Our Jewish December

My Dad grew up Jewish in a Catholic neighborhood. His parents owned the corner store, so he was a popular kid, able to offer a piece of salt water taffy or a cherry licorice dollar to kids dragged into the store alongside their harried mothers.
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My Dad tells me he understood he was Jewish, but that didn’t mean much. He was just like the Catholic kids—trading Green Hornet comic books and playing stickball. And he was just as rich as they were, meaning not at all. My Dad was born in 1927, so his childhood knew no extravagance.

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If there was a time of year when he felt a little different, those weeks after Thanksgiving, with the Christmas season in full swing, would have been it.

One year when my Dad was about five, he was playing outside after Christmas. He remembers there had been snow the night before—just a dusting, but enough that his Mom told him to wear boots and gloves. He thinks he must have been on his way to his best friend, Patrick Maloney’s house. But on his journey, he found something astonishing. Lying on its side at the corner was one of those beautiful green fir trees, the kind that all his friends seemed to have.

It couldn’t have been very big, and it was likely losing needles quickly, but to my Dad’s innocent eyes, it was a thing of beauty. Forgetting his friend, he grabbed the scrawny tree trunk and pulled the not-much-bigger-than-a-shrub tree behind him, hiking the half block back to his house, up the three concrete stairs to the front door. It was awkward trying to pull it inside, so when he got it partway in he called for help.

His Mom found him tugging at the tree, pine needles scattering throughout the tiny front entrance, and she yelled, “Get that thing out of the house.” And that astonished him—just as much as finding the tree, free for the taking, right there on his own corner.

My Dad laughs at the story now, but I can imagine his sweet five-year-old self gulping back tears as he was made to drag the tree back to the corner. “I couldn't understand why my Mom was upset. I didn’t realize we didn’t have a tree because we were Jewish, I thought it was because we were poor.”

My kids understood their connection to Judaism more, perhaps. Maybe it was their Jewish preschool. But, like my Dad, they grew up with Christian neighbors. There were three families in a row and the eight kids only spanned five years in age. Front doors were left open and footballs were dropped in one yard at nightfall, rediscovered at daybreak and dropped in a different yard that evening.
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One December afternoon, I was enjoying absolute quiet as the baby napped. My two older sons were not at our house, which meant they were at one of the neighbors' homes. The phone rang — it was my neighbor Lisa. She struggled to tell me something, but each time she began to speak, she fell back into hiccups of laughter. Finally, she put my oldest, then about five, on the phone.

“I want permission, Mom,” he said. “We’re making a snack and I don’t know if I should eat it.“
I was congratulating myself on having raised a son who would turn down one of Lisa’s famous “little snacks,” which likely included a full-size candy bar chopped over ice cream and doused in fudge. But it wasn’t the gluttony he was opposed to, it was the final product.

Lisa had cut pieces of toast diagonally and slathered them with peanut butter. She added two milk duds for eyes, a red hot for a nose and two twisty pretzels for horns. Ta-da! A reindeer.

Unlike my father who wanted to pull Christmas into his house kicking and screaming, my son was afraid to even nibble at a holiday that wasn’t his own. I reassured him sharing pretzels and peanut butter, no matter what shape, was a fine way to celebrate our differences and come together in neighborly love. I also reminded him to wash his hands after playing outside. (Being a mother is a never-ending vigil.)

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My husband probably experiences the most unique Decembers of any of us. He was raised Catholic and celebrated his first two decades of Christmas about how you’d expect, with magical, twinkle-lit trees and charming toy train sets. It wasn’t until he approached his thirties that he converted so our family would share one faith.

Being a former Christian at Christmas is a mixed bag. Hanukkah is a lesser holiday in our religious calendar so that means we don’t shell out big bucks on holiday spending, which he likes. We also don’t have the high expectations that Christmas seems to bring. But something is definitely missing for him.

When his parents were alive we shared in their celebration. Since their passing, we usually go to a Chinese restaurant and for a movie. (Yep. It’s not just a thing in movies.) He has told me that he feels a bit adrift from the traditions he grew up with — the traditions the majority of Americans celebrate. 

One Hanukkah years ago, we brought all the kids to Target to each choose a toy to donate. On the way to the toy section we meandered past the fantastic Christmas department. Six hundred square feet of light, color and magic. Near the toy section, my husband stopped the kids and said animatedly, “Look kids! Our endcap!”

Three feet of shelving held a collection of menorahs, candles, dreidels and Hanukkah gelt. Nothing too tempting. We all shrugged our shoulders and moved on, no one sobbed, begging for a tinsel-covered Star of David.

Because I didn’t grow up with Christmas as my holiday, I can’t claim to understand what December feels like for my husband. My children are adults now. They come home for Thanksgiving and we spend the day all together. But the holiday is bookended as they try to squeeze in visits with every childhood friend they ever knew. So on Christmas, when all those other friends are busy, my husband said that he likes how Christmas Day means we get the boys all to ourselves.
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So while sometimes December can feel like standing outside the magical perfection of a snow globe peering in at its winter white charm, it can also be a series of imperfect, stolen moments of family, colliding with the holiday to make December uniquely our own — our Jewish December.

​Read the original at Perfection Pending

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