I remember creeping down the red fuzzy stairs, as quietly as I possibly could. Excited giggles bubbled and grew in my throat. I managed to swallow them for the most part, the only noise I made was a tiny "Hee!" every minute or so. Finally I reached the bottom of the stairs and the living room was a wondrous sight to behold. It was still dark outside, but the lights from the Christmas tree shone softly, casting multi-colored shadows against the window shades. Piles of presents sat under the tree, the tree which seemed as tall as our house itself. But then again, I was 2 years old, so everything seemed tall to me. The tinsel and lights on the tree were beautiful. I couldn’t look at everything hard enough. On a whim, I ran into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. Our fridge had a built-in shelf for eggs on the door. In each oval space was a chocolate marshmallow Santa Claus. Twelve Santa Clauses sat in their egg slots, waiting patiently for me to discover them. I laughed gleefully and ran back into the living room. My mom had waken up and was standing on the stairs, smiling at me.
"Merry Christmas, Emily."
I looked up at her and my clapped my hands excitedly.
"Merry Christmas, Mommy!"
When I was 2 years old, I had my first Christmas.
When I was 2 years old, I had my last Christmas.
My parents are both Jewish, but they were never that religious growing up. I can’t remember if my dad had a Bar Mitzvah, but I know that my mom didn’t. My dad wasn’t brought up religious, and he isn’t religious now either, but he’s fine with that. Religion was never a big deal for him, and he never looked for God or anything like that. My mom is another story. My mom never had any religious influence when she was growing up, and she always said that it was something she missed later in life. I guess she figured that since she never had any religious upbringing, she didn’t want my brother and me to be the same. So she experimented. When I was 2 years old, we celebrated Christmas. I loved it, but apparently it didn’t work for my mom. So the next year, Christmas didn’t make the cut. I didn’t realize what was going on, I was too little. Mom just removed one holiday, and put another in it’s place. It wasn’t until later that I suddenly sat up, looked around and raised my hand saying, "Um? What just happened?"
I don’t think I ever fully recovered from that.
They say that people get depressed around the holidays. Suicide rates are higher, and people are moody in general. It’s a horrible time to be alone, because being lonely for the month of December is worse than being lonely for the other 11 months combined. I tend to be one of those people. I feel left out of everything and I feel like the world is against me.
Every two feet, I see another reminder that Christmas is right around the corner. I see Christmas lights, Christmas trees, Christmas decorations. Everyone wears those big, goofy Santa Claus hats and every radio station busts out the Christmas carols, even the awful ones like "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer." Christmas is one day, but it is impossible to not know when that one day is coming. Hanukah is eight days long, but half the time I don’t even know when it starts or ends. Hanukah came and went this year, and I didn’t even realize it.
When I was younger, my family actually celebrated Hanukah, so I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. We put up Hanukah decorations and put a menorah in the window and lit the candles every night and my mom made latkes and we played a tape of Hanukah songs and we gave each other presents and it felt like a real holiday. When I was still in elementary school my mom came in with my friend’s mom and they taught the class about the menorah and the dreidle and gave everyone latkes, and I felt special because I had a different holiday than everyone and my mom got to come in to tell everyone about it. But afterwards I still felt left out. Hanukah was brushed aside and Christmas was rushed in. Everyone got out their red and green clothes, hung jingle bells necklaces around their necks and even dusted off those goofy reindeer headbands. Christmas was just more fun than Hanukah, and that’s all there was to it. It was more fun, and it was so much prettier, and it has a much nicer back story than Hanukah.
The Jews celebrate Hanukah to remember when we weren’t allowed to read from the Torah and there was a war and our temples were burned and ruined and there was only a little oil that was said to last one night but it lasted eight nights so we light eight candles and eat greasy potato pancakes. Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Christ. Now, I don’t believe that Christ is my personal savoir or anything, but I think that a birth is a much better reason for a holiday than a war. Christmas is happiness and good will and being merry and cheerful. Hanukah is kind of depressing when you think about it. It got worse for me when I got older.
