Can Santa Love A Jewish Girl?
Some Jewish people grow up warm and secure in their faith, where the eight days of Hanukah don’t have to compete with Christmas. These are the Jewish nurses and firefighters who take Christmas Eve shifts to ensure that their Christian brethren are home for the holidays.
Not me.
I grew up with my nose pressed right up to the glass. Like any other bird, blind to the barrier between the glowing scene inside and me, I banged and banged until my nose almost broke.
There were no Hanukah traditions in my house, so naturally, I longed for the sparkles of Christmas. One year my sister and I even hung stockings. What were we thinking? That the keys to the kingdom lay in our old limp socks?
Mom was out on a date; we stayed up as late as possible until, exhausted, we went to bed giddy with the prospect of what would be spilling out the tops of those socks. We didn’t know what Christmas stockings were supposed to hold, but boy, we knew it must be pretty damn special for the entire world to talk about it. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!
My poor mother either didn’t notice the socks or cursed Jill and me for leaving our clothes all over.
In years to come, I went out with my similarly disposed-to-Christmas-envy friend, Debbie, bought a tiny Charlie Brown-pathetic tree on Christmas Eve and put it up in her room, decorating it with God knows what. Our long dangling hippy earrings? Her mother was not happy. I spent Christmas with my best friend Bobbi’s family, trying to be as adorably Christian as possible so they’d invite me back.
Santa became the Robert Redford to my Barbara Streisand as I lived my Christmas version of The Way We Were.
I left home and gave up the Christmas ghost for a few blessed Scrooge-free years.
Then I became a mother. Christmas reared its head again. I promised myself that my children would have a giant piece of the American pie. We lived with a non-Jewish couple in a big old Victorian House. Yay! I fell into Christmas as though I were Jesus’ mother. Religion played no role for any of us: it was simply an orgy of food, presents, lights, and Christmas stockings so full we always needed an overflow bag.
However, there was always a little (big) fly in the Christmas pie. Friends who hadn’t stepped in a church since their birth said, as though I were crashing the gates of heaven, “you celebrate Christmas?”
The kids got older. Christmas became more and more of a cracked-glass fantasy. I would have retreated into the world of Hanukah, but I had even less to draw on for Hanukah than for Christmas. I saved all my Jew-mojo for Passover, not having any Easter envy and possessing Passover role models.
By the time my kids were grown (and a grandson and son-in-law joined us) honey, we shrunk the Christmas. A miniature rosemary tree from Trader Joe’s replaced the giant evergreen crusted with lights. Baking: gone. Orgy of presents: still there. Some traditions stayed, some didn’t: bagels before gifts? Check. Chinese food appeals more than cooking giant Christmas feasts.
A strange cold metal Crate and Barrel contraption of a ‘tree’ replaced pine. I hang only the most sentimental memories — the Raggedy Ann rescued from my oldest daughter’s crib mobile, the birds I bought in Woolworths when I was 25, and the Santa ornaments my dear friend Linda sends me each year. If Linda has a voice, I’ll feel Santa’s hugs.
It’s hard growing up in a world where something is shining on a mountain, and it seems everyone in the world except you is allowed up. Is it such a sin to dip a Jewish toe into this ocean of goodwill? Or, when the time calls, to jump right in?
Forgive me, my Santa jealousy. I envy those who can turn their backs: I don’t yet have the will to spend the day at the movies. Can we perhaps have, Chrismanakuh? Hanamas?
Oh, Santa Baby, is Linda right? Can you love a Jewish girl?
