ISTM #53: A Jew's View of Christmas

[NOTE: We are on the edge of the Christmas Season, and I thought I would post my traditional story of Paula Israel and me and how it shaped us as a couple. This will be the 21^st year since I first posted it, and I have tweaked some terms and references, but overall, I think the points remain clear. In any case, let me be among the earliest of this season to wish you the happiest holidays, whatever you want to celebrate.]

We wish you all peace on Earth and goodwill to everyone.]

I grew up in the 1950s in New Bedford, MA, a working-class and overwhelmingly Christian city. Christmas was the biggest event of the year: Schools closed, parents enjoyed rare paid days off, and exciting new gifts would be opened.

Very often, the ground was covered by snow, and churches stood in almost every neighborhood with bell towers chiming all day long.

But none of this was for me. I was a Jewish kid, and this was the most Christian of all holidays. Still,  I just couldn’t help feeling the excitement. My parents, both born in Europe at a time when it was unfortunate to be simultaneously European and Jewish, were ambivalent about the holiday.

They loved the decorations and saw my excitement, but still, they persisted in reminding me that Christmas was not for me. We were merely observers of the joy in other people’s worlds. Yet they helped me enjoy it.

Live Reindeer & Dropped Jaws

Each Christmas season, we would drive through gentile neighborhoods where we admired the lights, decorations, and even manger scenes. On good years, we would journey 60 miles, all the way to Boston, a two-hour drive, to see the magnificent holiday display on Boston Common.

It was there I saw my first live reindeer, a sight that dropped my jaw. There was an impressive tree covered with tinsel, angels, and blinking lights. It was as tall as the adjacent Park Street Church steeple and brighter than the Golden Dome of the Massachusetts State House across Beacon Street. For me, at that stage of my life, there was nothing more wondrous to behold in the entire world that I knew of.

As observers, my family seemed to absorb the Christian culture that pervaded where we lived. More than once, my mother roasted a turkey on Christmas Day as aunts, uncles and cousins stuffed the house and then themselves. I remember the noise, laughter, and overly passionate arguments. One uncle consistently drank too much, and another would invariably land on a chair and snore with a resonance that made the overhead light vibrate.

These events were not held on Chanukah but on Christmas Day. This was because of the paid days off, I was told. But as a child, it confused me: If Christmas was a day to be observed only by Jews from a distance, why was my House of Israel filled with relatives and gifts?

Okay, there were limits: There were no stockings hung by our chimney with care, no sweet smell of pine trees in our living room. We had challah to eat but no holly to hang, and we never, ever called it Christmas. Instead, it was just the Holiday.

It was all so very confusing for me as a grade school kid. I was experiencing a cultural fusion, without admitting that there was ecumenism going on. I felt Christian envy.

True, we Jewish kids had Chanukah — a word that could be spelled almost any way we wished, and it would still be right. We had gifts, and cholesterol-soaked latkes, with maybe a side dish of chopped liver before the turkey would be served, supposedly making it more of a Jewish event.

Dreidels, not Angels

Instead of Carols, we sang Chanukah songs and played with toy tops called dreidels and it was fun. The American name for our holiday was the Festival of Lights, which would have been pretty cool except that our lights paled in the shadow of all that Christmas glitter of tinsel and bright blinking lawn and roof lights, not to mention talking animals and melodious Christmas carols pervading all shopping places.

Christmas was everywhere. We saw it in the windows of homes and stores, on lawns in parks, and even on rooftops. Yes, it was in the schools and no one thought of objecting to it at that time.

Then there was the Santa Claus.

When I knew my grandfather or Zaydi in Yiddish, he was already an old man with white hair. He usually wore a somber expression, but when he saw me, his face lit up. I looked forward to seeing him around Chanukah because he would reward me with a shiny new silver dollar, which he called Chanukah gelt. A dollar was big-time loot for an American kid in the mid-1950s, and I strongly resisted parental urges to put it into my savings account for college.

But Zaydi’s gelt wasn’t the main event. How could my grandfather ever compete with that other white-haired old guy, the one in the red suit who employed a bevy of toy-making elves and traveled via reindeer?

I liked getting a gift each of the eight days of Hanukkah, even if most were only socks and clothing that I would have gotten anyway. But while my Christian friends had but a single day to celebrate, theirs seemed to be the Big Jackpot: their spectacular gifts always eclipsed what we Jewish kids got.

It depressed me when the holiday recess ended, and I had to return to Betsy B. Winslow Elementary School to be subjected to glee-filled reports from my Christian friends who told me about awakening on Dec. 25 to find their living rooms filled like cornucopias, overflowing with such great stuff as Schwinn bikes, Lionel Trains, Flexible Flyer sleds and American Flyer red wagons and countless other cool stuff.

Faith-based Milk

And what did these Christian kids have to do to reap all this nifty loot? Just leave out a glass of faith-based milk and a few cookies for some strange guy named Santa Claus who was welcomed to enter while families slept, apparently unconcerned with this elderly intruder in a red suit.

Often, I wondered about this Claus guy. He looked too fat to slide down the chimneys he allegedly used for entry. I wondered why he never got hurt or sooty or burned by smoldering embers, or why he never got stopped by police on suspicion of burglary.

