What Exactly Is A Jewish Christmas?
I don’t know what my fellow Jews consider celebrating a Jewish Christmas, but I’m going traditional. The 3:45 showing of Hunger Games 2 followed by Chinese. Well, actually Asian Fusion and I’ll probably have the veggie sushi. Zen’s does sushi really, really well, after all. Not only that, we’ve found a friend who’s not Jewish to come with also. At first I thought, being of a certain age, Paul was a Christmas orphan. But he assures me not. He’s a Druid, claims he, and considering the magnificence of his garden, maybe he’s not even joking.
Christmas is a strange holiday for me. I grew up with it. I enjoyed it as a child, felt oppressed by it as an adult. When I became Jewish, nearly forty years ago, I thought I could be done with it once and for all, but it’s part of the culture. You can’t escape it. From the piped in carols at CVS that start before Thanksgiving to the parties and gift-giving orgies everyone around you delights in, it’s everywhere. So the wise thing is to adopt a ‘tude.
My husband long ago decided the Japanese ‘tude suited him. He celebrates whatever cultural elements of Christmas he can without doing damage to his identity. That means he loves singing carols, which he learned in school in the days before sensitivity to diversity. If he had a voice, I’m sure he’d be a member of some annual Halleluiah Chorus group a la our buds from Tokyo. When the season rolls around, never have I been so grateful that he’s tone deaf.
We don’t do a Hannukah Bush – that would be entirely too weird for us. In fact, we don’t give each other Hannukah presents, even when the holidays fall especially close to each other. I’m pretty vigilant at not confusing the holidays. Hannukah is Hannukah. That means menorahs and latkes. Christmas is Christmas. We all know what that means. In my house, the twain should not meet. But then my birthday is in early January, so I still get winter gifts and don’t feel like I missed out. Not sure if that accident of birth is cheating or not.
Anyway, when the Jewish Book Council asked me to blog three times this week, Christmas week, for their Visiting Scribes series, I thought, ok, I’d love it! But secretly, I worried the world was so busy no one would notice my blogs that particular week of crushing cultural solidarity. Then: all right. If that happened, I thought, it would be my willing neck in the diversity noose and maybe there’d be a blessing down the line.
Holy mackerel, though! My blog seems to have gained some traction! I wonder if it’s another cultural crossroads at work since the blog (and two more related blogs will follow) is entitled: Is your husband black? and concerns some curious questions I’ve had as an author who works in the field of race relations and the Deep South. Hmmm. Read for yourself and let me know. . .if you don’t mind and Santa has given you a little leeway. . . http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/_blog/The_ProsenPeople/post/is-your-husband-black/
