Wait. Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah fall on the same day this year? December 25! Thank God! Finally! Can we please keep this going?!
My extended family is a mix of Jews and Catholics, all attached to their own customs and traditions. We can finally stop running to different houses to commemorate different holidays on different days. I deeply appreciate this divine operational efficiency.
In my own home, I’ve done a few 360s over the years. I was raised Jewish, but quickly internalized my mother’s unspoken mandate that any overt sign of Judaism was . . . LEFT. (Shh!) Was it because her family had fled Germany and Hungary for Hartford and Ohio and felt compelled to assimilate? Maybe. But still.
A mezuzah?! Absolutely not.
Dancing the horah? Oh no, no, no. Instead, my mother sent me to a ballroom dancing school. White gloves required.
My Jewish mother even grew up with a Christmas treea tradition that was passed down to me until I married another Jew who found this custom offensive.
I traded my sparkly Christmas decorations—a baked and painted wreath, a shiny red bauble with my name engraved surrounded by ivy, a gold and pewter Jewish star I made at sleepaway camp—for a ring of sparkling engagement.
Gone were the sentimental sounds of scratchy Christmas records as I dove into stuffed stockings. Instead, as a new mom, I meticulously sorted gifts into eight piles for Hanukkah: at least one gift per night for each of my four children. Inevitably, at least one of the kids was disappointed each night. And my brain was fried.
I missed the tree. I missed the simplicity of a big pile of gifts. I missed the milk and cookies for Santa. I missed being the kid myself. I missed the ritual of adding the star to the top of the tree, Mrs. Claus’ lollipop ornament swinging as we wrestled over it.
I even missed the sidewalk negotiations to get the tree, which my father always used as a business lesson.
Thanks to those freezing evenings on street corners, I still feel a surge of pride every time I can lower the price of anything.
I also missed the heartwarming sight of my mother’s looping “Santa” script in the “From” section of her gift stickers. Of course, I pretended not to see the resemblance. That’s what the Christmas holidays teach, right? Suspension of disbelief.
I mean, a stranger on a sleigh coming down our chimney in Manhattan? Do we even have to have a fireplace? What was stopping the old man from entering other nights? What prevented anyone to enter if this gift-laden intruder could slide down whenever he felt like it? Maybe the Jews were too worried about this story.
My father remarried a Catholic woman for whom Christmas was non-negotiable. Then my brother did the same.
Christmas has come back into our lives their houses: a giant tree in my father’s hall, every year with a different theme; a flickering pine tree at my brother’s house on the west coast that I occasionally decorated alongside my nieces and nephew.
My old ornaments were resurrected as I carefully placed them on thorny branches that smelled of the forest, hoping that the weight of the ornament would not cause it to fall to the needle-strewn ground. Family traditions: respected!
Hanukkah at our place; Christmas at your place.
Then one year, when we went to my father’s house to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah, there was a new arrival: a Hanukkah teepee! Inside the towering white teepee (think: Pottery Barn Kids) were blue, white and silver gifts grouped in one big pile, all of our gifts were mixed up so we had to dive to find ours.
“Mom! This one’s yours!” my son shouted from the back of the transport, before we all lit the Hanukkah candles together, the towering tree just beyond.
Even after divorcing and remarrying a Catholic (what is that? with us!?), family traditions have been rewritten as he brought back Christmas. And yet, over the years, I had become a much more observant Jew.
I looked forward to lighting the Shabbat candles on Friday, observing all Jewish holidays and being part of the Jewish community. (I even recently edited an entire anthology called “Be Jewish now” as I try to combat the rising tide of anti-Semitism.)
I didn’t want to give it up. Plus the kids were all in Hebrew school with bar and bat mitzvahs in the planner.
My husband offered to convert to Judaism (what a mensch!) and then adopted all of our customs. But her my family, with whom I quickly became closer, always observed.
The trees were back. Now every year we go not only to my dad and brother’s house, but also to his dad and stepmom’s house for a Secret Santa gift exchange under their tree, before inviting them all to our house for Hannukah. It’s a logistical hurdle during the Super Bowl of motherhood.
As for My mother? She remarried another Jew 20 years ago and also gave up her tree.
She’s also become a lot more religious as she’s gotten older, although I think she’s still a little horrified by the mezuzah on my front door. (Yeah, if Santa takes the elevator, that’s the first thing he’ll see.)
And yet, with the sharp rise in anti-Semitism after October. 7, as particularly demonstrated by the documentary “October H8te” which will be released soon (my husband and I are associate producers), being Jewish is now complicated. I personally doubled (quadrupled!?) my Jewish identity.
I wear a Jewish star necklace. I started a substack On Being Jewish Now, edited original essays, and spoke all over the world to unite the tribe. I became an activist by accident, something I couldn’t have seen coming.
Listening at my children’s school assembly to the Hanukkah story of the destruction of the synagogue just days after a synagogue was burned down in Melbourne, Australia, I felt the significance of the holiday as never before.
Sure, we exchange gifts, but really Hanukkah is about never forgetting the past and believing in the power of our community to bounce back from whatever happens to us.
I understand why this, in Second Temple times, was considered a miracle two millennia ago. We could use another one right now, as we tear the wrapping paper to shreds and block out the atrocities.
Like many others, my family is a patchwork of Jewish stars and Catholic crosses united by a deep respect for tradition, family and custom itself. The fact that everything falls on the same day this year? Alleluia.
Zibby Owens is the editor of the USA Today bestselling “Being Jewish today: reflections from authors and advocates” and five other books. Follow her on Substack And Instagram @zibbyowens.