Holidays Highlight Understanding and Respect for Differing Religions

It was the saddle shoes. In a sea of loafers, her saddle shoes were highly visible.

On closer examination, I noted her tightly curled, brown hair, dark eyes and the prominent Star of David hanging around her neck. Amazing, I thought, the complete antithesis of me sitting directly across the aisle on my first day of high school. She probably described me at her family dinner that evening as the fair-haired, blue-eyed girl with the St. Christopher medal who was in three of her classes. We were destined to be friends.

Over the next three years in our Detroit high school, I was allowed to enter my saddle-shoed friend’s world. She was the only child of elderly German parents who had immigrated to the United States in the late ‘40s. Her home was within walking distance of the temple. I lived across the street from the parish convent and was one of seven children of Irish and German-French parents.

She longed to know everything about rosaries, novenas, First Communions and St. Anthony, to whom I prayed for all lost articles. I was fascinated with bar mitzvahs, yarmulkes, rabbis and the Torah. Her world prayed in Hebrew, mine in Latin.

On Fridays, her mother invariably packed the most magnificent roast beef or turkey sandwiches. Without opening my sack, I knew my Friday lunch was either a tuna-fish or cheese sandwich. She introduced me to bagels and laughed when I ate them during Passover while she munched on matzos.

Two decades later, a first-grader at our breakfast table simplifies the Judeo-Christian dichotomy in saying, “I’m Christmas and Jane’s Hanukkah.”

Long before the grocers displayed their Thanksgiving turkeys, Christmas decorations began to envelop the town. Santa has sledded, ballooned or helicoptered into shopping malls and two little 6-year-old girls will spend the weeks prior to Dec. 25 sorting out Christmas and Hanukkah in a fast-paced consumer-oriented season.

How does it feel to be a child whose family does not celebrate Christmas? What obstacles do Jewish parents encounter in adhering to their faith during Christmas?

In Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the father advises his child, “First of all, if you can learn a simple trick, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view--until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

What did the parents of my friend with the saddle shoes experience as they watched her sing Christmas carols in the school’s Christmas program each December? In the intervening years, educators have been sensitized to the feelings of a group of children who do not observe Christmas. Our children will sing a variety of songs in this year’s holiday program. There will be songs about snowflakes in Japan, dreidels (a toplike toy) and the Iranian birthday song sung in Farsi, as well as “Shabat Shalom,” “Panis Angelicus,” “Jingle Bells” in Spanish, and even Jane singing “All I Want for Hanukkah is My Two Front Teeth.”

Both “Hanukkah” and “Christmas” families anguish while teaching their children the historical and religious significance of their todays while the receiving of presents seems to be paramount in the children’s minds. How do we emphasize the tale of the birth in Bethlehem or the miracle of lighting the holy lamps for eight days when the 10-speed bike, doll or new outfit intersperses the conversation? For the Jewish family there is also the more difficult task of placing the celebration of Hanukkah in proper perspective with respect to their holier days of Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashana and Passover.

For both the celebrants of Christmas and Hanukkah, the holidays mark the passing of time. There will be families who will note the addition or absence of a family member at the lighting of candles this year. In some homes, one more stocking will be hung by the chimney--or, more painful, one fewer. For other individuals, this will be the final time to share the story of Judah Maccabee or hear the words of St. Luke’s Gospel. How do we teach our children to look about them and recognize the underlying pain that this joyful season often masks? Will we make the gingerbread house or Hanukkah cookies blissfully or anxiously while we worry about unresolved gift decisions or impending entertaining?

We live in a community where Jewish families offer to baby-sit on Christmas Eve so families may attend midnight services, or serve dinners to the homeless and hungry in downtown facilities on Christmas Day, or rearrange work schedules so others may spend Christmas with their families. Will this same community remember this coming year to be sensitive to the needs of Jewish families on their holiest of days? Will this community mark the dates of the Jewish holy days on the calendar and re-think scheduling soccer games, Boy Scouts camping trips, high school homecoming dances or major business meetings on Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashana? Can we remember to consider the Hanukkah child in our holiday programs, parades and civic observances?

The last time I saw my saddle-shoed friend, we sat together in a college dining hall decorated with Christmas and Hanukkah ornaments and lamented our fate at having to endure final exams in a season of joy. I noted that she still was wearing her Star of David but her saddle shoes had been replaced with loafers.

How grateful I am that she allowed me to “walk in her shoes” when we both were young.