This is my response to yesterday’s MidLifeBloggers Writer’s Workshop prompt: How does/did your family celebrate the holidays of December? Are you continuing a tradition? Changing one up? Starting a new one? How? and why? and is it working?
When my parents married back in the ’30s, they had a wedding that was Jewish enough to satisfy my mother’s Orthodox family, but not so traditional as to freak out my father’s more assimilated German Jewish relatives.
Our nuclear family, when my sister Linda and I came along, were what we now call cultural Jews. That is, we said we were Jewish; we ate matzoh ball soup; we paid lip service to the High Holydays by staying home from work/school. However, we belonged to no synagogue (although I did spend a couple of miserable years in Saturday School). The reason came down to this: my mother hated organized religion and my father was a confirmed agnostic.
They must, however, have loved holidays, because we did Christmas up better than most Christians I knew. We always had a live tree, a big one, really big, that was decorated with colored lights and shiny glass ornaments, some of which I still have. Our extended family in Pittsburgh included my aunt and uncle and my three cousins. The holiday was split up so that Christmas Eve would be at our house. My mother, who was the champion chef of the family, would make prime rib with Yorkshire pudding. We’d eat and make merry and then exchange the presents. Christmas morning, our family of four would open the gifts that were under the tree. Then we’d go back to my aunt’s for Christmas dinner. It was as Norman Rockwell a Christmas as some New York Jews could create: all the trimmings, no mention of Jesus. And Chanukah? That we didn’t do. My grandfather sent us gelt for Chanukah but my mother used it to buy us Christmas presents.
When my sister married a Jewish man, she brought our family Christmas traditions to her new husband’s family. They were confused, bemused and possibly not a little annoyed. Why was their new daughter-in-law celebrating Christmas? And her family–why were they even encouraging such a thing? But Christmas was such an entrenched part of our family dynamic that the only thing that changed in those early years of my sister’s marriage when we trekked from Pittsburgh to LA for the holidays was that there was no tree.
My sister’s three children all grew up with Christmas, just as we had. But they also grew up with much more of a Jewish education. Was this confusing to them? I don’t know. They seem to have arrived at their own understanding of who and what they are and, therefore, what holidays they celebrate. To a large extent that seems to have to do with who they married, although one could argue that who they married had a lot to do with who and what they understand themselves to be.
The oldest married a Jewish man who went along with our Christmases but also set the framework for a Jewish household. The middle child married an observant Jew, which means theirs is a strong Jewish home. The youngest married a Buddhist, and she talks about her issues with the holidays in the comments below.
Our extended family no longer celebrate Christmas. I’m not sure when it stopped. I last remember a big blowout–prime rib and all–at my parents house the year before my father died. The year after he died, we all went to Las Vegas to celebrate my niece’s 21st birthday. I remember bringing a teeny tiny tree, complete with miniature ornaments, that we put in the room where we opened our presents. I had moved away from LA by then, so the holidays were no longer family occasions. A couple of years, my youngest niece and I thought to make new Christmas traditions that focused on the fun of the holiday and not the presents. Eventually, however, even that ended, and now what I do for Christmas I do on my own.
What I do is possibly not unrelated to my having married two Christians. Probably I figured that they would be my excuse to recreate the huge Christmases of my childhood, and my first husband did just that. But my second one–for various reasons, he hated every minute of the holiday. I have soldiered on, creating my singular Christmas every year despite him. For me, it is all about the decorations and the music and, yes, the memories of family. True, there have been times, those periods when I’m feeling my Jewishness much more, when I’ve felt somewhat guilty about celebrating the holiday. However, the Christmas wreath on my door, festooned with ribbon and twinkling lights, is just southwest of the mezzuzah on the doorframe, and truth to tell, I like it that way.
I’ve created some Chanukah traditions for myself as well, but there is something about a holiday that calls for family and friends to celebrate. When I’ve had those around, I’ve done the latkes and the lighting of the candles. When I haven’t, I’ve sheepishly lit the menorah on my own, feeling slightly embarrassed as I mumble the prayer to myself. Interestingly, I ignore the gift-giving aspect of Chanukah. My sister, who loves nothing better than to give gifts, doles out one a day to each of her three children and six grandchildren. For some reason that seems excessive to me.
I wonder if I had had children how I would have dealt with the holidays. Would I have celebrated one or both, and how would I have differentiated between the two? It occurs to me now that Chanukah really is a religious holiday in my mind. It is connected to the history of the Jews, and I like remembering that connection. Christmas, on the other hand, is totally secular, all bells and whistles, party gloss and merry-making.
This year I will make latkes for myself–yes, I will, and I will try not to be sheepish as I light the candles (I will also try to remember to light them every night). This year, as in the past several, I will spend Christmas Day with friends who are as in love with the secular aspects of Christmas as I am. I will have, I believe, the best of what each holiday means to me. And that, I suppose,is all one can ask.
Photo credit: momlogic.com
Jane Gassner
