like my gift. I want to open another one,” she said to my mother.

“You’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” replied my mother.

“No. I want another gift tonight, please?” Diane begged. And she kept on begging.

My mother had had enough. “Fine, Diane! Go ahead! Open your gifts. Open all of them tonight. You can’t wait? Fine! Open all of them now!”

“No, no,” she cried, tears streaming down her face, “I don’t want to.” But she did as she was told and miserably opened every last gift. Afterward, Diane retreated to her bedroom in humiliation. I felt sick for her. I went to her room and tried to cheer her up by playing her new Kool & the Gang tape and dancing for her.

“That’s not even the one I asked for,” she sulked, “I wanted the new one…”

Today, however, we both tend to agree that watching children unwrap in-numerous gifts in the blink of an eye after having spent weeks shopping and wrapping and planning, is anti-climactic. We both came to this sad conclusion the first time we witnessed Christmas with our in-laws.

I remember our conversation on the phone, “Diane, Christmas was so weird. I swear. It was like a blizzard! There was wrapping paper flying around, children making tons of noise and unwrapping gift after gift in about five minutes flat and then afterward, no one had any idea who gave them what, it was total chaos. Then, everyone came around to thank you and it was done!”

“Totally,” she agreed, “it has to be the most anti-climactic event ever. After everyone opened their gifts, I said to my husband, ‘That’s it? That’s fucking it?’ It’s totally lame.”

My first Christmas in the working world was bizarre. I worked at a landscaping office with a bunch of highly uneducated people. Yes, that sounds mean but I can back it up.

Evidence 1: The phone rings, my colleague who wears green sweat pants, is fat and pimple-faced, but claims she was once a dancer, hangs up the phone and announces, “My boyfriend was just arrested. He was a security guard for Chase and was stealing people’s credit card numbers…”

Evidence 2: At the Christmas party, my other colleague who claims to have done a world tour but merely visited Australia 20 years ago gets so drunk with her husband; they start a fight with another couple who wants their Blockbuster Video gift card during the gift exchange.

Evidence 3: My boss was addicted to Percocet and often thought I was giving him the bird when I would rub my eye. He also referred to his business friend as “Spanky,” “Spankster” and sometimes “The Spank.”

Evidence 4: My manager, who not only was obese with a walrus mustache, but he was also a recovering alcoholic and a Born Again Christian who, when I bluntly asked him, “Do you think I’m going to hell?” he responded, “I don’t think you have to…”

But, that is a story for a different time. Back to Christmas, in our office one morning, one of our illegal Mexican workers dragged in a huge Christmas tree. My ugly colleague, the one who was the “world traveler” with grey stringy hair, a female version of Snape, brought out a big box of decorations. “I have something fun for you, Sunny,” she said with a sly smile. “You can decorate the tree!”

“Oh, no!” I thought. The only time I had decorated a tree was when I was ten years old. My friend’s mother scolded me for putting too much tinsel on the tree.

At the office, I started hanging random ornaments here and there until Snape snipped, “Hey! You have to put the lights up first. Don’t you know anything?”

“No,” I replied annoyed, “I’ve never done a Christmas tree before,” I wanted to add a lot of other stuff but didn’t.

After she composed herself from the horrid shock of a human who had never decorated a tree, I pulled out a string of M&M Christmas lights, talk about cheesy. I struggled to get them around the tree. The needles were prickling me everywhere. I felt punished and appalled it had been my duty to do this. Plus, it felt completely unnatural.

Needless to say, decorating the office tree did give me a crash course in Christmas trees. A couple years later when my sister put up her first Christmas tree, I had a few pointers and she exclaimed, “Wow, you’re helping me with my Christmas tree, sisi! And you think I’m such a Christian. Look at you!”

Yes, that was the moment I realized society had had their way with me. Many years later, after having lived in France, I finally accepted the idea to buy a small tree. I first had to discuss this with my sister over the phone, “I think we’re going to get a tree, Diane!”

“Oh, you’ll like it. They’re a lot of fun.”

“I don’t know. It’ll be weird having a tree like that in our home.”

“It’s not a big deal, I promise. Just get a little one, you’ll like it.”

My husband and I got dressed and strolled out of the apartment with our little girl. We went to a big store that had tons of artificial trees and ornaments. Where to begin? My husband was set on a small white tree with fiber optics built into the branches. Now what about the ornaments? There were so many kinds: traditional, hand-sewn, modern, glass, cute, colorful, what was our style? Do you mix and match styles? Do you stick to a certain color or theme? All these ideas were stirring in my head.

“Hurry up! God! Just pick a couple. Who cares? They’re fucking Christmas ornaments. They’re just ornaments!” cried my impatient husband.

Well, sadly, I had zero input and I had become so excited about this first tree I was going to create. My husband grabbed a couple different sizes of red, silver and black balls and two long red things, I forget what they’re called, and we left. Garlands?

When we got home, we started to set-up our tree. “No, no! Not yet! Don’t you know anything, little Jew?” he teased as he took off the garlands and put them back around the tree his way.

“How the hell should I know, god!” I retorted.

In the end, I was in charge of tying strings to all the ornaments. Later that day I called Diane. ”We have a tree. It’s super pretty!”

“See! I told you. They’re fun, you see?”

“Yeah. I thought it would be a big deal but it’s fine!” I said. And since then we do it every year.

The other day, my little girls and I put up the tree while my husband was at work, our first solo job ever and it looked good. When he got home, I said, “Did you see? We put the Christmas tree up. Go look!”

“Oh, cool!,” he said, “Great!”

Then, that evening being the first night of Channukah, we made potato latkes, lit the menorah, sang songs and ate chocolate. Our little tradition. We have blended the best of both worlds. And that’s A Jewish Christmas Story, fa la la la la, cha cha cha cha. (Yiddish “ha“ sound, don’t cha know?)