Since Nathan (Jewish, but not to Lubavitchers) and Christopher (not a Jew, but frequently mistaken for one) have weighed in on this topic, I figured I’d throw in my two shekels. So:
As a Jew (even the black hats have to admit it), I’m completely opposed to any celebration of Christmas. No tree, no Santa Claus, no egg nog. (Hey, I’m allergic to milk!) I’ll allow Jew-penned carols to be sung, but not played, in my home. Midnight mass is acceptable, but only to gawk at the eccentric traditions of other cultures.
I’m also an atheist, which makes my recent embrace of Hanukkah a little perplexing, even to me. Mostly, though, I think it’s about frying potatoes and baking chickens.
My wife, Jean, is a Buddhist, but the kind of Buddhist where, if she were Jewish, she’d be eating bacon-wrapped bratwurst and wearing jackboots on Yom Kippur. (Which frankly sounds kind of hot.) She doesn’t understand my opposition to Christmas.
It’s fun to decorate a tree, she says.
Really? I decorated my first tree six years ago in New Delhi, and it was okay.
We can give presents, she says.
We can do that for Hanukkah, too. If I actually thought we should celebrate Hanukkah, which I don’t.
At the moment, however, Sasha has little to do with this. She’s not even a year old, and has no conception of holidays. Or, really, days. But we know the issue will rear its head within a year or two, and we’ve been trying to figure out a compromise. Currently, we’ve decided to do something called a “Chinese tree.” Unfortunately, we have no idea what the hell that’s supposed to be.
We do have luck on our side in one way, though. Sasha’s birthday is in early December, which means she’ll be getting a ton of presents around the same time everyone else is. And if that’s not enough, we can give her a few more on… Well, I don’t know what we’ll call this made-up, ultra-commercialized holiday, but I do know when it takes place: the Thursday before her school’s Christmas break, so she can show off her brightly colored new crap to her friends and prove her parents love her.
Which we do, honestly. But not enough to deck the halls.