Christmas vs. Hanukkah Tensions of Mixed Couples

While Christmas and Hanukkah are traditionally times for joy and celebration, they can produce enormous, unexpected tensions for couples of mixed religions, says a Syracuse University sociologist.

“What usually occurs is a situation where the couple gets along perfectly well throughout the rest of the year but then, as the holiday season comes up, the (religious differences) become salient,” said Allan Mazur.

“One is inevitably confronted with Christmas from the Jewish perspective, and the issue of getting a Christmas tree comes to a head.”

Mazur, a Jew who has been married to a Christian woman for 15 years, said it is “asking too much” for the Jewish spouse to ask the non-Jewish partner to forgo what in many cases is a lifelong tradition of having a tree.

But then the Jewish partner, after allowing the tree, feels guilt and anxiety.

“The Jewish partner will think to himself something like, ‘Gee, I went through childhood and never had a tree. Does that mean I’m a turncoat or a traitor? Have I given in to a larger culture?’ ” Mazur said.

Mazur said the Jewish spouse will then go about reasserting his or her faith.

“Often, the spouse will go back to the business of lighting the Hanukkah lights, which he or she hasn’t done for years--or having a Passover Seder (feast) during the Easter season,” Mazur said.

“Jews who have not celebrated Hanukkah in years may start to light candles for their young children, as if to counter the influence of the Christmas tree in the living room.”

The winter holidays for interfaith couples often become “secularized, eclectic” and both partners adopt the philosophy, “If we’re going to have Christmas, we’re going to have Hanukkah.”

Speaking from his own experience and from observing other couples, Mazur said spouses accept more and more every year, and that over the years celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah becomes “normal.”

“It’s still a problem for me in a sense that my wife always pushes a little more every year--the tree gets a little bigger every year--and now she wants decorations outside the house, which I still find unacceptable,” Mazur said.

Reversing things isn’t so simple, he said. “It becomes imbedded in the children to celebrate both, which leads to what some people might perceive as an orgy of presents and crass materialism.

“You’re celebrating two winter-type holidays and you end up with a pile of presents. It almost exaggerates the materialism that one didn’t like in the first place.”