‘December Dilemma’ of Holidays : Should Jewish-Gentile Families Celebrate Christmas?

Geri Sandor wanted to be careful. It was the first Christmas after she had married and converted from Catholicism to Judaism. She and her husband David were living with his Jewish parents.

“I didn’t feel it was fair to my parents not to celebrate Christmas,” but signs of the Christian holiday reminded her mother-in-law of pogroms, said Sandor, now 43 and a Newport Beach attorney.

So, on her first Christmas as a Jew 20 years ago, Sandor bought a very small pine tree. And kept it in her bedroom.

Seasonal Problem

The Sandors are among the growing number of Jewish-Gentile families who, each year at this time, face what has been called the “December dilemma.” Should they celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah? Or both? And how?

The last three decades, the number of American Jews who marry non-Jews has risen to between 30% and 40%, according to the Council on Jewish Life of the Jewish Federation Council of Los Angeles. For those who regard the holidays as mutually exclusive, it can be a painful season of colliding traditions and choices. Others gamely tap their ingenuity and tolerance to integrate two seemingly separate worlds.

On subsequent holidays, the Sandors, who live in Irvine, have always lit Hanukkah candles, made Hanukkah cookies and exchanged Hanukkah gifts. They created a tradition of a “Jewish open house” on Christmas Day. With most workplaces shut down, “our Jewish friends had no place to go,” Sandor said. And once they moved into their own house with a cathedral ceiling, Sandor said they also had a huge tree and Christmas gifts for their two sons every year.

Reached an Understanding

After a while, she said, her in-laws understood that her Christmas celebrations were based on respect for her parents and intended to give their children an understanding of their mother’s heritage. She believes her sons, now 15 and 18, “really had the best of both worlds.”

Patti Lewis, the former wife of Jerry Lewis, said she combined the two holidays effortlessly for the 36 years she was married to the Jewish entertainer. While her six sons were raised as Catholics, she said they always lit two menorahs (Hanukkah candelabras) during the Christmas season.

She says she lights one in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary. “I have an altar in my dressing room,” said Lewis, 64, who lives in Los Angeles. “It’s part of their father’s heritage and they should know that,” she explained. “After all, Jesus was a Jew,” she added.

Though the couple is divorced now, she still lights the Hanukkah candles with her children “out of respect for their father,” she said.

Eight-Day Festival

Hanukkah, which began Saturday, is a minor eight-day Jewish festival. It commemorates the first known battle for religious freedom when the Maccabees defeated the Syrian Greeks in 165 BC and rededicated their temple in Jerusalem. Part of the original ceremony was the relighting of the eternal light with a small jar of oil that burned an unusually long eight days, said Rabbi Stephen Einstein of Temple B’Nai Tzedak in Fountain Valley, who teaches a communitywide introduction to Judaism.

Observers light one candle each night of the festival, recite blessings, sing hymns, sometimes exchange presents or cook potato pancakes called latkes, he said. Children play with a four-sided top called a dreidle.

Hanukkah starts on the 25th day of Kislev (on the Jewish calendar), which usually falls in early December in the midst of the sprawling Christmas season. But along with general Christmas merriment, the ubiquitous ads for toys and gifts, the tinseled pine trees, Santas, and sugar cookies, there are also signs such as angels and carols announcing that Christmas is a major religious holiday, celebrating the birth of Christ. “It’s not a winter festival. It’s Christ’s mass,” Einstein said. He said he has been offended in the past when he has received Christmas cards from Jews.

Secular but Sectarian

Liberal and conservative rabbis agree that even “secular” Christmas traditions, including Santa Claus and his reindeer, should be viewed as sectarian, said Rabbi Henri Front of Temple Beth David in Westminster. “All these things have come to mean Christmas to us . . . . Therefore they are as Christian as if Jesus himself gave presents and decorated Christmas trees. Any Jews who have Christmas trees and Santa Claus are celebrating a Christian holiday. They should not.”

