One Home, Two Holidays

Growing up in the 1980s in a suburb of Baltimore, I was surrounded by so many Jews that I didn’t even know other religions existed until I was about 7 years old. So naturally, I thought that December only meant gelt and candles and potato latkes. Sure, I sat on Santa’s lap at the mall, but I didn’t really understand who he was. Sometimes Santa even wished me a happy Hanukkah.

Eventually I realized that, unlike the people in my neighborhood, most people in this country hung stockings or placed cookies by the chimney for a different holiday: Christmas. I saw it in movies and on TV, but it was a world I could only gaze at from a distance. The glistening Christmas decorations on houses in other neighborhoods drew my attention, but I knew that we wouldn’t be putting those up on our house. My Ukrainian friends, despite being Jewish, had brought with them the tradition from their country of decorating a tree on New Year’s Eve. But we didn’t do that, either.

I envied the Christians their beautiful trees, their tinsel, and their festive lawn Santas and reindeer. I vowed that when I grew up, I’d get myself a tree and decorate it with blue and white lights and dreidels.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love being Jewish—I just wanted an excuse to decorate, but when and where I grew up, Jews didn’t do a lot of outside decorating for Hanukkah. The most we did was placing the menorah in the window, as was customary. Perhaps it was because we thought it best not to call attention to ourselves. Ironically, after I left Baltimore at the age of 18, my parents learned about a “Hanukkah house” that decorated for the holiday in the Christian tradition: lawn ornaments, tinsel (white and blue), large menorahs dotting the front yard, a huge “Happy Hanukkah” sign dangling from the roof. This was such an unbelievable sight that Jews from all over the area would drive to see it, cramming into the small street and causing a headache for the neighborhood.

Then I married a Catholic, and it took me about two seconds to realize something wonderful: We would have a Christmas tree. My husband gently told me that he hated those hulking firs that scattered pine needles everywhere, so we were going to have a small, plastic tree. I felt a bit cheated, but when I saw my friends’ babies rolling around under their trees and trying to eat the ornaments, or their cats climbing the branches and causing chaos, I told my husband that a small tree was probably for the best.

When he actually brought out the tree for the first time, though, I felt unsure—not wondering if it should be bigger, but wondering if I should have it in my house at all. All of those years spent wanting a tree, and here I was uneasy about it when it was finally in my grasp. I worried that decorating a Christmas tree in my own house meant that I was doing something forbidden to Jews, even though I went to shul every Shabbat and even chanted from the Torah occasionally. I told my mom over the phone that we had a tree and she wasn’t sure how to respond. “Great?” she said tentatively, but I knew that she was wondering what I had gotten myself into. (My parents and in-laws were mercifully happy with our marriage, especially once we each assured our respective parents that we weren’t going to convert; my mother’s unease was specifically about the tree.)

As I helped my husband wrap the red tinsel around the small, plastic tree while he played classic Christmas songs (written by Jews, naturally) on his phone, I found myself relaxing and thinking that God would be pleased at all the joy we were bringing into our new home.

Before we even had kids, my husband and I had talked about how it would make the most sense to raise them Jewish (since they’d be born Jewish). Once that was settled, we didn’t think about the logistics until the babies actually arrived. Then came the efforts to explain to them what exactly was happening in our house, and what it meant to have a Jewish mother and a Catholic father. We kept it simple: The kids and I were Jewish, we attended Shabbat services every Saturday, and the kids would have their b’nai mitzvah when the time came, but we would help Dad celebrate his holidays. Every December, we would hang the ornaments and tinsel on the tree, eat Christmas dinner with their Catholic grandparents (who lived nearby), help the grandparents decorate their tree, but still have our Hanukkah celebration. It took a little while for my twin boys and daughter to fully wrap their heads around all these traditions existing together, but when they understood that they would be receiving presents for both Hanukkah and Christmas, they were happy to go along with anything. While each parent observes a different religion, we’ve formed a cohesive unit. My husband and I have an ongoing faux argument in front of the kids about which religion is “better”: He says Christianity improved upon Judaism; I say, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The kids find this hilarious. I’ve seen how my husband, a relentlessly curious person, enjoys learning about Jewish traditions.

In a normal year, when Hanukkah and Christmas give each other breathing space, my husband and kids and I light the menorah and eat our gelt. Falling back on my upbringing, I don’t decorate for Hanukkah except for hanging the occasional paper dreidels on the banister or placing a dreidel I crocheted on an end table. The colored glass menorah my parents gave us for our first wedding anniversary is lovely enough for me. I always fry up a huge batch of potato latkes for home consumption and then bring a bunch to my kids’ Catholic school, where the teachers, staff, and students snatch them up. Sending my kids to a Catholic school has made sense for a lot of reasons, but for our family, the small class sizes and sense of religious community (even if it wasn’t Jewish!) were paramount. A couple of times, I’ve given a short talk to my kids’ classes about the meaning and celebration of Hanukkah, and parents have then told me that their kids didn’t stop talking about Judaism and dreidels for a week. My kids feel special at their school, since the religion teacher often asks them about Hebrew and stories from the Torah. Around Hanukkah time, my kids are like rock stars.

In a normal year, we’ve already cleaned and placed our menorah on the shelf by the time Christmas comes around. Then, my children help my husband decorate the tree while listening to those same Christmas songs (the decorating takes all day, somehow, though this tree is quite small). I decided early on to let my kids have this special time with my husband while I do other errands, though naturally I jump in to hang my favorite ornaments on the tree. We usually then go to my in-laws’ for Christmas dinner. Knowing that I don’t eat any pork products (though I don’t keep kosher), my mother-in-law always cooks either steak or chicken, along with about a million side dishes (she’s Italian, so no amount of food is ever enough for her table). The children then spend time decorating that tree, which reaches up to the ceiling. They truly enjoy helping with this task, and my in-laws are happy to outsource the decorating, since they no longer feel quite up to climbing step stools to reach the higher branches.

This year, since Hanukkah begins on the first night of Christmas, we will be celebrating both holidays at once. We will bring our menorah over to my in-laws’ house. After decorating the tree and eating Christmas dinner, my sons, husband, and father-in-law will put on their kippot and we’ll all say the prayers as we light the menorah. Then we’ll pass around the gelt and the kids will open their Hanukkah and Christmas presents.

Of course, Hanukkah is a minor holiday for Jews while Christmas is one of the two major Christian holidays, but in my experience, the two seem to have a similar weight. Jewish children, like those from any minority background, generally want to fit into the larger culture, and Hanukkah in America has become disproportionately large in relation to other Jewish holidays. And yet, I make sure that my kids (12-year-old twins and a 9-year old) know just how central Christmas is for their dad and that it is a joyous time for him, his family, and Christians around the world. The Christmas concert in which my children participate at school, with its candles, lovely music, and readings from the Torah and New Testament, underscores this every year. For me, Hanukkah and Christmas are two sides of the same celebratory winter coin, and the warmth and community that both my kids’ school and our shul provide at this time of year makes this even more true for us.

I love seeing the expressions on people’s faces when I tell them that we celebrate both holidays. At first, they look puzzled, but then remember that we’re an interfaith family (although people often assume that I’m the Catholic spouse and my husband is Jewish because of his black hair and thick beard). Then comes the inevitable question about gifts: Do your kids get a million presents? Of course not, I say. They get a very reasonable number—these children will not be spoiled.

I know that every house with a menorah or a Christmas tree will be festive this year, but those few with both a menorah and a Christmas tree—well, they won’t need any other lights. It’ll be bright enough already.