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livFor me, it usually works quite well when chanukah falls really early compared to the solar calendar. This year it coincided with the last week of term, which meant that there were lots of Christmas parties going on; when everybody else offered round mince pies, I offered doughnuts, and that seemed to go over well, and it felt generally festive and gift exchange-ish. To be honest I've always celebrated the end of the Christmas term as Christmas, and have managed to spend most of my life in an academic context where there is a last week of term to enjoy. I don't feel left out, and I don't feel I'm being forced into celebrating someone else's religious holidays, because everybody can enjoy the end of term and the prospect of a few weeks of vacation.
Given it's barely even the middle of December, I'm not with my family. I feel a bit silly lighting the chanukah candles every evening on my own at home; for me, chanukah is the careful turn-taking with lighting the candles and saying the blessings, left over from childhood when we had to share everything absolutely equally. And theological debates about whether chanukah should be celebrated at all, being as it's ideologically dubious (brothers), probably didn't actually happen historically (grandmother), lacks much adult relevant content (mother) etc... Instead I found myself more or less celebrating "virtually", with Twitter and FB full of pictures of people's chanukiot, and lots of people messaging me with chanukah greetings. I actually felt a little sad when the last candles guttered out last night, because now it's just dark dark dark for the next few months and I can't even light pretty little flames to cheer myself up.
I did fine on the eating of fried food front, with lots and lots of excuses for doughnuts, plus indulging myself with some chips one night and a Chinese takeaway another. Today I rounded off with proper Staffordshire oatcakes, as I was passing one of the few remaining traditional hole-in-the-wall oatcake shops which is mostly a breakfast place so rarely open when I am nearby. Well, not quite "proper", as proper oatcakes are loaded with multiple different forms of pig meat, but even the mushroom and cheese approximation I had was seriously drenched in butter.
Chanukah party at shul for second candle, Sunday afternoon / evening. (The good thing about this latitude is that you can celebrate an evening festival at 3:30 pm, which is a better time for children than actual evenings.) We lit lots and lots of candles, and didn't set anything unwanted on fire, and absolutely butchered Maoz Tzur. Then I organized some rounds of human dreidl for the half dozen children present. They were reluctant to play at first, but once the first kid won big, everybody wanted just one more turn in the hopes of winning back their lost stakes. Amazing how easy it is to get people hooked on even the most basic form of gambling. I'd told the community that if they couldn't think what to bring as a contribution of food, doughnuts were always a good fallback. In the event every adult present brought at least a dozen doughnuts, which was, strange to recount, too many doughnuts for one afternoon. The kids got a bit wild with that much sugar, but I think they had a good time. And I managed to find suitable small gifts for everyone, which was a challenge considering that I had no idea in advance how many children or what ages or genders to expect.
I invited the girls from the student interfaith group to join me for fifth candle on Wednesday evening. I knew that not everybody could come, but a good half a dozen told me they'd be there, and then nobody showed up. I think that some people genuinely tried to come but then couldn't find the J-soc rooms (which admittedly are fairly well hidden), others were just being studenty about agreeing to show up to events but not willing to regard that as a commitment if something better came up at the last minute. I was a bit miffed by this, not that I was annoyed with any specific individual, but it really sets off my teenage insecurities around people finding it hilarious that I would possibly imagine I was cool enough for anyone to actually want to spend time with me, if people say they're coming to events and then don't show.
Today, not particularly relevantly to chanukah, I had to lead a service for a stone-setting. To start with I was a bit put out because the synagogue made arrangements with the deceased's family without consulting me, and just assumed I'd rearrange my life to be there to lead the service. It's fair enough that they rely on me to be there every Friday night unless I make specific arrangements in advance, but expecting me to be there on any random Sunday they need me seems a bit much. I had to cancel a whole bunch of social plans to do it, and to be honest if they had asked me I likely would have done so anyway, because funerals are important, but it would have been nice to be asked. And then on top of that we had precisely four members of the community, including myself, in attendance today. Everybody who wasn't there had a perfectly good reason, but I'm not delighted that we can manage 15 for a chanukah party, but can't even scrape a religiously mandated quorum to say the memorial prayer. Obviously funerals are a lot less fun than chanukah parties, but they ought to be more important. The generation who would have dropped everything to attend such an event are mostly under the ground these days, and those who are still with us are genuinely too frail or sick to travel. But we do have ten members between the ages of 13 and 70, and they just didn't make it a priority.
