It’s a harmonic convergence: Christmas today/Hanukkah tonight.
I have excellent credentials as your columnist-du-jour: I’m Jewish but I’ve twice married women who grew up with visions of sugar plums, not latkes, dancing in their heads at this time of year. As a result of these exogamous unions, I have had a Christmas tree in my house every year since at least 1987, when my first child was born unto us.
And every year, while I’m lying on the cold, cold ground, sawing away at the trunk of a Fraser fir, I have the same vision: My Yiddish-speaking forebears gaze upon me from on high, call me a yutz and wonder how I went so wrong.
And every year I show them that I have not abandoned the traditions of our people by lighting Hanukkah candles, hanging a dreidel ornament on the Christmas tree, keeping an electric menorah burning in the window, and grating knuckle skin into the potato mixture when making latkes, as required by Jewish law.
In other words, I’ve got December’s Judeo-Christian holidays covered. If you’re wondering how often Christmas and Hanukkah overlap, you needn’t Google it, for I already have: about five times per century. Previous time: 2005, the year that gave us glamping, sexting and truther.
It may seem like a lot has changed since then, but consider some of the top stories from December 2005:
- Some 40,000 protest inaction on global warming in Montreal.
- Israel continues to strike Palestinian areas in the Gaza Strip.
- Benjamin Netanyahu becomes the new Likud leader.
Plus ca change, eh?
You might think Chrismukkah is some newfangled melding of traditions, a product of our secular and intermarrying age. Not so. According to Wikipedia, credit for the “first historically documented” Christmas tree goes to Fanny von Arnstein, a “Jewish socialite” who brought a tree into her house in Vienna in 1814 (though the article notes that Fanny imported the tradition from Berlin, which makes the whole “historically documented” thing something of a head scratcher).
Egregiously, the Wikipedia article does not say whether Fanny and her family ate takeout Chinese food on Christmas night, as all good Jews have done since Christ Their Savior was born.
Before I went to Hebrew school, I assumed Hanukkah was the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar. After all, what’s more important in life than presents?
The rabbis disabused me. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a much bigger deal. But biggest of all, they said, was Shabbat — the Sabbath — precisely because we observe it every week.
Hanukkah, I subsequently learned, acquired inflated importance solely because it coincided with and therefore competed with Christmas. It just wouldn’t do for the Gentile kids to get sleds and bikes while we Jewish kids settled for walnuts and raisins.
My family never had a Hanukkah bush, but we did acquire a giant cardboard dreidel, around which the presents were spread as if it were a Christmas tree. Best Hanukkah ever was the one when I came downstairs and saw train tracks encircling the dreidel. Lionels, baby!
I loved the little light on the front of the locomotive, especially at night with the room dark and the engine making a cone of illumination as it chugged around the track. Way better than nuts and raisins.
Let’s face it, though. Even with electric trains, Hanukkah can’t hold a candle, so to speak, to Christmas. Once I had kids, I was all in: ‘Twas I who wrote the note from Santa thanking the kids for the cookies and milk (and carrots for the reindeer). Though I tried to disguise my handwriting, the kids soon wised up. Santa’s Borscht Belt tone sounded suspiciously like their dad’s. So, for that matter, did the Easter Bunny’s when I composed clues for the egg hunt.
I also went caroling with the neighbors in those days, though I knew only some of the lyrics. I should have followed my dad’s lead. His Yiddishized version of “Good King Wenceslas”: Yai-dai-dai-dai/yai-dai-dai, gesungen die alte bobe (sang the old grandmother).
We Jews, somewhat self-congratulatorily, like to think of ourselves as the People of the Book, though I read that the term originated in the Quran to refer to Jews and Christians whose scriptures Muslims recognize as part of their tradition. In this spirit, perhaps, I skipped the Christmas tree farms this year and constructed a tree of books.
This was not an original idea. First I saw a photo of such a “Bookmas” tree on social media. Then, naturally, there were how-to videos on YouTube.
My first attempt was rounded – more Hanukkah bush than Christmas tree – but now it’s cone-shaped and trimmed with lights and ornaments and if we don’t stamp our feet when we come in from the snow it may not collapse until after New Year’s.
In the meantime, we’ve tested it under real eggnog-drinking conditions. It works!
Have a merry/happy holiday, whatever and however you celebrate. And thanks for the gift of your attention.
