In some ways, I’m an unusual Jew. Despite having two Jewish parents, I grew up celebrating Christmas as a cultural holiday. My father’s first marriage was to a Christian, and their interfaith family celebrated both Christmas and Chanukah each year. Later in his life, after meeting and marrying my mother, he didn’t want to give up Christmas. (It probably didn’t hurt that my family has German ancestry on both sides. We spent years living in Germany when I was young, and Christmas is a huge cultural event there.) To my father — an agnostic, a pacifist, and a humanist — both Christmas and Chanukah reflected the importance of gathering with loved ones during the coldest, darkest days of winter to create warmth and light. I learned to value the commonalities rather than dwelling on the differences.
This year, for the first time, my mother visited Spokane for the holidays. (My father died in 2003.) She brought a menorah for our baby son, beautiful multicolored Chanukah candles, dreidels, and chocolate gelt (coins). At my in-laws’ annual Christmas Eve celebration, we lit the first candle, sang a Chanukah song, and talked about the historical events that inspired the holiday. I appreciated my wife’s family for their willingness to let something new into their decades-old Christmas tradition. When people from different religious backgrounds get married, the whole family — both people’s parents, siblings, and so on — becomes an interfaith family. Opportunities for learning and mutual appreciation abound.
Intellectually, I understand what my fellow Jewish FāVS writer, Hyphen Parent, is saying in her piece “When Christmas and Chanukah overlap.” She writes, “Christmas is not our holiday. We don’t want to take anything away from our Christian friends, neighbors, or family; we just don’t want to be a part of it ourselves.” Because of my somewhat unusual upbringing, I feel differently. I’m thrilled that my family’s interfaith roots will continue through me and my wife, and that our son will experience aspects of both traditions — Judaism and Christianity — as he grows up. I’m glad to be a Jew whose understanding of Christianity continues to increase. (Dr. Amy-Jill Levine is a hero of mine in that regard.) My wife and I, as well as our parents and other family members for the most part, are secure enough in who we are to be around each other’s traditions, and even theology, without feeling that our own are compromised. In a sadly fractured country and world, I’m very grateful for that.
“My wife and I, as well as our parents and other family members for the most part, are secure enough in who we are to be around each other’s traditions, and even theology, without feeling that our own are compromised. In a sadly fractured country and world, I’m very grateful for that.”
You and I often have different perspectives on things (“2 Jews 3 opinions” after all). I’m going to venture to guess that has more to do with observance than security.
The way Jews observe Judaism greatly affects how we interact with (or don’t) and how we see the world (both Jewish and non-Jewish).
True. Despite having a bar mitzvah, helping lead services as a teenager, spending a semester as treasurer of Oberlin’s Hillel, living at the Ravenna Kibbutz, and my current job as director of SAJFS, I’m not religious. And I think that’s ultimately the difference. Cultural/secular Judaism is much more assimilative than religious Judaism, though Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism are fairly flexible (built as they are to adapt to modern times, within reason).
I am grateful that FAVS has the benefit of two different kinds of Jewish perspectives, though I think we’d benefit from a Chabad POV as well. And yes, you’re right — “secure” probably isn’t good shorthand for what I mean. I think a better way to look at it is, I not only expect but want Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Mormonism, etc. to be significant parts of my life via the friends and family who practice them. And I think by virtue of your religiousness, Judaism represents a more central role in your life, at least in terms of worldview, than it does in mine.
However, I’ll also say I’m glad I can serve the Jewish community, and Spokane in general, from a position and representing an organization built on Jewish values, That’s more Jewish involvement than high school me, college me, or pre-2008 Seattle me would have imagined. Between organizing the Jewish film festival and visiting with members of the community on a regular basis, I feel that this is truly my community, with all the joys and frustrations that entails. I felt that way about the Ravenna Kibbutz, to be sure, but that was a small sub-community within Seattle’s larger Jewish community. In Spokane, the community we have is small and relatively easy to get to know if you have impetus to do so. Also, BTW, I was sad to hear how invisible you felt here as a Jew. It’s weird; it took my moving to the smallest Jewish community I’ve ever known to be more involved than I have ever been.
It’s also possible that I took your statement “Christmas is not our holiday” too personally. Obviously, for your family and for the majority of Jews, that’s true. But because of the unusual nature of my family’s relationship to Christmas, it really does feel like our holiday — my family of origin’s, and that of my current, interfaith family, including myself, my spouse, our son, my mother, and my many in-laws. Ultimately, from a traditional Jewish standpoint, of course you’re right. It’s hard to explain my father’s love of Christmas and his unmistakable identity, nonetheless, as a Jew, and how all of that affected and influenced me, in a short FAVS piece.