It’s the most wonderful time of the year…for everyone else. Christmas songs are on rotation in stores, on the radio, and cluttering my newsfeed. The Christmas season is a rough time to be Jewish. As a member of the tribe, I have the joy of choosing between three versions of the Hanukkah Song or I Have A Little Dreidel. I don’t expect the world to subdue their celebration of Christmas and make December an equal opportunity month for us Israelites. In fact I commend Northeastern and the city of Boston for putting up menorahs, albeit ugly ones.
I know Hanukkah sounds more promising than Christmas, present wise. Adam Sandler claims “Eight CRAZY nights” but I haven’t celebrated Hanukkah with my family since I came to school, and we ditched the eight nights of gifts years ago. This is actually one of the first years I won’t be spending my holiday studying for finals. I’m no Grinch, just a girl stuck in a gentile world.
The holiday season is a bit confusing for me, and not just because every time I hear the word “Noel” I turn around thinking someone is calling my last name (Nobel) and the same occurs with “Hana” and Hanukkah. In some ways I feel like I’ve succumbed to the cultural majority and ditched my December showing of any Judaic pride. I partake in Christmas “holiday” pollyanas, I’ll stop studying to watch Elf and I’ve sent out dozens of Christmas/”holiday” cards during the past 4 years. I’m the one who put up all the decorations in our apartment (I live with 3 non-Jews) and it was I who advocated most for a real tree. I’ve been known to nosh on my fair share of candy canes and I even own an ugly Christmas sweater, which I wear each year to my hometown friend’s Christmas Eve party. My brother, also Jewish, dons a full Santa suit to that event, and my mom wears an elf hat.
However, I do wish it were as easy to get excited about my own holiday as it is about Jesus’ birthday. “Isn’t Hanukkah like a Jewish Christmas?” I’ve been asked. Oy veh…not quite. It actually came first, but I bet the commercialization aspect was an attempt by the Jewish community to control jealous children from kvetch-ing too much.
So this year, while you eat Christmas ham, I’ll be asking my brother to pass me the pork lo mein. Would I like to run downstairs in my pajamas and find that some overweight bearded man has delivered the red Kitchen Aid stand mixer I wanted? Hell yes. But for now I’ll enjoy Chinese food and a movie, also hoping for a white Christmas and enjoying an empty highway.
The real miracle of Hanukkah this year will be if I can make it eight days surviving only off of potato pancakes and applesauce, and if I can find my VHS copy of Rugrat’s Chanukkah before 2012. And for now, I’ll maintain my hybrid Jewish/pseudo Christian December identity and hope that I can convince Obama to put a Hanukkah bush covered with driedels next to our national tree next year.