Know Hanukkah, No Christmas?

Posted On December 15, 2018

My first memory of Hanukkah was when I was seven years old and my father was invited to come and teach the kids in my third grade elementary school class about Hanukkah. I have no clue whose idea this was. My parents were not ones to be involved in our education in a PTA-type way. My father was working full time and starting law school. My mother was also working, and it was best for everyone involved that her exposure to other children was limited. My third grade teacher was named Ms. Goldsworthy and, according to the 60 seconds of internet research I conducted just now, that is not a traditionally Jewish last name, so I cannot easily attribute it to her own observances either.

The kids I went to school with were either Latter Day Saints (Mormon), Catholics, or some variety of Christian, so Ms. Goldsworthy was likely right to assume they did not know much about Hannukah. Although my father was never religiously observant in my lifetime, he was proud of being a Jew and he loved to tell stories. So one afternoon in December 1988, he spent part of an afternoon telling my class the story of Hannukah.

It has grieved me for many years that I cannot remember how Dad used to tell the story, although I would ask him to tell me every year when I was young. He would emphasize not only the physical prowess of the Macabees in battle, but also how they were intelligent enough to outsmart their enemies when they were outnumbered or otherwise overwhelmed. There was a part he would tell about Hannibal trying to take elephants over snowy mountain passes (which I now cannot figure out how this was part of the Hannukah story, or if I am somehow smashing another history lesson he gave me once into the Hannukah story). He told me about the looting and desecration of the temple and the emotional strength it must have taken to clean up and begin again after such an onslaught. The actual miracle of the story, the oil lasting for eight nights when it was only thought enough for a few, was often surpassed in my memory of my father’s telling by everything leading up to it. Regardless, the way Dad told me the story of Hannukah made me wonder why an action adventure movie hadn’t already been made about the whole ordeal.

You might say, “You just typed a whole damn paragraph about it–what do you mean you can’t remember how he told it?” I know I cannot remember what he actually said because I cannot retell it. The feelings I felt when I heard his words are as fresh when I think back on it today as they were the first time I heard it, but the sentences he spoke are as elusive as the smoke from an extinguished candle.

Despite my father’s pride in his Jewishness, he and my raised-Catholic mother believed organized religion perpetrated more harm than help and resented the time spent in their childhoods when they were forced to be observant. So there was no formal religious upbringing for my brother or I. 

With this background in mind, I cannot know for certain why Christmas was still well-observed in my house growing up. Was it because my parents figured my brother and I would inevitably be indoctrinated into Christmas by our surroundings at public school? Was it because my mother was more attached to her Catholic faith and traditions than she was willing to admit?Was it my mother’s love of getting gifts combined with her love of berating people who got her gifts about how shitty their gifts were? We will never know for certain.

The day after Thanksgiving each year, my brother, my mom, and I would put the tree up. For many years in the days leading up to Christmas Mom, Dad, Max and I would make pierniczki (Polish gingerbread), shaping the cookies into whatever shapes our hearts desired.  My parents would make kielbasa from scratch, hog guts and meat grinder and all. I loved playing Christmas carols on the piano and found them to be my greatest motivation to practice every November and December. And we could not make it through December without my mother insisting we watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Scrooged, and (unfortunately) Ernest Saves Christmas. Dad enjoyed wrapping our gifts for under the tree and putting cutesy things on the gift tags (e.g. if one item was a CD,  the tag would say “To: James From: Bon Jovi”). We would unwrap all of our presents Christmas Eve, which my mother claimed was a Polish tradition, but I suspect was just a plan to allow her and my father to sleep in on Christmas morning.

I had a standard Christmas upbringing and, even after the death of my father led me to a number of endeavors to do new things  in order to be closer to his memory, observing Hannukah was not one of them.

