When I was growing up, there was no Christmas tree, no ornaments, no goose or fruitcake. No, I’m not a member of the Cratchit family, I’m Jewish. Though I grew up largely secular, my family didn’t celebrate the Christian holiday in any way, except by touring the department store windows on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan a few times.
Like many Jews, we marked Christmas by going to the movies and eating Chinese food. On the holiday years ago, I went with my parents to see “Schindler’s List.” I can only imagine that the percentage of Jews in the audience was close to 100 percent. My dad got angry that people were eating popcorn on such a solemn occasion.
We did observe the eight days of Hanukkah, lighting candles on our charmingly severe wrought-iron menorah and exchanging gifts that, by day three or four, reached the level of tchotchkes.
That all changed when I married Nancy, a Catholic. I’ve got plenty of company: In a 2020 Pew Research Center study, 42 percent of all married Jewish respondents indicated they have a non-Jewish spouse; remove Orthodox Jews and, for those wed after 2010, the number spikes to 72 percent.
This year, us interfaith couples face a bit of a challenge. The Jewish calendar is based on the lunisolar cycle, which does not sync with the Gregorian one. So Hanukkah and Christmas rarely end up on the same dates. Roughly every 10 to 20 years, though, they do; 2024 is such a year, the first since 2005. (Jewish holidays start at sundown the night before their first day; this year’s Erev Hanukkah, as that first night is called, is on Dec. 25.)
A 2003 episode of the show “The O.C.” popularized a term for the combining of the holidays: Chrismukkah. Trying to find a way to bridge his parents’ interfaith celebrations, Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) calls it “the greatest superholiday known to mankind.”
Though she is nonpracticing, Nancy looks forward to Christmas: the family time, the gift-giving, revisiting childhood memories. My first Christmas tree was purchased, installed and decorated with her. I will admit that, from my end, it was all a bit under duress. But I’ve largely come around, leaving the decorating to Nancy and our daughter, Anna, but joining in the family fun in doses.
We do also celebrate Hanukkah, which has its pleasures: Anna enjoys lighting the menorah, playing dreidel, singing a song or two — but that’s about it. Anna is truly the daughter of an interfaith family: This year, she both went to Jewish sleepaway camp and landed one of the leads in her dance studio’s production of “The Nutcracker.”
Anna identifies as “more Jewish” (Judaism is matrilineal, but she marches to her own shofar) and admits that, though she enjoys the Christmas tree and the trimming, she’s really in it for the presents and seeing her aunt and uncle, who stay with us for several days of food, drink, TV, games and holiday merriment. I’ve already warned her that she’s not doubling up on gifts this year thanks to the lucky temporal phenomenon. (Her response: “What?!”)
So this year, after the presents have been opened, wrapping strewed about, with “Elf” or “A Christmas Story” queued up on the TV, we’ll be lighting the menorah under the watchful eye of my one contribution to the Christmas tree: a Star of David tree topper.
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