Jewish communities like to agonize about the "December dilemma" of what to do when you're a religious minority and everybody around you is celebrating Christmas. I've been pretty lucky in that it's never really been a problem for me. As a kid I enjoyed being different, and didn't feel any particular anxiety over celebrating the end of term with a bunch of parties and decorations (while I opted out of Nativity plays). While Christmas itself was usually a quiet time with family, watching the classic films they put on TV over the holidays (we never had a video player, so we could only watch stuff when it was broadcast). My birthday falls in the last days of the year, so when other kids were comparing what they got for Christmas, I could join in by talking about my birthday presents. In fact, I could very much relate to this account by the Velveteen Rabbi. Most of my life I've lived in areas with tiny Jewish communities, but still haven't found Christmas to be a problem.
I think the difficulty around Christmas happens not so much when "everybody" is celebrating, but when you have close relatives who are non-Jewish. This is the case for an increasingly large majority of Jews these days! It's particularly difficult when your non-Jewish relatives are your parents; not celebrating can then seem like deliberately spiting your family, or your spouse, because it's pretty tricky to negotiate a household where some of you are celebrating and some not. I think a lot of the problem is caused not so much by the non-Jewish relatives as by the Jewish community being snooty about making Not Celebrating Christmas somewhat of a cornerstone of Jewish identity; this doesn't really make sense for Jews by choice because it asks them to reject their cultural background, and it doesn't really make sense for inter-married Jews, because it requires them to be at best rather cold towards their spouse. Some communities of course specifically want to drive inter-married Jews away from the community; you won't be surprised to know I think this is the wrong choice!
When I was growing up, we sometimes had definitely-not-Christmas dinner, usually on Boxing Day just to underline the fact that we were celebrating family togetherness and not that Christian festival at all, no sir. But we had roast turkey and crackers and present-giving and so on. Some years it was with my cousins on my father's side, whose father, my uncle-by-marriage, isn't Jewish, and he reasonably enough wanted his (Jewish) children to experience his own childhood traditions along with their grandmother. Some years with my own grandmother who didn't come from a Jewish background and sometimes misses Christmas as a high point of the year.
Now I have a non-Jewish spouse of my own. We've built up some traditions that work well for everybody; it's become my habit to spend Christmas itself with his family. I think this works partly because my in-laws aren't particularly religious; Christmas for them isn't much different from the non-Christmas I grew up with, a little bit more specifically Christmassy, but not enough to make me feel weird about celebrating it. We sort of joke that we have it easy compared to a same-faith couple, because there's no question that we go tojack's family for Christmas and my family for Passover, so everything's simple. This year most of my sibs are likewise going to be spending Christmas with the families of their non-Jewish partners; I'm hoping that at least some of us will get together for the end of the year, but it might or might not happen.
Anyway, the main point of all that rambling was that I wanted to link tokerrypolka's excellently thinky piece: Cultural rituals and the christmaspocalypse.
Given it's barely even the middle of December, I'm not with my family. I feel a bit silly lighting the chanukah candles every evening on my own at home; for me, chanukah is the careful turn-taking with lighting the candles and saying the blessings, left over from childhood when we had to share everything absolutely equally. And theological debates about whether chanukah should be celebrated at all, being as it's ideologically dubious (brothers), probably didn't actually happen historically (grandmother), lacks much adult relevant content (mother) etc... Instead I found myself more or less celebrating "virtually", with Twitter and FB full of pictures of people's chanukiot, and lots of people messaging me with chanukah greetings. I actually felt a little sad when the last candles guttered out last night, because now it's just dark dark dark for the next few months and I can't even light pretty little flames to cheer myself up.
I did fine on the eating of fried food front, with lots and lots of excuses for doughnuts, plus indulging myself with some chips one night and a Chinese takeaway another. Today I rounded off with proper Staffordshire oatcakes, as I was passing one of the few remaining traditional hole-in-the-wall oatcake shops which is mostly a breakfast place so rarely open when I am nearby. Well, not quite "proper", as proper oatcakes are loaded with multiple different forms of pig meat, but even the mushroom and cheese approximation I had was seriously drenched in butter.