It was the first holiday season I was dating my future-ex-husband which prompted Hannukah to re-enter my life. He had always been interested in Judaism and although he knew I was not raised in an observant Jewish household, would it be okay if I taught him what I knew about Hannukah? One Party City menorah kit and a Dollar Store lighter later,  I was trying to regurgitate Dad’s version of the Hannukah story and the Hannukah candle blessings, realizing for the first time as an adult I couldn’t remember any of it coherently.

Suddenly, however, our first holiday exploring a little bit about Hannukah somehow transformed into eschewing Christmas altogether. Although my ex-husband would participate in his extended family’s Christmas gatherings that included gift exchanges and food because he wanted gifts and food, he began to emphasize our need to celebrate Hannukah as somehow canceling out part of any observance of Christmas. Over the years, this evolved into me giving up on Christmas all together personally. I wouldn’t realize until I escaped the marriage years later this was a pattern that defined our relationship: through slow erosion over the decade we spent together, I stopped doing many things I had enjoyed and gave up things I loved because my ex frowned on them or didn’t like them, without even realizing what I was losing. 

This part of my identity was also complicated by my attempt to observe more Jewish traditions, like Passover, and how I would talk about this with people I didn’t know well, like co-workers. Colleagues would ask me what I did for Easter. I would explain about having a Passover dinner. People would say, “So you’re Jewish?” I initially started by responding I was not raised Jewish but was close with my father and in an effort to feel closer to him and celebrate Jews I was learning more about these traditions. But it was exhausting and more than most people cared to know. Over time, I just started answering “Yes” to the “So you’re Jewish?” question.

When Basil and I started dating, he did not have much interest in either Christmas or Hannukah, telling me he felt “bah-humbug” about the holiday season in general. He did enjoy celebrating New Year’s, and so our initial tradition became exchanging gifts on New Year’s, as well as enjoying a cigar together on that day. Basil has also dutifully observed Hannukah with me each year, making fried whatever I wanted and lighting the menorah with me whenever I wasn’t away traveling for work. I had never told him about my former enjoyment of Christmas, as I still was forgetting I had ever really enjoyed it.

When Basil and I began sorting through Aunt Terry’s things in the aftermath of her illness and death this year, we found boxes and boxes of Christmas-related decorations. We also realized there was some Christmas items she had left up in her house all year along. Even though we had come to see her each Christmas Basil and I had been together, I had failed to realize how much she really loved the holiday. When we went through boxes of old photos, I found pictures of Christmas 1987, when Aunt Terry had hosted us all for Christmas in Buffalo. I knew it had to be a good holiday because not only were my brother and I having a good time in each shot, but my father, never one to be able to fake it for the camera, was smiling in every picture.

But I did not realize how much I really missed Christmas until I started watching the Hallmark Channel after Aunt Terry’s death. I would turn it on in hotel rooms when I was traveling for work in order to have background noise while I ironed or did more work in the evenings. She always told me how much Hallmark Channel movies would lift her spirits, no matter what else was going on in her life. And after her death, I was in need of some spirit lifting by any means necessary.

Even though she died in early October, by time I started watching the channel at the end of the month, Hallmark Christmas movies were already being played. It only took a few nights of having titles such as Christmas at Pemberly Manor, Mingle All the Way, and The Road to Christmas playing in the background for me to remember, “Hey–I actually like Christmas. Why did I stop celebrating it?”

It took me a few weeks to admit these new found feelings for the holiday to Basil. Part of me felt inexplicably guilty and silly for being romanticized by a holiday so intertwined with consumerism and a belief in Christ that I do not hold. But what was I going to gain by trying to pretend I didn’t like some Christmas traditions? Basil was, as always, sweet and supportive about it. A few days later, he brought home a little Christmas tree for me (pictured at the top of this post). Every time I look at it, it makes me smile.

While we won’t be buying a 12 foot evergreen or hanging up stockings for all of the animals any time soon, part of me feels more at peace having gone through this evolution on the topic of winter holidays. Whether it is from having found another way to honor Aunt Terry after her death or from allowing myself to remember and embrace memories of my family that are happy and nominally trauma-free, I am not sure. But I am happy to welcome that peace into my heart all the same.