This Jew’s Christmas
By
Leonard Zwelling
“Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.” Associate Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan at her confirmation hearing in 2010 when asked where she was on Christmas.
Nowadays, that’s a pretty standard answer when Jews are asked what they will be doing on Christmas. The usual more complete answer is “going to the movies and eating Chinese food.”
Not this year.
The first night of Hannukah is on Christmas night, so we too will be celebrating, but this is most unusual. Hannukah is usually earlier in December, even occasionally falling immediately after Thanksgiving.
But I want to discuss how Christmas has changed for me over my 76 years. It is a much different holiday for everyone my age, but for this Jew it is night and day different. You see, Christmas used to be my holiday, too. No more.
I think I first knew that being Jewish was different in kindergarten or first grade in Stratford, Connecticut when I had to explain Hannukah to my gentile classmates. That evening the teacher had to call my mother. Apparently, the notion of eight nights of gifts was a bit subversive and my classmates were considering converting.
Throughout my childhood, I was surrounded by Christmas. All of my classrooms had Christmas trees. I suspect most of the classrooms in the Bellmore, Long Island school district did, too, except my mother’s fifth-grade class. She refused to have any symbol of any religion in her public-school classroom. My parents were very liberal, but rigid in their thinking and believed in absolute separation of church and state, including in public school classrooms.
Nonetheless, their son (me) learned all the Christmas carols through music classes in public school. I was forced to listen to Amahl and the Night Visitors, Menotti’s operetta about the birth of Christ. I loved it. By the time I was in my high school choir, I was singing all the Christmas carols in concert and even sang The Messiah.
During my senior year in high school, the senior class went into downtown Bellmore on the Saturday before Christmas and the boys dressed as Santa and the girls dressed as elves and we took wish lists from the children. When my rabbi heard that some of his congregants had partaken in a Christmas ritual on Shabbat, he was furious.
Once I got to Duke, my only connection to Christmas was Christmas break which was before finals during my undergraduate days and moved to after finals during my freshman year in medical school. From then on, it was Winter break and Christmas was no longer a part of my life.
I did learn the New Testament during my second semester that freshman year at Duke where Religion was a mandatory course. I came away not understanding why Christmas was so important to Christians when the origin story of their religion was clearly Easter. Like Passover for us, it was a miracle of redemption that was the seeds of the faith.
Today, Christmas holds no magic for me, as it once did during my childhood. It’s a day to go to the movies and to find an open restaurant. We will be eating Persian food this year.
There was a time, not so long ago, when Christmas was something more than commercial, especially for me. I actually looked forward to the songs and the lights. Today, not so much.
I wonder if the Christians miss the old Christmas as much as I do.
