The December Dilemma - My Jewish Learning

The December Dilemma - My Jewish Learning

Continuing the discussion regarding Hanukkah and Christmas. I appreciate the author's dialetic framework as opposed to the usual dichotomous one as our cultural script reads...

Happy 7th Night of Hanukkah

Post Mikvah Hanukkah Musings

29 Kislev 5772

This you have to know: my first go-around with Hanukkah went very badly.

Despite it coming early on the secular calendar I still suffered from a severe cultural dysphoria. For example, I went looking for Happy Hanukkah cards, only to be told this was a minor Jewish holiday that did not require a Hallmark rhyme. I was invited to a friend’s house for First Night of Hanukkah, a tremendously special event, but was deeply disappointed to find it not celebrated at work or school. Gift-giving was an aspect of both Hanukkah and Christmas – I could understand the latter’s reasoning but not the former’s. I became irritated. If this was truly just a lesser Jewish holiday than why was a giant menorah planted in Boston Common and why did its lighting make the local news? Conversely, if this was a major holiday worthy of sales at various online and brick-and-mortar Judaic stores then why wasn’t it more grandly celebrated?

My growing disorientation was further compounded by Hanukkah 5771 being my first holiday season outside-the-dominant-belief-system-looking-in.  I was aware – okay, ridiculously hyper-aware - of just how Christmas-oriented this country is in December. Of course, being dragged up Roman Catholic and then celebrating Yule for decades as a practicing pagan I had been so long indoctrinated in this truth that it became like breathing, invisible in its reflexive ubiquitous quality. Now I could appreciate the difference between knowing this and having it slapped across the back of my head. Every carol on the radio drew nails across my internal chalkboard; every other commercial reminded me someone else’s holiday was going on; every “Merry Christmas!” became a notice that in this land based upon religious freedom there was an unspoken Christian-normativity at work. (That my “Happy Holidays!” were sometimes met with angry, defiant, “No, it’s Merry Christmas!” retorts just evidenced this even more.) It felt like on every house hung a wreath-wrapped sign that said I was now a cultural foreigner.

An acquaintance said, It’s not about you. She was right, of course - there was no great holiday conspiracy going on. Yet to give my emotions their due I admit feeling horribly isolated and on unsure footing, and why not? I was still in the middle of my conversion, my family-of-origin was still wishing me a Merry Christmas, more of my friends at the time celebrated the birth of Jesus rather than a Maccabean victory over the Hellenistic Greeks and by the time Christmas Eve arrived my menorah’s candle-lights had long since burned down to waxy stubs.

December 26th came like the breaking of a month-long fever.

***

But that was then and this is now.

Or, more specifically 6:25 a.m., December 24^th/29 Kislev 5772.  My Boston neighborhood is steeped in sleep around me, the echoes of last night’s Christmas parties long faded away. Even the ghosts of gift-bearing revelers have dissipated. I sip at my coffee; breakfast snaps and scolds me from the kitchen’s burners. Later today I will journeying south for a friend’s Christmas party. I am at peace with the knowledge I will probably be the only Jew in the room.

Same Hanukkah celebrations and Christmas season in these United States, although this year they overlapped. I thought that would cause a repeat of last year’s angst but the anguish never came. Why not? 

Turns out it wasn't the holidays that had changed but in fact me.

Now being post mikvah, I feel that my Jewish identity is more firmly established and continues to grow and solidify. Additionally there has been the lighting of the Hanukkah candles over prayers, connecting me to traditions stretching back centuries. Standing on such a mountaintop foundation, I feel there isn’t a Christmas commercial or carol that could knock me off.

Thirdly I no longer feel so secluded. On Shabbat Hanukkah my rabbis engaged in some very creative ‘Mad Yids’ to tell the Hanukkah story, and last night found me dining with a friend over Kung Pao Vegetables and stir fry, next to the restaurant’s Christmas tree. My FB friends having been wishing me Happy Hanukkah as I leave Merry Christmas and Winter Solstice messages on their pages.

Finally, there is the music. 

Silence is no longer my only alternative to the onslaught of Christmas carols. Pandora’s Hanukkah channel has opened a large door to a vast range of Jewish holiday music, from traditional scores to their modern interpretations to a chorus of original tunes. So yes, I have been chair-dancing to The LeeVees' “Goyim Friends” and “Gelt Melts” and Kenny Ellis’s Hanukkah Swings album. My heart skips beats over Blackmore's Night and Erran Baron Cohen’s  versions of “Ma-O-Tzur”, smiles over TheodoreBikel’s “Kitaltas”, laughs over Tom Lehrer’s “Hanukkah In Santa Monica”, and rocks to the organic beats of Shira Kline’s “Nes Gadol Haya Sham”.

The irony is that I have now heard Hava Nagila in its various versions to actually be tired of it.

Welcome to the holidays, 5772.

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5 kislev 5772