Steve Silverstein, a staff worker for Jews for Jesus in Studio City, said he celebrates Christmas as well as Hanukkah, but shuns “non-biblical” rituals such as lights, Santa and Christmas trees. “It’s not wrong to have a Christmas tree, but it’s not wrong not to have one,” said Silverstein, 29, who said he was born into a Jewish family and became a believer in Jesus 14 years ago. With his wife and three children, he said he focuses on “the real meaning of Christmas, the birth of Jesus. We sing songs like ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ that are meaningful and leave out songs like ‘White Christmas.’ Especially living in Los Angeles.”

Influenced by the pervasive Christmas culture, Hanukkah in America has become more elaborate, said Einstein. Banners, menorahs or dreidles are now made commercially for home decorations. Some people stamp out sugar cookie shapes in the form of menorahs or dreidles. “Some children try to convince their parents that it is written in the Bible to be given gifts each and every day of the holiday. Some families do that,” said Einstein.

Interestingly, mixed marriages frequently act as a catalyst to draw Jews back to observing traditional holidays such as Hanukkah, he said. Some of those in his classes are concerned about what the effect of mixing traditions will be on the children, he said. Egon Mayer, a Brooklyn College sociologist, recently estimated in the New York Times that there are 400,000 to 600,000 children of Jewish-Gentile marriages in the United States.

The result of mixing traditions with children, Einstein said, “is a child who says: ‘I know who my father is and I know who my mother is, but I’m not sure who I am . . . “

However, Justin Call, professor and chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UC Irvine’s College of Medicine, said a child’s conflict is in proportion to the parents’ conflict. “If the parents are agreed they can celebrate both holidays for whatever reasons, it’s usually not a conflict for the children,” he said.

In contrast to the commercial stimulation of the season, “Our house is a neutral zone,” said Estee Huff of Dana Point who said she is raising her sons, 4 and 2, Jewish although her husband Dana was raised Protestant. “We talk about Hanukkah and light the menorah and play with the dreidles and read a little book about the significance of the dedication of the temple and the miracle of the lights. How we bring in the Christmas theme is we talk about good will toward men and peace on Earth,” she said.

His parents have had more difficulty than he did in adjusting to changing traditions, said Dan Rasmus, 24, a systems analyst from Santa Ana who last year converted from “nothing” to Judaism. Rasmus, who is single, said his parents had encouraged their children to choose their own religions.

“They’re supportive, but after 24 years of me celebrating Christmas, they are not really changed over to thinking I have a different holiday and want to celebrate it in my own way.”

Severing Christmas ties was her “last hurdle” to converting, said Judi Lapin of Corona del Mar. Born into a Protestant family, Lapin, 38, who heads her own public relations and marketing firm, obtained a ready-made Jewish family six years ago when she married Michael Lapin, an attorney and current president of the Orange County chapter of the American Jewish Committee.

She understood that in her new family, which included Michael’s three sons, there would be no Christmas carols, no sugar cookies, no tree with lights and tinsel. Still, she said, Christmas mornings she always came down to breakfast with pangs of emptiness.

One December, the family traveled to Israel. Together, they watched as the chief rabbi of Israel lit the first candle on the Hanukkia (Hanukkah menorah) in Jerusalem. And together, they made a pilgrimage to Bethlehem for Christmas. “That year, I not only learned about Hanukkah, but the real (religious) meaning of Christmas,” said Lapin.

Even though in Israel she had discovered she felt just as comfortable with Hanukkah as with Christmas, she was still awash with self-pity on Christmas mornings. But last Christmas she came downstairs to find the mantle strung with lights and clumps of tinsel. Her husband and stepsons had bought toy Santas and musical Christmas trees, Christmas stockings filled with candy and joke gifts. “It was so moving, my eyes filled with tears,” she said.

That year, as she boxed up the decorations, Lapin said she could finally let go of her old ties. She signed up for Jewish education classes and will convert in January.

“It was really a turning point. Even though it had never been a contest, the void was filled.”