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No Longer That Most Wonderful Time of the Year

For converts, December can be the cruelest month

by
Marc Tracy
December 28, 2009

On the day after Christmas, the New York Times published a sympathetic article on the emotional bind that many former Christians who have converted to Judaism find themselves in during December 25th:

For thousands of people who convert to Judaism, Christmas is a difficult day of balancing what was once intimately theirs but now represents, in some ways, the essence of what they are giving up.

We are surprised that the Times resisted the temptation to point out a small coincidence in its piece: the paper of record’s lead anecdotal convert, Charlotte Jett, shares a name with maybe the most pop culturally famous convert, Sex and the City’s Charlotte Goldenblatt (née York). But the article is worth your time, and important to read: after all, Christmas is only 362 days away!

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.