"It was 2013, and that time of year again; the sun setting early, lights in every window, red and green adorned everything in sight. In my house, a disgruntled Christmas tree stood in the living room, strung with IKEA lights. Except my tree had soul, jazz, and reggae records jammed between the branches, and a grubby menorah whose candleholders were full of multicolored dried wax sat in the window, forlorn. This was my holiday, and it’s always been like that; a contradiction." -- Viv Mansbach, 9th grade
My father’s dislike isn’t towards Christmas, exactly; more like the buzz and the commercialism and the fact that nobody acknowledges how all the best Christmas songs were written by Jews. On the polar side, my mother’s love for Christmas, however, was pure and unadulterated and unlike the tradition around me. Coming from Sweden in her 20’s, the Christmas she knew had less to do with the birth of Jesus, or extensive gift giving, and more with the comfort of light, warmth, and tradition in the bitter, dark winters of Scandinavia.
My father has never been a practicing Jew, and neither have my grandparents. It had always been an ethnic identity, a forged community, food and culture at the center rather than religion. As a kid during December, my dad’s comments about the American Christmas standard were liable to pop up at any moment. And maybe that’s where my love for the holiday came from, at first. There’s a true delight to hitting play on the music that makes your dad go crazy, to having something of your own that your parent doesn't identify with.
After my parents split, the holidays morphed into something completely different. But it wasn’t the sad feeling that my friends described, missing the family togetherness on the holiday. It didn’t impact me like that because I’d never had that togetherness.
When my father started a family with my step-mother, it was clear how her Jewishness had been ingrained in a way that my father didn’t have; the customs, food and holidays his family had never experienced, and he began to make up for lost time. Hanukkah was a big deal now; the latkes were ordered from the neighborhood deli in batches of 30, actual gelt and dreidels purchased, blessings learned by heart, even if he’d looked them up on Wikipedia.
At first, when my stepmom moved in, my vicious love of Christmas intensified in revolt to the new presence in my house; it was something of my mom that I’d always have, even if she was just a few blocks away. The holidays became a battleground; I began to amp up the Hanukkah at my mom’s, the Christmas at my dad’s, and all the while boxing myself in and never being able to enjoy myself.
As a lover of the holidays, it is difficult to feel comfortable in the customs and traditions that have become mine, because they aren’t others’. The diaspora my mother feels, far away from the snow and darkness of Swedish winter (though I can’t say she misses the weather aspect) is shared by me to some degree; but the pride she feels in passing it on to me is something more precious than our messy family gatherings. My father’s haphazard Hanukkah celebrations may not be the same as the other Jewish families on the block, but my efforts to create a tradition for my young half-sisters means that I will be able to give them the tradition around the holidays that I am still struggling to mend for myself.
That being said, there are always moments when my family surprises me, when they are able to open their minds to the other side. My half sisters coming to my mother’s house to decorate the Christmas tree, introducing my mother to Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings’ Eight Days of Hanukkah (best Hanukkah song ever, by the way), and watching Die Hard with my dad.
I may not ever be able to sit at a crowded table during the holidays and feel the warm and fuzzy feeling that other kids do, but I am a part of two cultures, and a unique experience. So this year, for the first time, they are my Holidays. Both of them.
My father has never been a practicing Jew, and neither have my grandparents. It had always been an ethnic identity, a forged community, food and culture at the center rather than religion. As a kid during December, my dad’s comments about the American Christmas standard were liable to pop up at any moment. And maybe that’s where my love for the holiday came from, at first. There’s a true delight to hitting play on the music that makes your dad go crazy, to having something of your own that your parent doesn't identify with.
After my parents split, the holidays morphed into something completely different. But it wasn’t the sad feeling that my friends described, missing the family togetherness on the holiday. It didn’t impact me like that because I’d never had that togetherness.
When my father started a family with my step-mother, it was clear how her Jewishness had been ingrained in a way that my father didn’t have; the customs, food and holidays his family had never experienced, and he began to make up for lost time. Hanukkah was a big deal now; the latkes were ordered from the neighborhood deli in batches of 30, actual gelt and dreidels purchased, blessings learned by heart, even if he’d looked them up on Wikipedia.
At first, when my stepmom moved in, my vicious love of Christmas intensified in revolt to the new presence in my house; it was something of my mom that I’d always have, even if she was just a few blocks away. The holidays became a battleground; I began to amp up the Hanukkah at my mom’s, the Christmas at my dad’s, and all the while boxing myself in and never being able to enjoy myself.
As a lover of the holidays, it is difficult to feel comfortable in the customs and traditions that have become mine, because they aren’t others’. The diaspora my mother feels, far away from the snow and darkness of Swedish winter (though I can’t say she misses the weather aspect) is shared by me to some degree; but the pride she feels in passing it on to me is something more precious than our messy family gatherings. My father’s haphazard Hanukkah celebrations may not be the same as the other Jewish families on the block, but my efforts to create a tradition for my young half-sisters means that I will be able to give them the tradition around the holidays that I am still struggling to mend for myself.
That being said, there are always moments when my family surprises me, when they are able to open their minds to the other side. My half sisters coming to my mother’s house to decorate the Christmas tree, introducing my mother to Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings’ Eight Days of Hanukkah (best Hanukkah song ever, by the way), and watching Die Hard with my dad.
I may not ever be able to sit at a crowded table during the holidays and feel the warm and fuzzy feeling that other kids do, but I am a part of two cultures, and a unique experience. So this year, for the first time, they are my Holidays. Both of them.
