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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