Stories abound of Jewish people who grow up warm and secure in their faith. Those for whom the eight days of Hanukah didn’t compete with Christmas: Jewish nurses, firefighters, and doctors (the ones my mother wanted me to marry) who take Christmas Eve shifts to ensure that their Christian brethren are home for the holidays. These are the lucky Jews with traditions of Chinese food and a movie on Christmas.
I wasn’t one of them.
I grew up with my nose pressed right up to the glass. Like any other bird, blind to the barrier between the glowing scene inside and me, I banged until my nose almost broke.
There were no Hanukkah traditions in my house. (Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah songs make me blue with envy.) Naturally, I longed for the sparkles of Christmas. One year my sister and I hung stockings. What were we thinking? That the keys to the kingdom lay in our old limp socks? Mom was out on a date; we stayed up as late as possible until, exhausted, we went to bed giddy with the prospect of what would be spilling out the tops of those socks. Like in the books! Like the movies! All we’d previously lacked were the smarts to put our socks out.
We didn’t know what Christmas stockings were supposed to hold, but we knew it must be pretty darn special for the entire world to talk about it—Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas. I’m sure my poor mother either didn’t notice the socks or, more likely, swore at us for leaving our clothes all over—whatever she thought, no sparkles greeted us that Christmas morning. (Though, not to present us as all-pathetic: as seen below, we had dolls in our Brooklyn apartment!)
I spent one Christmas with my friend Bobbi’s family, trying to be as adorably Christian as possible so they’d invite me back. They did not.
As a teen, I went out with my similarly Christmas-deprived Jewish best friend and bought a tiny Charlie Brown-style pathetic tree on Christmas Eve. (Another movie!!) and put it up in her room, decorating it with God knows what. Our long dangling hippy earrings? Her mother rolled her eyes.
Finally, I left home and gave up the Christmas ghost for a few blessed too-cool-for-holiday years.
Then I became a mother. Christmas reared its head. My children would have a giant piece of American pie! Why shouldn’t Santa love us? We lived with a non-Jewish couple in a big old Victorian House, and I fell into Christmas as though I were Jesus’ sister. Religion played no role for any of us; my outsider status faded as we celebrated an orgy of food, presents, lights, goodwill, and Christmas stockings so full we always needed an overflow bag. But the fly in my Christmas pie were friends, who’d never stepped in a church, exclaimed, as though I were crashing their personal gates of heaven, “What! You celebrate Christmas?”
The kids got older. Christmas became more and more of a cracked-glass fantasy. I considered retreating into a sole-Hanukah celebration, but I had nothing to draw on, so I saved all my Jew mojo for Passover, not having any Easter envy and possessing Passover role models.
At a certain point, I felt like I were Barbra Streisand in “The Way We Were.” Santa was the Robert Redford I’d never genuinely possess. He’d hang out with me for years but never really committed. Santa was my married man.
At this point, Honey, I’ve Changed the Christmas. My trees went from light-crusted evergreen to miniature rosemary tree to a weird steel Crate & Barrel thing; sentimental ornaments line my window along with Stars of David. My holiday morphs: from empty socks to dripping tinsel to latkes and macaroons laced next to candy canes (but always, bagels.) Orgies of presents flip from being Chanukah to Christmas and back again.
I’m older. I try to see more clearly. I hope I’ve given my daughters a fun merry-go-round of cultural inclusion and the knowledge that no matter what, we belong.
Forgive me this day, my Santa jealousy. It’s hard growing up in a world where something is shining on a mountain, and you think everyone except you is allowed to climb up. Was it such a sin to dip a Jewish toe into this holiday ocean of goodwill? I envied those who could turn their backs, but I didn’t have the will to spend the day at the movies.
One year, when the kids were away, we went almost full-on Hanukkah: Brisket, latkes, and potato kugel, and to make sure we stayed ecumenical, cookies from the local Italian bakery. To the great glee of my (Jewish) husband, who’s been generous and kind in his acceptance of his once-a-year-faux-Shiksa wife, we returned to our roots by watching movies and eating pan-fried ravioli. But, of course, on Dec 25, I woke up feeling bleak and empty-sock-ish, wondering if Santa baby and I were breaking up or just on a break.
Years ago, I began my Christmas soul-searching by asking Santa Baby, can you love a Jewish girl?
Today I think I know what my head-long plunge into my insane version of Christmas-Hanukkah-Macaroon-Candy-Cane Kitchen-Sink holiday represents. Like every human on this earth, my past shaped me.
Some of us learn from experience; some suffer forever—with luck, we knit new ways to keep warm.
When my daughters’ father fries a batch of mouth-watering latkes, he feeds them love with crispy potatoes.
Gifting those I love makes me extraordinarily happy. Watching my grandson smile when he holds just the right book, my daughters wrapped in the softest of scarfs, my son-in-law happy, holding exactly what he put on his list, and pretending to like the Planned Parenthood hat, and my (ever-patient) husband laughing as socks explode from a box brings me joy.
If I invite Santa to the party, he will come. When I light the Menorah, a festival ensues.
When my husband shleps out at 7 am to get the freshest bagels at Rosenfeld’s for Christmas morning, he gifts me with his open heart, shows me the most real of love, and keeps building our mixed-up traditions.
And is my holiday mixed-up? Yes. But wars killed millions in the name of religion—I’ll take my swirling mess of a holiday.
My family includes a plethora of identities—cultural, religious, gender-spectrum, talents, neuro, city, country— perhaps, if all of us opened our hearts to a bit of borrowing and a cup of kindness about sharing, we’d build a more loving world.
For 2022, I’m declaring this: I don’t have to ask if Santa loves me cause I bet he’s happy that I love him. Or her. And the new Santa I’ve built? He’s sticking around. And he can’t begin to compete with my bagel-man.