But mostly, I wondered why Santa liked those Christian kids more than us Jewish kids. I would have wondered also about Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist kids as well, but at the time, I did not know any. My world was smaller back then.

There was more to this Christmas thing than just Santa’s discriminatory practices. There were tales of talking animals, wise men, and all sorts of miracles involving a baby born in a barn who was the son of God.

Compared to that, Chanukah's tale of one night’s supply oil burning in a Jewish temple for eight nights seemed paltry. Big deal. Our most popular Chanukah song was, “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,” which had about the same melodic merit to me as Row, Row, Row Your Boat and was not quite on par with Silent Night, First Noel, or even Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. We  Jewish kids had no Mormon Tabernacle Choir, no TV special with Perry Como crooning Ave Maria. We never dashed through the snow, laughing even part of the way.

But Chanukah had one special part for a Jewish kid in that era–latent machismo. The holiday story was about how Judah Maccabee had led a successful guerrilla war against Roman occupiers, making himself a central figure in the whole Chanukah tale. At a time when the stereotyped Jewish male was a bit of a wimp, Maccabee made me proud. He was our Iron Man, our Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, our Jackie Robinson. He was Jewish, tough, and if you didn’t like it, he could kick your butt.

Current events have shifted perceptions of Jews over the years. Israel’s strident and aggressive militancy have virtually eliminated perceptions of the 1950s when American Jewish kids were generally regarded as studious wimps and easy prey for schoolyard bullies.

Redefining Heroes

We live in times when heroes may be regarded less for prowess with boxing gloves,  bats, or semiautomatic weapons. and more by their willingness to give to those in need, including those who, like Christ, find themselves homeless in cold weather.  

But that is all an aside from the central point of this post, a point that came to me back in 2003 when I was driving through what was then the sad city of East Palo Alto (EPA). While today, it is rated among the 15 safest cities in America, back then, it was among the most dangerous. In 2003, it boasted the highest murder rate in the country–beating out  Detroit, New York City, and Oakland for that dubious distinction.

It certainly was not yet a Safe City, and I remember making sure my car doors were locked as I sat at a traffic light, involuntarily witnessing a transaction between a mean-looking dude in a long leather coat and a kid wearing a Stanford sweatshirt on a bike.
 I saw a sign that reminded me of what I envied most about Christmas.

I had a strong urge not to witness what they were doing and looked upwards. Above me, was a huge banner stretched above the street. It hung, slightly lopsided, showing the words:  

“Peace on Earth.”

It was a great many Christmases ago when I first heard those words and fewer Christmas ago when I came to understand the bigness of the concept and the power of the thought. Peace on Earth is much, much bigger than Maccabee kicking Roman butt, and it is a goal so many of us have wished for but never seem able to attain.  As I write, there is blood spilling in a war taking place less than 60 miles from where Christ was born.

 The Paula Effect

In 1989, I met Paula–pictured above–who is now my wife. She had loved Christmas all her life, and by the time I met her, my ambivalence toward Christmas had reached full bloom. As far as I was concerned, if the Grinch stole Christmas, it just didn’t matter to me.

Paula was at the opposite end of the spectrum. She loved planning, shopping,  decorating, wrapping, and unwrapping gifts. She was fond of the silliness of putting ribbons on her head; she loved cooking and filling the house with unlikely assortments of people who somehow enjoyed each other.

It had always been a big deal for her and her daughters Mindi and Melanie. Christmas was a source of great comfort and joy to her, and I was the Grinch who had come into their lives.

Her zeal was at direct odds with my humbug attitude. I’ve never been able to explain how I felt in any way that made sense to her, and my presence in her life at the season she loved most was like a dart piercing her balloon. This was an annual issue for us from 1989 until 2003 when I found myself staring at the Peace on Earth sign over the then-dangerous streets of East Palo Alto.

The Real Meaning

That sign resurrected the real meaning of Christmas to me. It has allowed me to feel more of what Paula feels. I now see Christmas Day as about hope and promise the better elements of humanity will eventually prevail.

There are now two things special about Christmas for me. The first is a big thought, a dream or illusion of peace and goodwill between Earth’s many inhabitants– it’s Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, Confucians, and even maybe the Republicans.

I hope that we can share at least the common goal of keeping the Earth a fit place for the human race to reside. In my travels, I’ve come to know people of many faiths and hues, and I always marvel at how very much alike we are when we take the time to get to know each other before judging.

My writing and speaking has allowed me to travel a good deal and I have talked and eaten and drank with many people from varied places and have come to the conclusion that the Dali Lama was right: “We are all alike.”

Rekindling Hope

It may be a Christian day for you, but for me, Christmas is a day of hope for humankind. It redoubles at times like these when hope seems out of reach for so many and this is the greatest gift of all the great gifts Pula has given me.

I may not pray, but I do hope. If you do pray for these issues, I hope they come true and I will be grateful if prayers bring peace to this very troubled planet.

My second thought is smaller and more personal. It’s about Paula and how she catches the season’s joy as if it were something contagious. Whatever the germ, I’ve caught it as I find myself looking forward to the planning, decorating, gifting, wrapping and opening–albeit without ribbons on my head.

Happy Holidays, whichever you choose to observe, and may the New Year bring all of us closer to peace on –and for–the Earth.