Once my brother had his Bar Mitzvah, I think that my mom felt her involvement in our religious activity was complete. She had put us through Hebrew school, taken us to synagogue, lit the Shabbat candles and celebrated Hanukah for a good 13 years. Slowly, Jewishness in our life started to dwindle. We’d light the Shabbat candles every other Friday instead of every Friday. We stayed home and talked about Rosh Hashanah instead of going to services. And Hanukah took a back burner. The decorations stayed in their boxes in Deep Storage, rather than being displayed in the house. It’s not that I wish that we had kept doing Jewish things, but just that it was confusing for me. We did all these Jewish things for a long time, and then suddenly stopped. But it was always the worst around the holidays. Christmas time makes me that much more bitter, when I don’t have Hanukah to make up for it.
One year I asked my mom if we could have a Hanukah bush. She went into a speech about how we couldn’t have a Hanukah bush because it was still a Christmas tree, and Christmas trees are for Christmas which is about Christ and we didn’t believe in all that. I nodded and glumly accepted her decree, but deep down I didn’t understand. I just wanted to decorate something. My friends invited me over to help their Christmas trees a couple times, and it was always so wonderful. Carefully arranging the tinsel, deciding which ornament should go where, plugging in the lights and stepping back to admire the view. Even though I didn’t like eggnog, I liked the smell of it.
But even though I loved helping with my friends’ trees, once we were done I felt like an outside again. My friend would cuddle up with her family and I would sit on the floor, feeling out of place. I wanted to be able to have a tree that was mine that I could decorate how I wanted and admire my work and not feel like I didn’t belong. I didn’t think of it as a Christmas tree, just something fun to do.
It seems like I have a big Christmas hang-up, and maybe I do. But religion was just never something I thought about when I was younger. I just went through the motions. It’s not that I wanted to be Christian or anything. I still don’t. I’m Jewish, that’s who I am and that will never change. When I was younger, I thought it was kind of cool, because I was different from everyone else.
One time in Art class, a classmate said to me, "Emily, you’re Jewish right?" I nodded and said I was. They then asked if I knew any Hebrew. I said of course I did, then I turned to another Jewish girl in our class and said, "Hey Shari! Shalom!" She turned to look at me and smiled, because we knew what that meant. It was almost like we had our own private code that no one else knew. It felt really neat. My mom had enrolled my brother and me in Hebrew school, and it was just something we did. Sometimes it was fun because I felt special because I could talk about what I was learning in regular school, and the kids always seemed intrigued that I was learning to read and speak Hebrew. But we didn’t always like going either. We never really questioned why we were going, we just figured that it was something we had to. I didn’t have a very positive Hebrew school experience. For some reason, I was ostracized by all the girls in my class, and I only hung out with the boys. To this day, I still don’t know why they didn’t like me. Even now, I still associate Hebrew school with feelings of isolation and unhappiness. My parents knew I was miserable in my class, and when I was a year from graduating, they sat me down for a talk.
I sat down on the couch, and looked at my parents looking back at me. My mom looked at my dad, my dad looked at my mom, and I started to wonder what was going on. Finally, my mom spoke up.
"Emily, we know how much you hate Hebrew school. We know that you don’t want to go anymore, but we also know that you only have one more year left before you’re done. So we’ve decided to let you decide whether you want to go for your final year or not. It’s entirely up to you. If you want to finish, then that’s great. If you don’t want to, then it’s okay with us, we’ll understand."
I sat back and thought hard about this. It was up to me. I could be free of this private hell forever. I would never have to spend another minute in that freezing house with those mean, spiteful girls, struggling to read in Hebrew even though I knew it would serve me no purpose later in life. I could sleep in on Sundays, I could have Tuesday nights free, I would have less homework and I would have peace of mind. But...I was only a year away from finishing. If I stuck it out for one more year...I could say that I actually completed Hebrew school instead of dropping out. If I stuck it out, I could have my Bat Mitzvah. I would be the first Bat Mitzvah on both my parent’s sides, it would be a huge deal. I had made my decision.