Chanukah party at shul for second candle, Sunday afternoon / evening. (The good thing about this latitude is that you can celebrate an evening festival at 3:30 pm, which is a better time for children than actual evenings.) We lit lots and lots of candles, and didn't set anything unwanted on fire, and absolutely butchered Maoz Tzur. Then I organized some rounds of human dreidl for the half dozen children present. They were reluctant to play at first, but once the first kid won big, everybody wanted just one more turn in the hopes of winning back their lost stakes. Amazing how easy it is to get people hooked on even the most basic form of gambling. I'd told the community that if they couldn't think what to bring as a contribution of food, doughnuts were always a good fallback. In the event every adult present brought at least a dozen doughnuts, which was, strange to recount, too many doughnuts for one afternoon. The kids got a bit wild with that much sugar, but I think they had a good time. And I managed to find suitable small gifts for everyone, which was a challenge considering that I had no idea in advance how many children or what ages or genders to expect.
I invited the girls from the student interfaith group to join me for fifth candle on Wednesday evening. I knew that not everybody could come, but a good half a dozen told me they'd be there, and then nobody showed up. I think that some people genuinely tried to come but then couldn't find the J-soc rooms (which admittedly are fairly well hidden), others were just being studenty about agreeing to show up to events but not willing to regard that as a commitment if something better came up at the last minute. I was a bit miffed by this, not that I was annoyed with any specific individual, but it really sets off my teenage insecurities around people finding it hilarious that I would possibly imagine I was cool enough for anyone to actually want to spend time with me, if people say they're coming to events and then don't show.
Today, not particularly relevantly to chanukah, I had to lead a service for a stone-setting. To start with I was a bit put out because the synagogue made arrangements with the deceased's family without consulting me, and just assumed I'd rearrange my life to be there to lead the service. It's fair enough that they rely on me to be there every Friday night unless I make specific arrangements in advance, but expecting me to be there on any random Sunday they need me seems a bit much. I had to cancel a whole bunch of social plans to do it, and to be honest if they had asked me I likely would have done so anyway, because funerals are important, but it would have been nice to be asked. And then on top of that we had precisely four members of the community, including myself, in attendance today. Everybody who wasn't there had a perfectly good reason, but I'm not delighted that we can manage 15 for a chanukah party, but can't even scrape a religiously mandated quorum to say the memorial prayer. Obviously funerals are a lot less fun than chanukah parties, but they ought to be more important. The generation who would have dropped everything to attend such an event are mostly under the ground these days, and those who are still with us are genuinely too frail or sick to travel. But we do have ten members between the ages of 13 and 70, and they just didn't make it a priority.
Jewish communities like to agonize about the "December dilemma" of what to do when you're a religious minority and everybody around you is celebrating Christmas. I've been pretty lucky in that it's never really been a problem for me. As a kid I enjoyed being different, and didn't feel any particular anxiety over celebrating the end of term with a bunch of parties and decorations (while I opted out of Nativity plays). While Christmas itself was usually a quiet time with family, watching the classic films they put on TV over the holidays (we never had a video player, so we could only watch stuff when it was broadcast). My birthday falls in the last days of the year, so when other kids were comparing what they got for Christmas, I could join in by talking about my birthday presents. In fact, I could very much relate to this account by the Velveteen Rabbi. Most of my life I've lived in areas with tiny Jewish communities, but still haven't found Christmas to be a problem.
I think the difficulty around Christmas happens not so much when "everybody" is celebrating, but when you have close relatives who are non-Jewish. This is the case for an increasingly large majority of Jews these days! It's particularly difficult when your non-Jewish relatives are your parents; not celebrating can then seem like deliberately spiting your family, or your spouse, because it's pretty tricky to negotiate a household where some of you are celebrating and some not. I think a lot of the problem is caused not so much by the non-Jewish relatives as by the Jewish community being snooty about making Not Celebrating Christmas somewhat of a cornerstone of Jewish identity; this doesn't really make sense for Jews by choice because it asks them to reject their cultural background, and it doesn't really make sense for inter-married Jews, because it requires them to be at best rather cold towards their spouse. Some communities of course specifically want to drive inter-married Jews away from the community; you won't be surprised to know I think this is the wrong choice!
