(published VC Reporter 12/14/06)
(part of compilation: Naughty and Nice/Snarky to syrupy, these four holiday essays will put you in the mood)
When people find out I’m Jewish (and with a last name like Freedenberg,
it usually doesn’t take that long), they assume this time of year is
all about Hanukkah for me: dreidels and menorahs and eating at Chinese
restaurants on Christmas day.
Which is when I have to explain two things. First, I’m half-Jewish,
which means there’s a whole side of my family who know more about
rosaries than Rosh Hashanah. And secondly, the Jewish side of my family
weren’t exactly Hasidic.
When I was a kid, my dad always made an important distinction between
Judaism as a culture and Judaism as a religion. He was always proud of
the fact that being Jewish, unlike being Baptist or Mormon, meant you
were associated with a community on both of these levels. I think it
was also a justification for calling ourselves Jewish even though my
Dad hardly ever went to temple, we never ate kosher, and we only
occasionally celebrated Jewish holidays (and even then, it was
according to books like Passover in Twenty Minutes).
Furthermore, there are photos of my Dad as a kid in Brooklyn
celebrating Christmas with his full-Jewish family, a phenomenon I can
only explain as a result of assimilation. (When my grandparents’
parents came to New York from Eastern Europe, they must have picked up
the tradition of Christmas trees and gift-giving as a way to fit in
with their neighbors, or embrace American culture, or — dare I think
it? — to renounce the culture that caused their necessary flight from
their homeland.) There are more family photos of my Woody Allen-esque
dad, his mom, Martha, and his father, Harold, sitting around a
Christmas tree than there are of them lighting menorahs or praying over
Shabbat candles.
When I asked my Dad why this was, he would only say, “Christmas is a national holiday.”
That’s when I began to realize that so, in a sense, is Hanukkah.
The thing is, Hanukkah as a holiday isn’t really that big of a deal in
Jewish culture — more like Arbor Day or maybe Memorial Day than
Christmas. It’s only because of its proximity to Christmas (which, by
the way, also was scheduled in December for its proximity to pagan
winter solstice rituals) that it gets much attention at all. And so
Hanukkah as the Jewish kids’ Christmas is really an American invention,
one born either of (at best) the altruistic desire not to leave anyone
out or (at worst) the capitalistic desire not to miss out on any
marketing opportunities.
Sure, Jews across the world do celebrate the festival of lights. There
are menorahs with one candle lit each night. There are dreidels (and
the ubiquitous dreidel song). There are chocolate coins wrapped in gold
foil (called “gelt,” the German/Yiddish word for “money”) and there are
small gifts given.
But what most people think of as Hanukkah — a kind of Christmas
celebration where the tree is decorated in blue and the mountain of
gifts is opened over the course of a week instead of in one morning —
is a fairly new, and very New World, phenomenon.
And so at my Dad’s house in December, we always had a Christmas tree —
one of the kinds with stiff, flat branches — decorated in colored
balls, candy canes, tinsel and the occasional menorah or dreidel
ornament. There were stockings hanging from the fireplace. Outside, the
eaves and the bushes were decorated with Hanukkah-blue lights. Inside,
menorahs sat alongside red-and-green candlesticks. Some years we’d have
a lighting ceremony or two, though hardly ever eight in a row. Other
years, we’d celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas together on Christmas Day
— the pile of presents wrapped in poinsettia-themed paper were for
Christmas, and the one or two small boxes (usually Jewish-themed
jewelry) wrapped in silver or blue were for Hanukkah. And if it was a
really special year, perhaps my stepmom would make latkes (potato
pancakes) or my grandmother would make strudel, or maybe we’d spend one
night of Hanukkah at the house of Jewish family friends (who, I
suspected, were just as sporadic and “reform” about their Hanukkahs as
we were.)
Neither celebration was particularly religious. But both were
profoundly cultural. One connected us to the culture we’re living in;
and one connected us to the culture we came from — if only in an
abstract, symbolic way.
Now that my dad has died and I’m an adult, my Winter holiday leanings
tend more towards Christmas than Hanukkah. But I still feel a sense of
connection, ownership and pride when it comes to the latter. Whether I
choose to acknowledge the holiday or not, the fact that I have that
choice is a reminder that I belong to a special, rare group of people:
to my particular family, to the American Jews throughout history who
have improvised and adapted to incorporate their traditions with their
new culture, and to the Jews throughout time.
So, Merry Christmas and l’chaim. And to all a good night.
