QNA: what’s the deal with Jews and Christmas?

In an attempt to re-start my Adventures in Judaism blog, I’ve decided to start a sort of FAQ series called (drumroll please) Questions Nobody Asked. In other words, questions I’ve been wrestling with that I thought others might be interested in my answers to. (Isn’t that how FAQ lists get generated anyway?)

The first question I’d like to tackle is a timely topic: “what’s the deal with Jews and Christmas?”

Why has this question been coming up for me lately, you might ask? Well, if you feel the need to ask then I suppose you haven’t been living in America for the past month and a half. There has been the pervasive saturation of the auditory atmosphere with Christmas music that started the day after Halloween. There have been the people wondering out loud on all sorts of social media whether “Merry Christmas” is okay to say as a generic salutation this time of the year. There has been my department’s “Christmas Potluck” that was decorated thoroughly in red and green, tables scattered with Santa and even Christian themed word finds and crosswords to play, and food supplied almost entirely with variants on ham and shrimp. And there was this past weekend spent helping my mother decorate her house for Christmas and making cut-out cookies that my kids liberally blended between Hanukkah, Christmas, Autumn, and Spring symbolism. So. Christmas is everywhere, even if you’re Jewish. 

So how’s a Jew to respond? Boycott all things Christmas and act offended when wished a Merry one? Act like Hanukkah is a Jewish response to Christmas and splatter menorahs and dreidels and six-pointed stars everywhere there are Christmas trees and Santas and manger scenes? Or embrace the “holiday spirit” and celebrate “secular Christmas” this time of year?

My first answer comes from a little revisionist history of the season. Back in ancient times, pagans celebrated the solstice time quite publicly and sometimes demanded participation in some of their public rites. Jews developed a legal tradition of it being prohibited for Jews to participate in other religions’ holiday festivities lest one inadvertently end up worshipping a false deity in the process. Often the occupying power gave the Jews an exception from these public rites as a way of keeping the peace. Sometimes they didn’t. One of those times led to the world’s first war for religious freedom, which in turn led to the celebration of Hanukkah. 

As the Western world Christianized, pagan solstice celebrations were replaced by Christianity’s signature holiday: the birth of the savior, dubbed Christmas. Jews obviously felt they could not join these celebrations any more than they could join the pagan ones, lest they end up worshiping a human-cum-deity in the person of Jesus. Lest they celebrate the birth of the man who led to the downfall of historical Judaism as Christianity rose and frequently took it upon itself to oppress us. As a result, at various times in our history with Christendom, the winter holiday has been a time to exclude and marginalize Jews or even to repress and abuse us. As I understand it, European Jews learned to stay at home on Christmas Eve and Christmas, lest their lack of celebration be used against them. 

So, given this history, Jews should not participate in any sort of celebration of Christmas. Hence the practice among some Jews of just boycotting all things Christmas. Hence my refusal to attend a Christmas Potluck that my department keeps refusing to rename a “winter holiday” party. Hence the way some Jews wince when wished a “Merry Christmas.”  It’s not only not our holiday, it can be seen as an anti-us holiday. Red and Green can be seen as the colors of oppression. 

But then Jews started living cheek-by-jowl with Christians in America. Going to the same schools. Seeing friends get presents as Christmas was slowly but surely transformed from a religious holiday to the gift-giving holiday par excellence that it has become today. Wondering if Santa thought their friends were “nice” enough to merit stockings full of presents, why weren’t they?

So the practice of giving small amounts of gelt at Hanukkah slowly transformed into a tradition of giving eight small presents, one each night of Hanukkah, and in some houses the gifts became not so small as the Jews tried to keep up with the Joneses. Go to Israel and ask about the practice of eight gifts at Hanukkah and you will probably be met with a blank stare. For Jews in most parts of the world, Hanukkah is a pleasant but relatively minor holiday. Gifts are given at Rosh Hashanah (new clothes), Purim (food and maybe small trinkets), and Passover (“bribes” to get kids to return the found Afikomen), but not at Hanukkah. 

And yet, in America the need to make our kids feel they are not missing out on something major leads to the perception of Hanukkah as “the Jewish Christmas”. My coworker asked if our kids wake up to lavish presents all eight mornings of Hanukkah. Of course they don’t - Hanukkah is a night-time holiday, for one thing, and no family can afford eight lavish gifts in a row. Certainly no Jewish family would feel obligated to. But yet there is this perception that we need to put Hanukkah out everywhere there is Christmas to “compete”. Hence my kids adding Hanukkah cookies to the Christmas cookies they baked for teachers. Hence me making a menorah out of Christmas lights and posting it on our wall at home. Hence the High School choir choosing to add “a Jewish song” (that had no connection with Hanukkah, but never mind) to their “wintertide” concert that was otherwise 100% Christmas music. Blue and White are the colors of our resistance. 

But then, there is the question of whether, in this day and time, Jews are really still prohibited from celebrating Christmas at all. Today, Jews feel free to dress their kids up for trick-or-treating at Halloween, despite that holiday’s origin as a pagan celebration of life and death. Today, Jews feel free to take their sweethearts out for St. Valentine’s Day and to dress in shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day despite those holidays’ origins as Catholic saint’s days. 

So, in an age when the primary public celebrations of Christmas are playing Jingle Bell Rock and Santa Claus is Coming to Town, decorating evergreens with silver bells and flying reindeer, and stuffing stockings with trinkets and gift cards (and often spilling gifts out of the stocking cause let’s be honest, kids are maniacs for Santa gifts these days), how is Christmas still a forbidden religious holiday? At what point does Christmas become secular enough that we can ignore the word “Christ” in the name and jump into office Christmas parties with Santa hats on and let our kids write letters asking Santa for gifts and put a thoroughly secular wreath on our front door and an elf on our shelf and lights on our house?

I don’t actually have an answer to that. At the moment, there is enough Christ in Christmas that I will not let any of it into my home. I put lights out on the front of my house, but I shaped some of them into a menorah. I boycotted my department’s Christmas party (however little good that did), and I wished my students a happy holiday instead of a merry Christmas. And I made sure that at least some of the cookies my kids bring their teachers are Jewish symbols. But I will also go celebrate Christmas in my mom’s house, and I will do it without a twinge of Jewish guilt, because we will be tricking our menorahs along with us and celebrating Hanukkah right along side. Pathetic assimilation or multiculturalism at its best? I’ll let you decide. 

In the meantime, whatever holiday you celebrate, have a chag  sameach!