It’s official; the Christmas holiday season
is upon us. Our school aged kids are
learning Jingle Bells and The Twelve Days of Christmas to perform at the school
Holiday (CHRISTMAS) Concert, so naturally, the questions have started about
Santa and Christmas. How will Santa get
into our house; we don’t have a chimney?
When will we get our get Christmas tree?
Is Santa going to come into our room like the tooth fairy because I
don’t want him to? (I totally agree
about the weirdness of random made up people coming into my room at night. Creepy!)
It is at this time that I have to explain to the kids that they are
Jewish and that we have a Jewish home and therefore don’t celebrate Christmas
at our house but instead celebrate Christmas at Nanny’s house. We don’t have a tree and Santa won’t come to
our house. As I’m explaining all of this
to the kids, I’m preparing for some heavy duty “it’s not fair” tantrums, but
luckily the kids are pretty chill about this.
After, they clarify that Santa knows where they’ll be and they will, in
fact, receive their presents at Nanny’s house, they go about their
business. Discussion done. ...For them.
I find this interfaith family thing a
little more challenging. I am Christian
- not A Christian but I grew up
celebrating Christmas and Easter. And
I’m still the first one up on Christmas morning ‘cuz well, it’s Christmas
people! My partner Lisa is Jewish. She grew up more as a cultural Jew than a
religious Jew.
When we met, I was all “If God had a
refrigerator, my picture would be on it!”* and Lisa was all, “I’m going to
meditate at the local Buddhist temple.”
When we started planning to have kids, I said that I want to raise our
kids to believe in God and Lisa said she wants the kids to be raised Jewish. Regardless
of the biological technicality that none of our children were born to a Jewish
woman and therefore are not recognized as Jewish, it seemed like a good option
to raise the children to believe in God in a Jewish way. Cool, right?
Wrong. As it turns out, Lisa
doesn’t really know much about finding God in the context of Judaism and I pretty
much use God as a tool in managing behaviours.
Basically this leads me to saying things like “God doesn’t like it when
you blow out the Hanukkah candles!”
Jewish God, with a side of Catholic guilt! Not at all what we had intended.
So every year- Jewish and Gregorian, we
promise to bring more religious spirituality to our family life. We light candles and say blessings on Friday
nights. It is true that on some Friday
nights, we bless the sushi we’ve ordered in rather than a traditionally blessed
Challah, but the kids get it – we thank God, farmers and Sushi Island for our
food. Our eldest goes to Jewish religious
school once a week. (We are late for
religious school too by the way). This
week, we gently suggested that he not take his picture of an elf decorating a
Christmas tree with stars of David to show his teacher. We excitedly teach the kids to spin dreidels
while they excitedly sing Christmas carols.
This happened. I am not making
this up. And we explain, to anyone who asks, that the reason why we haven’t cut
our youngest boy’s hair is because we are following the Jewish custom of
letting a boy’s hair grow until he turns three before having a celebratory
chalakah (Jewish hair cutting ceremony).
The actual reason for keeping
his hair long is because he’s crazy cute with long hair! Obviously we pick and choose which customs to
follow and which traditions are meaningful to us. Truth be told, right now our kids may be more
Jew-ish than Jewish, but we’re
getting there.
Hanukkah starts this week we have placed
our menorah in the window so that when we light it on Wednesday night everyone
will know that ours is a Jewish home.
This week we will also practice the Christmas songs in preparation for
the Holiday (seriously, call it like it is – Christmas) concert, because no kid
of mine, Jewish or otherwise, is going to be in the back row of the choir
pretending to sing!
I am confident that when the teacher asks
if anyone celebrates Hanukkah, my kids will raise their hands and say “I do!”
and then proceed to have a lengthy conversation with their friends about the
travel pattern of Santa on Christmas Eve.
Clearly the kids have this interfaith family thing down!
Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Hanukkah to
all those celebrating this week!
xo Ajike
* Quote by Max Lucado
I enjoyed your post. My family is also interfaith, but it helps that Hannukah is so early this year. The kids know Christmas decorations don't go up until after Hannukah. I also really wanted to send a Holiday card in the shape of a Christmas ornament but worried my Jewish friends would totally freak out. As it turned out, the Christmas ornament cards were outrageously overpriced. I decided to send New Year greeting cards instead.
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