Throughout the past few weeks I have had numerous conversations with parents of current students and alumni about the Christmas dilemma. Parents struggle with how to respond to the dazzling allure of the Christmas season. We smell the trees when walking down Broadway, we see the glistening lights in every store window, and our children know all of the lyrics to Jingle Bells. Parents report that their children want to celebrate Christmas, decorate their homes, and sit on Santa’s lap at Macy’s. As parents we might find ourselves asking the question that Coach Sue Sylvester sardonically asked in the recent episode of Glee, “Is Christmas just a time when Jewish kids get slightly uncomfortable?” Can Christmas provide more than just a source of tension within a Jewish home with young children?
Certainly living in a diverse city like ours, we confront the reality that others are celebrating a holiday that many of us may not be. It is a concrete moment when we may need to say “no” to our children, “No, we don’t celebrate the holiday,” or “no, we won’t have a tree in our home.” For others a compromise position may be devised – whereby you do take elements of the Christmas holiday into your home. But then more questions arise – why do we draw the line where we do and what does it feel like to have to defend our choices? For some, there may be some ambivalence about what it means to be out of step with the larger cultural celebration. For others, this season may bring you back to childhood memories of living in a place where there were far fewer Jews celebrating Chanukah with you – a time of being an outsider, a time of feeling isolated. Or for those of you who were raised in a Christian home, or a home where there was a tree, this may be a time when you wish you still lived in this context.
While this season may feel somehow fraught, it is useful to remember that your child may be having a very different experience than you had and may not be sharing your identical anxieties. They may be asking to celebrate Christmas and they may be attracted to elements of the Christmas holiday but your child is also having rich and meaningful experiences around Chanukah as well. They are in a school that values and celebrates this holiday. Your children worked for hours on their menorahs, they sang Chanukah songs, they cooked many tasty treats, and they enjoyed a family celebration within the classroom. They are also being raised in neighborhoods where Chanukah symbols are prominently displayed in stores and residential buildings, and they have many friends who are also preparing for Chanukah.
Everyone needs to find their own way to respond to these various forces but I think the first thing is actually getting clear within yourself about how you feel. If you are clear inside (and also with your partner), it will be a whole lot easier to parent in a thoughtful way. When my children say, “isn’t that a pretty tree” I feel comfortable joining in their admiration but I am also comfortable explaining that we don’t have a tree in our own home because we are Jewish. We can go ice skating at Rockefeller Center, we can see some of the junky Christmas movies, and we can even sing along to Jingle Bells when we hear it playing on the radio. But from my perspective that doesn’t make my family less Jewish. In my family, we also go to my in-laws’ home in Florida and celebrate Christmas with them, because they are Christian. We do this because being a part of my husband’s family, and being there for their special holiday celebration is of high value to me and our family. And I believe that respecting and staying close with family is a high value and is consistent with my family living as Jews. My in-laws have also travelled to join our family for Shabbat dinner and recently, my daughter’s bat mitzvah.
Is it complicated for my children to be raised in a Jewish home where they have their mother’s family celebrating Chanukah and their father’s family celebrating Christmas? It can be. But I think that children are capable of understanding complexity, over time. Their questions change each year and as they grow and develop their questions grow too. But through the years I have also become more comfortable with this conversation. I have also found more and more ways for me and my family to develop deep and authentic connections to Chanukah and Jewish life more broadly. The more we celebrate Chanukah, the more menorahs we slowly accumulate to decorate our dining room table, the more we tie the holiday to community service and giving, the more we admire the flickering Chanukah candles after they are lit, and the more connected we all feel with this tradition.
This holiday season may crystallize the complexity of being a minority in a Christian majority culture. But it is interesting to note that according to some population studies, 80% of American Jews celebrate Chanukah in some ways, making it the most observed Jewish holiday. Rabbi Irwin Kula points out that one might think that if you wanted to assimilate, this December season would be the perfect time. One might think that the last thing you would do is celebrate your own particular holiday precisely at the moment when the rest of the culture is celebrating a something else. Why wouldn’t we all just abandon our traditions at this moment when Christmas surrounds us? But instead we do, in many ways, what the Jews did in the first Chanukah story – choosing to express our distinctiveness rather than just blending into the prominent culture of the time and place. I believe that Chanukah provides families with an opportunity to live our values, to celebrate our differences while also respecting and honor other peoples’ traditions. It is a time to bring miracles into our lives, and to notice the miracles that are already abundantly present – beginning with our children, their menorahs, and the lights that are illuminated when these menorahs are lit.
Wishing you all a Chanukah of light and happiness and a wonderful vacation.
Ilana received her B.A. from Harvard College and a Master's Degree in Education from Bank Street College. She was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives there with her husband and three children.
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