Cheery And Challenging Chanukah-Christmas Chatter
Submitted by Julie Wiener on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 11:11
With Chanukah just a few days away, and Christmas not far behind, the Intertubes are not surprisingly very, very congested with interesting Chanukah-Christmas Chatter. (Isn’t it cool that each of those three words starts with C-H, but in each one it’s pronounced differently? Clearly I’ve been spending a lot of time with my learning-to-read 5-year-old!)
Some of the most interesting discussion is on Chveller (just kidding: it’s actually spelled Kveller), which ran Jordana Horn’s “Actually You Can’t Celebrate Christmas AND Hanukkah,” closely followed by Jennifer Arrow’s “We CAN and DO Celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah.” Both are thought-provoking, well-written pieces and both (Jennifer’s is also laugh-out-loud funny), not surprisingly, are generating tons o’ chomments (I mean comments). You may want to chime in too!
Kveller also has a beautiful essay by Adina Kay-Gross called “Christmas Made Me A Better Jew,” which is an homage to her very supportive and charming Catholic grandmother.
On the off chance that you want more Kislev Kondundrum chronicles to chew on, you may choose to check out the Parenting Blog on InterfaithFamily.com, which is chock full with a veritable chorus about the challenges and cheer of the season. InterfaithFamily.com also has an essay called “Oy, Tannenbaum!” about a tree-trimming party attended mostly by Jews.
Ciao!
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Actually, the "Ch" in Christmas/Christ comes from the Greek letter "Chi," which is a gutteral H sound in Greek, so actually more similar than you would think.
As far as the two takes on celebrating both, the one against seems to suggest that if you're half you should ignore your non-Jewish family on their holidays. That's absurd. You don't have to celebrate in your own home, but I see nothing wrong of going to see grandparents, cousins, etc. on their holiday. The one who did both made me blanch. Her husband obviously has no interest in being Jewish, and her observance of Christmas is totally secular. They are really not celebrating both, but picking up what they like of both religions.
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