When I was growing up, we sometimes had definitely-not-Christmas dinner, usually on Boxing Day just to underline the fact that we were celebrating family togetherness and not that Christian festival at all, no sir. But we had roast turkey and crackers and present-giving and so on. Some years it was with my cousins on my father's side, whose father, my uncle-by-marriage, isn't Jewish, and he reasonably enough wanted his (Jewish) children to experience his own childhood traditions along with their grandmother. Some years with my own grandmother who didn't come from a Jewish background and sometimes misses Christmas as a high point of the year.
Now I have a non-Jewish spouse of my own. We've built up some traditions that work well for everybody; it's become my habit to spend Christmas itself with his family. I think this works partly because my in-laws aren't particularly religious; Christmas for them isn't much different from the non-Christmas I grew up with, a little bit more specifically Christmassy, but not enough to make me feel weird about celebrating it. We sort of joke that we have it easy compared to a same-faith couple, because there's no question that we go to
jack's family for Christmas and my family for Passover, so everything's simple. This year most of my sibs are likewise going to be spending Christmas with the families of their non-Jewish partners; I'm hoping that at least some of us will get together for the end of the year, but it might or might not happen. Anyway, the main point of all that rambling was that I wanted to link to
kerrypolka's excellently thinky piece: Cultural rituals and the christmaspocalypse.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 03:38 pm (UTC)Yes! I agree with you entirely. Of course, that's arguably not so surprising, given that I have a non-Jewish spouse of my own, and I don't think that sharing in his Christmas celebration in any way diminishes my Jewishness. So nu, we have a tree. Which was not at all part of my upbringing. But he's a good sport about me wanting Shabbat candles every week, and a sukkah in the fall, and a seder in the spring, and staying up all night for Shavuot, and trying to figure out how to mourn on Tisha b'Av, and all of that. I can't imagine that decorating an evergreen in December somehow negates all of those things.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 04:52 pm (UTC)I think a lot of the time the people who make Not Celebrating Christmas a thing aren't actually doing much else Jewish. The sort of people who really want their kids to have a Jewish identity, but don't actually want to take an active part in Jewish life. If you reduce being Jewish to Not Inter-Dating and Not Celebrating Christmas, it's unlikely that people will in fact feel passionate about being Jewish. The other quarter this comes from is from fairly frum communities that are completely in denial about the reality of mixed families, whether that's admitting that sometimes people have non-Jewish partners, or admitting that people who convert do in fact have positive cultural identities of their own, they're not just empty pitchers to be filled up with Judaism.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 05:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-29 11:39 am (UTC)This is a great point and a great way of putting it.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 04:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 04:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 04:25 pm (UTC)Nobody's stopping you. Just don't expect to make a בְּרָכָה on them.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 04:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 07:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 07:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 06:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 06:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 06:42 pm (UTC)It can be hard when children start school, as even now many schools take it for granted that we all celebrate Christmas the same way, but we are fortunate in having a Holy Day in mid November to distract smallish children.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 08:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 11:11 pm (UTC)I think this works partly because my in-laws aren't particularly religious;
Indeed, almost entirely virulent atheists :)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-17 11:24 am (UTC)This year I'm going to R's parents' with him. First Christmas away from the parents (mwahaha) they're atheist types too; so I guess it'll be my first properly secular Christmas.
I'm still not sure how I feel about being an atheist celebrating Christmas. But it's so COLD and so DARK and the pretty shiny lights and the enormous amounts of food make it that much more tolerable. I guess I could say I celebrate "Winterval" (just to annoy the Daily Mail) or something.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-17 02:22 pm (UTC)Whereas I grew up with atheist parents, and most people I know celebrate a secular christmas, and I'm just not used to the idea that celebrating jesus at christmas is still something people do (even though I know many people do).
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-30 02:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-17 07:04 am (UTC)And it's not a major celebration, but it is one that I particularly enjoy. I mean, my Christmas isn't threatened by her Chanukah, and I love Chanukah. It's a fun holiday, with fun games and good music and my mother and I butcher ma'oz tzur as much as the next family, and all the songs. It makes me so sad that she feels that her Chanukah is threatened by my Christmas… and now this is probably going to go turn into a longer post over at my journal because I have Thoughts.
Happy holidays, too, glad to hear they're going relatively well.