I looked up at my parents.
"I want to finish."
My dad nodded, he wasn’t really affected by this decision except in the fact that he would have to pay for another year of tuition. But my mom smiled at me. And in that small smile, I could see that I was fulfilling her dream. And she was proud of me. And I smiled back. I could do this, and I would be proud to be Jewish. I felt happy with my decision.
I went through my final year, had my Bat Mitzvah and everything. There was a great party afterwards and I was sure I made the right decision. I even stayed for an extra year in Senior Seminar. (but that was only because I knew those girls wouldn’t be there) But this was around the time that my mom’s Jewish enthusiasm was winding down, so my enthusiasm was dwindling as well. I was right back where I started, not knowing what the point was.
I never thought about the vast aspect of religion when I was younger, but as I ended high school and neared college, I started wondering what it was really about. There are Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Mormans, Buddhists, Pagans, Atheists, Agnostics, Wiccans and many other sub religions and variations as well. It seems weird that there are more than one. If there really is a God, why are there so many different versions about his whole story. Shouldn’t there be one definitive story about God and his thing and that’s the end of it? And if there is a God, and only one version of this spiel is accurate...which religion got it right? How do we know which one is telling the truth and the rest are just bullshitting us? And why do people insist on killing each other in God’s name? If there is a God, would he really want people to kill for him? Wouldn’t he be much happier having everyone get along and agreeing to disagree about him? I didn’t understand what the deal was, I still don’t. I stopped looking at myself as Jewish, and more as Jewish/Agnostic.
When I was a sophomore in college, I decided to take a class in Jewish Life. I thought that since I was a "bad Jew" by not going to services anymore and not being sure about the whole God thing in general, then I should at least know a little about my history. It started out sort of interesting, but then I slowly lost interest. I realized that I just didn’t care. I felt slightly proud of myself that I took the class, but it still didn’t help me figure out what the point of religion was. The only thing of importance that I took away from that class was this:
There are two different types of Jews. I don’t mean like, Reform or Conservative or Ashkenazi or Sephardim. I mean that there are Jews who are Jews because that’s who their ancestors are, and there are Jews who practice the Jewish religion. Some people are of Jewish ancestry, but they don’t practice. Some people were born Gentile, but they converted to the Jewish religion. And just because I didn’t buy into the religious aspect of being Jewish, didn’t mean that I was not a Jew. My ancestors are Jewish, my family tree has deep Jewish roots. It’s who I am. And I’m okay with that.
Just this year I made another decision also. I want to stop being bitter about Christmas. I can do it if I set my mind to it. For so many years I get sarcastic and angry about all the Christmas cheer, but that’s just covering up my jealousy and sadness at not being able to enjoy it. But who says I can’t enjoy it? My friends keep saying that Christmas isn’t even about Christ anymore, it’s completely commercial. And if it’s commercial, why can’t I enjoy that aspect of it? I’m 20 years old, if I want to buy a Hanukah bush for myself, then I can. I started small though, I bought myself a stuffed duck with a red and green scarf around it’s neck, and when you squeeze its tummy it quacks Christmas carols. My mom didn’t sound too thrilled when I told her, but it didn’t matter to me. She could be disappointed in me, I was fine with that. She did what she thought was best for my brother and me when we were younger, but now it’s my turn to do what I think is right for me.
I’m still Jewish. I always will be. But I want to enjoy Christmas. If someone says "Merry Christmas" to me, I won’t get bitter. I’ll just smile and say "Merry Christmas" right back to them. I want to sing the Christmas carols and maybe help someone decorate their tree. I want to admire the Christmas lights and Christmas decorations and I want to be happy and cheerful and merry and I don’t want to be bitter anymore. I don’t want to be sad anymore. Christmas is a happy time of year.
I shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting to be happy.