My daughter (a toddler) and I are "home"—on the east coast with my family right now. My family celebrates Christmas, and here we are staying at my brother's house-- full on Christmas. You name it- the tree, the nativity scene, the stockings, the cookies, all the holiday cheer. I wish that this part of the family (my family) celebrated Hanukkah, but they don't. And that's o.k. In MY home, we celebrate Hanukkah-- and we do it up big. And it's fun! My daughter is a little surprised by all the Christmas going on here, and she is definitely interested in it. And that's o.k. with me, because we are in their home. In our home we do it differently. And that's good too!
I figure that if we don't join in the big celebrations of my family, how can we expect them to join us in celebrating her Bat Mitzvah years from now? We know we are Jewish and have other wonderful holidays to celebrate (a sukkah at sukkot, lights and dreidel at Hanukkah, getting together with friends at Passover, etc. not to mention Shabbat every week!). My child loves our family celebrations in our Jewish home. She isn't going to love them any less because she sees how other people celebrate different holidays.
It's all good!
MC, Reform, Female
When it comes to Christmas, I find it a relief not to have to deal with the tree, the ornaments, all the decorating, anticipation about gifts, etc. Candles are a hassle-free alternative to the literal mess that accompanies the holiday. I'm reminded of these things when I visit my family members during the holidays - all this hassle, all this build-up and then, BAM, it's over. The only thing about the holidays that I miss are the traditional foods that I grew up with, but it's really not difficult at all to incorporate that into my Chanuka celebration. I spend Christmas with my family and exchange gifts, but I truly feel that this is THEIR celebration and not mine. I'm not pro-Christmas, but I'm not anti-Christmas either - just like I'm not pro- or anti-Chinese New Year, Eid al-Adha or any other celebration by an ethnic/religious group. Other people have their customs and that's great, but I have my customs and I choose to embrace them.
When I was a child and Christian, I loved Christmas, but now that I'm an adult and Jewish, those memories feel like they come from a different lifetime and were experienced by somebody else. I find that engrossing myself in Judaism by celebrating the holidays as best I can and making Tefilla, Teshuva and Tora study something I engage in every day doesn't leave me with much of a hole that needs to be filled when it comes to the holidays. Truth be told, I identify so strongly as a Jew that I sometimes forget that I'm a convert and led a completely different life up until just a couple years ago!
DL, Conservative, male
Over the past few years I've created family traditions on Christmas. Before my daughter was born I would spend Xmas eve with friends at a Jewish-themed comedy show, eating Chinese food. Now I try to spend the day with friends away from the crowds and shopping malls, and the evening with a special movie and Chinese take-out. I would suggest either It’s a Wonderful Life (classic for some) or Dirty Dancing (one of my favorite chick flicks and so Jewish!).
I have to admit Christmas is always complicated for converts. We have family who wants to see us and they are always going to be requested to join in their celebrations in ways that may make a new Jew question their Jewishness. I've found it can be easier when Christmas and Hanukkah overlap because there will always be activities at your shul to participate in and Hanukkah parties to attend.
By GW, a Conservative female
For all the years since our conversion I have made a conscious effort to run away from all things Christmas. I did a good job of shutting down all memories of my childhood Christmas experience. I thought I had moved on and by stuffing them down I could ignore them. Since all our Christian relatives were dead it was pretty easy to ignore.
This year, however, I decided it would be ok to have a classical radio station playing while I did my housework - even if it did play Christmas music 3/4 of the time. The other day a simple guitar version with no lyrics of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" came on. For the first time ever since our conversion over a decade ago I sat still for those 3 or 4 minutes and allowed my mind to drift back to my childhood Christmas memories - all the simple little things that were good about the holiday. It was like a power point presentation in my mind - frame after frame of snapshots slowly fading into view. There was the plaster of paris snowman, reindeer and santa's sleigh my grandfather in Long Beach installed on his roof each year, the antique porcelin dolls that had been my parents from their own childhoods that we put on the tree, the stockings we had for our dogs, the jello mold my mother made each year, the Bing Crosby recording of White Christmas that was required listening for the weeks before Christmas. Dozens of little flashbacks.
Tears poured down my cheeks and it felt quite cathartic to think about. This quiet little solitary trip into my Christian past was not about religion - but about family connections, traditions, sights/smells/tastes that recurred year after year.
I have created these same memories for my own Jewish children - wonderful Jewish holiday memories. Just as I remember squirming in my seat during Midnight Mass and long Easter services in my childhood Lutheran Church, my own kids will remember long days at Shul during High Holy Days. They will also remember lighting the menorahs, Seders with friends, our annual Christmas eve Chinese feast and movie with our chavurah and much, much more.
I think every year at Christmas I am going to set aside 5 or 10 minutes to be alone and think about my childhood Christmases and allow myself a good cry. Tears of joy, happiness, loss, sadness. I don't really miss Christmas. I miss the people, now all gone, I used to spend it with. Then I will spend the rest of the holiday building closer ties with my Jewish friends and thinking about how to make all the Jewish holidays more memorable for my own children.
By OP, a Reform Male
I've had a significant "turn around." The xmas which occurred during my conversion process was an odd one because I felt obliged to keep up the xmas-celebrating out of some feeling of honoring my own tradition, yet I was starting to see it as "someone else's holiday". In fact I remember telling a friend who is also a convert that she SHOULD have an xmas tree (she was wondering if it was OK) because she shouldn't deny her own heritage.
Well, by this year I completely disagree with that! I see Christmas as an entirely invasive event to which I claim as little ownership as possible. What's further fascinating to me is that I now also associate a religious connection to Christmas which I previously didn't. By that I mean, in my pre-conversion years, Christmas was definitely a secular event, which, while having a religious origin, had no sense of religion to me, since I didn't have a sense of religion. But now, since I do have a sense of (Jewish) religion, I completely associate Christmas with Christian religion, even though I know plain well that for millions of people, my own family included, religion plays no part in Christmas. That makes no sense but is a very powerful feeling. I've developed a fairly unreasonable resentment that the Christian world has been historically oppressive to the Jewish people, and I now see Christmas as the poster-child of that oppression.
By CC, a Reform male
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