Me, the devout Jew

My sister Ilana has made an observation about American Jews. It’s that their anti-Christmas traditions eclipse actual Jewish celebrations. This became apparent this year since Hanukkah fell on Christmas Day. Alex, who lives in Dick and Kathleen (Ilana’s father and step mother)’s in-law unit, had plans for tonight to go out for Chinese and then to the movies. Ilana’s boyfriend David’s mother always cooks a duck, and they did that today too. I, on the other hand, traveled an hour each way on the BART during its slow Sunday schedule to have potato latkes with my Jewish family. However, I believe all 3 households lit candles and spoke Hebrew prayers.

I’m not Jewish, but I believe this makes me more devout than many of the real Jews I know. I’m certain this has inspired the Old Testament God has put a gold star by my name. (But He knows I’m culturally Protestant and spiritually Pagan Buddhist Agnostic.) I believe Ilana’s observation is more about people than Jews. Christmas traditions are about food; Hanukkah traditions are about ritual. You don’t have to make Jewish food to light the candles.

Hanukkah is about light in dark times. (Ilana says it’s about the Macabees overcoming their oppressors. Which is, of course, about light in dark times.) The birth of Jesus is the same thing: the growth of the day from its darkest point onward. Christmas trees are about celebrating nature when plants actually aren’t growing but will again soon, i.e. light in dark times. OK, I think I made my point.

My family has traditions too. My mother wraps up a whole bunch of gifts. We open them, and then we reject most of them. She takes home the rejected gifts and proceeds to give them to people more polite than we. My mother also likes to wrap up things that aren’t really gifts like a CD she borrowed from Ilana 2 years ago, my toys from childhood, or something my grandmother left me when she died. (The theory is that because she grew up with a disabled twin sister, she doesn’t feel that anything really belongs to her, and therefore nothing really belongs to anyone else either, especially her daughters.) This year I took home about 1/3 of the gifts from my mother, and Ilana rejected one of my gifts (but clearly she needs to have her brain checked).

To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel very Christmassy this year. I tried: I made about a thousand cookies and sent nearly 40 cards. (I received 3.) I thought it was lack of appropriate music, but I found that the songs annoyed me. I’ve got “Sex and the City” going as I write this, and Carrie just learned that Big is marrying Natasha. She storms out of their lunch, tripping on the stairs as she leaves the restaurant, and yells to the hostess, “These steps are very dangerous!” Well, that’s exactly what I would have done. My grandmother died, and Christmas is therefore barred from my soul.