Hanukah thoughts
We had a Hanukah party last night, which was a lot of fun. The baked "party latkes" from Cooking Light were a disaster, but the fried latkes were a huge hit, both the traditional ones and the curried sweet potato latkes from Joan Nathan’s Jewish Cooking in America. I like cooking and I like having people over. Can’t say I love the hectic cleaning that’s needed to get the house ready to have company. (I wish we had entertained more during the period when we were feeling flush enough to have a biweekly housecleaner.)
The party was a nice mix of people we know from different settings — work, online communities, school, hobbies. I think it worked because there were no big clumps of people who already knew each other, so people had to find different things to talk about.
I had an interesting conversation with one of our guests, a Christian married to a Jew, about why I am less than totally thrilled about celebrating Christmas with my in-laws. Why, he asked, is it not a totally positive thing to have another holiday to celebrate? I don’t have a really good answer. I think I have this vague notion of Christmas as a big seductive force that will try to suck us all in if I don’t draw a bright line against it. It is one of the ironies of the season that Hanukah is a celebration of resistance against assimilation, and it is the most assimilated of Jewish holiday.
December 13th, 2004 at 1:54 pm
Even for those of us who celebrate Christmas, it’s a big, seductive force that needs to be dealt with very carefully. Sometimes I wish I could draw a bright line against it, if only for my own sanity. For example, there’s my mom-in-law for whom stuff=love who gets upset if (1) she’s not the only person who got my son Power Ranger/Spiderman/Robot item X, (2) she hasn’t received enough of the “right” kind of gifts to feel cared about, (3) her gifts to my kids aren’t their favorites. As with many things in our over-commercialized society, Christmas has mutated from something beautiful to something crass, and sometimes, especially after spending time with my Jewish friends, (and as much as I love the lights and the songs and, to be honest, some of the gifts!) I wish that I hadn’t married another Christian so that I could have a more legitimate reason to keep the whole ruckus a bit more at arm’s length.
December 13th, 2004 at 3:38 pm
I have to admit I sometimes sneer at Christmas too because of the commercialization and the “stuff=love” that Maggie mentions. As a Jewish person married to another Jewish person, I often feel almost giddy when I get to say, “Oh, we don’t celebrate Christmas.” Contrary to the pity I often felt from Christian kids when I was growing up, as if they felt sorry for me that I had no Christmas, I feel lucky to escape the craziness. We hardly even give Hanukah gifts in my family at all, so the holiday barely registers on my radar screen.
All that being said, I’ve always loved Christmas because of the decorations and lights on people’s houses. I just like to appreciate them, never mind all the nuttiness.
December 19th, 2004 at 10:43 pm
Thanks for the thoughtful comments.
I’ve realized that a good deal of my problem is that because “we” don’t celebrate Christmas, I don’t have any leverage to push back against the ways my in-laws celebrate it and to suggest lower key alternatives that I would enjoy more. Or to say “no, we’re celebrating at home this year.”
I can (and have) said “no, we’re too tired to travel this year,” but that’s fighting something with nothing…