Christmas from the Jew's Perspective

On Christmas I eat Chinese food and go to the movies.

Just kidding. (Yes I know it's only October, but I am going to talk about Christmas since this is our first cold week and, as I mentioned in a previous post, this is one of my favorite traditions.)

While the stereotype that Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas and go to the movies is certainly true, I know many Jews that do just this, I am not one of the ones that follow this tradition. A major reason for this is my interfaith family, which was explained in one of my earlier posts.

Before I talk about what I actually do on Christmas, I want to talk about my family's tradition that takes places the Sunday before Christmas, or two Sundays before Christmas if Christmas is on a Monday or Tuesday. This tradition is our annual Holiday party. This year will be our 23rd annual holiday party.

As the party approaches, my family begins to send out the many invites, decorate the house, set up chairs, get the caroling books, put out the name tags, and buy the drinks and ice. The food will come when all of our guests arrive and bring a dessert or appetizer. If you were to walk into our house around the holidays it would be clear that it is an interfaith household. We decorate with stockings, Santas, ornament Christmas trees, Christmas lights, Hanukkah ornaments, dreidels, and lots of menorahs.

As the day finally arrives, we start the morning by filling the ice buckets with drinks, locking my dog in a room upstairs, hanging the silly signs my dad makes- such as directions for the coat room- and finishing any last minute set up details. At 2:00 PM, the guests start to arrive, my uncle is almost always the first one to arrive.

The First to Arrive

We tend to invite over 200 people, in my not-so-large house, and the party is an open house until 5:00 PM. The most crowded time tends to be 3:00 PM-4:00 PM, where my dad plays Christmas carols on the piano, along with a few Jewish highlights, and my mom leads the singing. I have memories of skipping around the house singing the 12 days of Christmas to get everyone involved.

Caroling

During the caroling, anyone who wants one gets a book with lyrics and bells to ring. As soon as one song ends, people begin to yell the number of the next song they want to hear and my dad starts playing the next song. Eventually, the caroling is over and some people leave, others just get there, and some stay past 5:00 PM.

Song book

Over the years, we have had some unique experiences at the party. Such as the year it snowed, a lot, and we thought nobody would show up but it ended up being packed since other events got cancelled. One year it happened to be Hanukkah, so we lit all of the Menorahs. We have over 10 menorahs, so on the eighth night, which it happened to be, the house gets very warm and bright.

Our Menorahs

My favorite one of these unique experiences had to be the day the party fell on the Eagles vs. Giants game. The game began during the caroling hour, so my cousins, all huge Eagles' fans, and some of our friends snuck down to the basement to watch the game. After the caroling, my mom asked me where everybody went because she could see the front door from where she had stood and knew people had not left. I told her to go look in the basement. To her surprise, she found close to fifty people filling my basement and the stairs, all to see the game. I had been downstairs earlier and knew any surface you could possibly sit on was filled, people were standing downstairs, the steps had people two deep, and my adult cousins were yelling at the kids who were Giants' fans. It was great. To top it all off, after the party my one cousins, the biggest Eagle fan of them all, stayed and helped us move in our brand new flat screen TV; he was a bit annoyed he had to watch the game on a small TV. I will never forget that entertaining year of the Holiday Party.

The Food

Eventually, everyone leaves and we put the food away and throw out all the trash. Although sad, we know the party will resume a year later and we will see at least our family over the next few days for the Christmas festivities.

On that note, what do I actually do on Christmas? Christmas Eve we always go to my cousins' house. We meet an uncle, aunt, and more cousins there. When we were younger, and even still now, my cousins and I used NORAD to track Santa and we would update everyone so people knew when to leave. One year there was a short power outage and we started freaking out thinking that Santa was almost there and was telling us to leave. Now, all my cousins know Santa isn't real, but we still track him for traditions sake. However, we have increased our tracking capability from the website, to a phone number, and most recently to an app. At the Christmas Eve party, we eat lots of food, cookies, and always have shrimp as an appetizer. We also take a family picture by the Christmas tree. Once we leave, my family has, a few times, gone to our local farm's drive through light show or just drove home and looked for Rudolf's glowing nose on the way.

Standard Christmas Eve Pictures

On Christmas Day, my family, even though we are Jewish, does gifts at our stockings- we don't have a tree. The gifts tend to be something small or something my parents decided to wait to give us at Christmas instead of Hanukkah. In our family, we do not get "twice the gifts," as some people assume all interfaith families do. It used to be that we would then go to a brunch at the Sheraton, where my parents got married. However, more recently we have been going to my other cousin's house for a big family lunch/dinner. This is a chance to see some of the same family as Christmas Eve and some others who had other plans the night before.

While not the traditional religious traditions of Christmas or the stereotypical Jewish Christmas, I love the traditions my family has leading up to Christmas and on Christmas. These traditions are some of the ones I look forward to most every year.

I'm sure many of you have unique Christmas traditions please share them in the comments!