Wait. Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah fall on the same day this year? December 25th! Thank God! Finally! Can we please keep this up?!
My extended family is a mishmash of Jews and Catholics, all committed to their own customs and traditions. At long last, we can stop running to different homes to commemorate different holidays on different days. I deeply appreciate this divine operational efficiency.
In my own home, I’ve done a few 360s over the years. I was brought up Jewish but quickly absorbed my mother’s unspoken mandate that any overt signs of Judaism were . . . gauche. (Shh!) Was it because her family fled Germany and Hungary for Hartford and Ohio and they felt compelled to assimilate? Perhaps. But still.
A mezuzah?! Absolutely not.
Dancing the horah? Oh no, no, no. Instead, my mother sent me to ballroom dancing school. White gloves required.
My Jewish mother even grew up with a Christmas tree, a tradition passed on to me until I married another Jew who found the custom offensive.
I traded in my glittery Christmas ornaments — a baked, painted wreath, a red shiny ball with my name engraved surrounded by ivy, a gold, tin Jewish star I made at sleepaway camp — for a glittery engagement ring.
Gone were the sentimental sounds of scratchy Christmas records as I dove into stuffed stockings. Instead, as a young mom, I meticulously sorted gifts into eight piles for Hanukkah: at least one gift for each night for each of my four kids. Inevitably, at least one of the kids was disappointed on any given night. And my brain was fried.
I missed the tree. I missed the simplicity of one big pile of gifts. I missed the milk and cookies for Santa. I missed being the kid myself. I missed the ritual of adding the star to the top of the tree, the lollipop Mrs. Claus ornament swaying as we wrestled it on.
I even missed the sidewalk negotiations to procure the tree, which my dad always made into a business lesson.
Thanks to those freezing street corner evenings, I still feel a jolt of pride whenever I can lower the price of anything.
I also missed the comforting sight of my mother’s loopy script “Santa” in the “From” section of her gift stickers. Of course, I pretended not to see the resemblance. That’s what the Christmas holiday teaches, right? Suspension of disbelief.
I mean, a stranger on a sleigh coming down our chimney in Manhattan? Did we even have a chimney? What was preventing the old man from getting in on other nights? What was preventing anyone from getting in if this gift-laden intruder could slide on down whenever he felt like it? Maybe Jews were too anxious for that tall tale.
My father remarried a Catholic woman for whom Christmas was non-negotiable. Then my brother did the same.
Christmas seeped back into our lives at their homes: a giant tree in my dad’s foyer, each year with a different theme; a teetering pine at my brother’s home on the West Coast that I occasionally decorated alongside my nieces and nephew.
My old ornaments were resurrected as I carefully placed them on prickly, forest-smelling branches, hoping the ornament’s weight wouldn’t pull it down onto the needle-strewn floor. Family traditions: upheld!
Hanukkah chez nous; Christmas chez vous.
Then one year, when we headed over to my dad’s to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah, there was a new arrival: a Hanukah tee-pee! Inside the white, towering tee-pee (think: Pottery Barn Kids) were blue, white, and silver-wrapped gifts in one big pile, all of our gifts were mixed up so we had to dive in to find our own.
“Mom! This one’s yours!” my son would bellow from the depths of the haul, before we all lit the Hanukkah candles together, the tree towering just beyond.
Even after I got divorced and remarried a Catholic (what is with us!?), family traditions were rewritten as he brought Christmas back. And yet, over the years I’d grown to become a much more observant Jew.
I looked forward to lighting the Shabbat candles on Fridays, observing all the Jewish holidays, and being a part of the Jewish community. (I even recently edited an entire anthology called “On Being Jewish Now” as I try to fight the rising tide of antisemitism.)
I didn’t want to give that up. Plus, the kids were all in Hebrew School with bar and bat mitzvahs in the planner.
My husband offered to convert to Judaism (what a mensch!) and then adopted all of our customs. But his family, with whom I quickly grew close, still observed.
Trees were back. Now, each year, we not only go to my dad’s and my brother’s but also to his dad and stepmom’s for a Secret Santa gift exchange under their tree, before inviting them all to our place for Hannukah. It’s a logistical hurdle during the Super Bowl of motherhood.
As for my mother? She remarried another Jew 20 years ago and gave up her tree, too.
She has also grown far more religious as she has aged, although I think she’s still a bit horrified by the mezuzah on my front door. (Yikes, if Santa takes the elevator, that’s the first thing he’ll see.)
And yet, with the steep rise in antisemitism post-Oct. 7, particularly evidenced in the soon-to-be-released documentary “October H8te” (my husband and I are associate producers), being Jewish now is complicated. I’ve personally doubled (quadrupled!?) down on my Jewish identity.
I wear a Jewish star necklace. I started an On Being Jewish Now Substack, edited original essays and spoke all over the world to unite the tribe. I’ve become an accidental activist, something I couldn’t have seen coming.
As I listened in my kids’ school assembly to the story of Hanukkah about the destruction of the synagogue just days after a synagogue was actually burned down in Melbourne, Australia, I felt the holiday’s relevance like never before.
Sure, we exchange gifts, but really Hanukkah is about never forgetting the past and believing in the power of our community to bounce back from whatever is thrown our way.
I can see why doing so during the period of the Second Temple was heralded as a miracle two millennia ago. We could use another one now, as we tear wrapping paper to shreds and block out the atrocities.
Like many others, my family is a patchwork quilt of Jewish stars and Catholic crosses united by a deep reverence for tradition, family, and custom itself. The fact that it all falls on the same day this year? Hallelujah.
Zibby Owens is the editor of the USA Today bestseller “On Being Jewish Now: Reflections from Authors and Advocates” and five other books. Follow her on Substack and Instagram @zibbyowens.
