A Rabbi’s Thoughts on Christmas

This has been an exciting year for me as I arrived in the Quad Cities and left my home in Wildwood. So, now that Chanukah has passed, we turn, as American Jews, to the big elephant in the room that comes in the month of December, Christmas.
I have to admit, it’s a bit controversial as a rabbi to speak of the holiday, especially because it’s not our holiday. More importantly, Christmas can be a bit uncomfortable for those of us who don’t celebrate it.  We Jews sometimes feel that we are the missing element in the fun of the December season, not invited to a party that seems so exciting. So, as we all prepare to embrace the December holiday season I thought I would give some thoughts on Christmas.
The term ‘why Christmas’ is an idea I had in looking at the Talmudic response to Chanukah. 
The Talmud, commentaries on the Torah, begins ‘Mai Chanukah’ or Why Chanukah. The Talmud (Shabbat 21b) delineates the miracle of the oil as the background of the holiday.
The Talmud then establishes that Chanukah was formulated with the following ingredients: “yom tov (holiday), hallel (praise), and hodaah (thanksgiving).”
These are the essential religious elements of the holiday and the significance of its holiness that makes Chanukah worthy of celebration with joy. The Talmud uses this question of why Chanukah to ask the deeper question of what makes this day special for Jews. 
It answers it with the miracle and the holiness of the days that are commemorated by the oil of the menorah. The rabbis felt the need to address this question with the opening statement of Mai Chanukah or why Chanukah because it was addressing a time that Jews had been celebrating since the military victory of the Maccabees over the Syrians and were trying to formulate the reason for the celebration and find a holiness that is involved in the celebration that went with the joy of the season. 
With Chanukah over, we can ask the question, “What about Christmas and why not celebrate it?”
This is a dilemma many in our Jewish community go through because we have this great desire not only to fit in but to join in this great celebration that seems to be passing us by. It’s like there is this great party going on in our society and we Jews are not invited. So when the question of “Why Christmas?” is asked, many turn and answer “Why not?”
The answer to this question of why Jews should not celebrate Christmas is because Christmas is not our holiday and even though the great aesthetic appeal is there, we should not cheapen the beauty of this spiritual holiday by embracing the worst aspect of it which is the materialism that has accompanied Christmas with its spiritual celebration.
Now, I must admit as a young person I struggled with this holiday in many ways. 
When I was 7, my parents divorced, and when I was 9, my father remarried a lovely woman who was not Jewish. She brought two children into my father’s life and thus Christmas became an integral part of that home. 
My father was quick to put up not only a Christmas tree but also all the trimmings that comes with Christmas. My father’s house started to look like a giant Hallmark card. 
In the custody agreement my dad had me and my brother for holidays so I would spend Christmas with my dad and his new family and so I had the experience for part of my childhood of waking up and trolling through all the presents on Christmas day.
I even had a stocking on the fireplace as a child. But as I grew older I began to realize that what I liked about the holiday was materialistic, after all, who did not like getting presents?
But the presents were, in a sense, hollow because it had no great spiritual connection to it.  Waking up and opening presents as a Jew on Christmas was like eating candy for dinner, enjoyable but not very substantial, because the meaning of the holiday was lost on me.
I eventually let go of Christmas when I was a teenager. My brother and I opted to have Christmas Eve with my mom at the local Chinese restaurant and we would then head to my dad’s for Christmas dinner, again resembling something out of a Hallmark card. 
This was how I spent the holidays throughout my childhood and many of my friends would joke with us on Christmas day that we had to make it to the Lipschultz family Christmas dinner. When I moved to Israel I actually began to miss the Christmas holiday because I was not home for that crazy dinner with my dad and my stepmother’s sisters and aunts. 
When I got married, my wife and I had the fun task of dividing up our time between our families when we visited Phoenix in the winter. I made sure that we set aside Christmas dinner with my dad so all our family could get to know her. 
She often joked that she not only married another Jew but a rabbi, and now she had Christmas for the first time in her life. When my brother David was killed in 2004 that was when we felt something was truly missing in my family’s life and I began to recall all those times around that silly Christmas tree he and I would spend together joking about this strange thing of Christmas being in our life.
My dad died almost six years ago and with his passing I finally said goodbye to Christmas and all the trimming that came with it. 
The first year without him we went back to the old Jewish tradition of Chinese food on Christmas day and walking around our neighborhood and of course a movie in the evening. I think it was when Christmas left my life that I began to appreciate it a little more because I was once again looking at Christmas as an outsider. 
At Christmas time I think all Jews see themselves as our great forefather Joseph, who became an Egyptian with great honor, but in his heart he missed his family and the family traditions that go with it. 
Joseph was an outsider always looking in trying to find his place. When Joseph encountered his brothers after years of contemplation of their evil deed of selling him into slavery the only emotion that came to him was that he was happy to see his brothers and be together and from that joy of seeing them he found in his heart the ability to forgive them.
I find myself this year thinking like Joseph, wondering where my time with my dad had gone. I have spent so many Christmas days with him and it makes me sad that all I have now is memories, but it is those memories that drive all of us during this holiday season and is what makes the season holy. 
I look now at my sons and we build our new traditions. Ari, who unbeknownst to him, was given a Christmas stocking from my dad when he was 1-year-old to hang up on his fireplace on Christmas. 
My dad was very sick at the time and we knew his time was short and as I was about to call him and tell him not to put the stocking up on the fireplace my wife said to me, “Let this pass.” I did, knowing that this might be the last Christmas I would have with my dad. That was my last Christmas.
Ari will never have Christmas with his grandfather. To him Christmas is not his holiday but at one time a stocking hung on a fireplace with his name on it. 
We are a Chanukah family now and Christmas has left my life completely, but when the holiday comes around I still think of that time with my dad’s family, my step-brother and sister around the tree at my dad’s house. 
To my fellow Jews who also confront this holiday season, many of you, like me, have found Christmas in their life either through a spouse or another family member. What I would say is that if you have that tree in your house, don’t focus on the superficiality of the tinsel and lights and presents but on each other.
 These moments you have together are what makes this time special. Even if Christmas enters your life in a non-religious way, make it holy by embracing the love of each other in these special moments you have together.
Sometime in years to come I will speak to my children about my days sitting under the Christmas tree with my dad and my brother, David: three Jews making someone else’s holiday our own. 
The Christmas that was so important to me eventually left this earth much like my dad. I shall make new memories and new traditions. It saddens me that my sons will never know my dad or his uncle David and the connection we had to Christmas but they will know me and the stories I will tell them of my childhood under my father’s Christmas tree. 
I hope they will be able to appreciate the holiday of Christmas that has so much meaning to so many in the world even if it is not their special day and not incorporated into their lives. 
To all of you, as we approach this non-Jewish holiday together, take time to think of these moments you have with each other. Christmas is not our holiday but your time together is precious and please allow each of your moments together to be meaningful.
Have a happy holiday break. 
Lipschultz is the former Rabbi in Cape May County and resides in the Quad Cities, (Iowa) at the Tri City Jewish center. He can be reached at dvjewish@rof.net.