Imagine it’s 1826 in a Polish shtetl on Christmas Eve. It also happens to be the first night of Chanukah. Snow blankets the ground, but what chills you is the fear of your neighbours’ ‘warm’ hearts, warmed by too much vodka or an antisemitic sermon at church.
To avoid drawing attention with your usual studies (since Christmas is for fun), you turn to Kleine Shas (small Talmud), a traditional card game played on Nittel Nacht (Christmas Eve). The game uses numbered cards (no face cards to avoid idolatry) and resembles Pontoon or Twenty-one.
While there appear to be parallels between some Christmas and Chanukah practices, their origins are different. We light candles during Chanukah and place them in our windows to “publicise the miracle” and in some Christian homes a seven-branched candle “bridge” appears. There is no clear consensus on what the candles represent but it it’s a Scandinavian custom marking stages toward Christmas.
Although both holidays begin on the 25th day of the midwinter month, the reasons differ. Scholars suggest 25 December was chosen for Christmas to counteract the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which ended on 23 December. However, Chanukah has no possible link to Saturnalia; its date, 25 Kislev, was recorded in the Book of Maccabees in the 2nd century BCE.
This year marks a rare occurrence – the first night of Chanukah is on Christmas Day itself! The two holidays coincide again in 2035 and 2054 but after that we’ll have to wait over 50 years for it to happen again.
Kleine Shas gane
Christmas isn’t a Jewish holiday, of course, but we have obviously taken it on and there are Jewish homes with trees to rival Trafalgar Square but with more lights and baubles. Chrismakah and the ‘Chanukah Bush’ are both decried by rabbis in the USA who would sooner see their congregants in a Chinese restaurant which is the norm across the pond.
The popular joke about how Jews spent Christmas used to feature the little boy who spent the day looking at the empty shelves in his father’s toy factory. But that was then; now children are just as likely to tell a Jewish Santa what they want for Christmas and in Atlanta it may be Rick Rosenthal as the Orthodox Jew has turned playing Santa into his profession. He runs the Northern Lights Santa Academy, working as a professional Claus and training others. Rosenthal sees Santa as a non-religious figure spreading joy across all backgrounds and views this as his contribution to tikkun olam – repairing the world. His beard? It’s officially registered with the National Beard Registry, and he’s a proud member of the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas.
The cast of Eretz Nehederet
Jewish influence on Christmas culture has been surprisingly significant with Newsweek and Vogue magazines crediting Jews as the providers of the best Christmas songs, namely Johnny Marks – Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Let it Snow by Sammy and Jule Styne. Movies? Obviously we’re involved and to get you started there is the hit Christmas film Elf, written by David Berenbaum, with Ed Asner playing Santa and Mara Wilson of Matilda fame took on the Natalie Wood role in the 1994 remake of the classic Miracle on 34th Street. Stephen Spielberg’s Gremlins (1984) is set at Christmas, telling of a young Billy Peltzer who receives a strange creature as a pet – along with strict instructions not to feed it after midnight, keep it out of the light and away from water. The pet, a “mogwai” named Gizmo, was voiced by Jewish actor Howie Mandel.
Comedienne Joan Rivers once quipped that to be “properly Jewish”, nativity scenes would include a nanny for the baby Jesus, and Mary wouldn’t be dressed in schmattes but clothes to reflect her importance in the Christmas story – a Chanel suit, Manola Blahnik shoes and a Hermes bag! The Israeli satire TV show, Eretz Nehederet (Wonderful Country) is an odd one for Christmas but may work with Chanukah. Featuring a different kind of nativity scene, the infant Jesus is visited by three “wise persons” of the West, from Berkeley – who claim Jesus is not Jewish but Palestinian and Muslim.
Menorah in the Middle
For more Chanukah-specific films check out Lucy DeVito, Jonah Platt and Sarah Silverman in Menorah in the Middle, which has Sarah returning home to introduce her fiancé, only to discover the family bakery is going m’khuleh. More romantic still and on Hulu is Mistletoe and Menorahs, the tale of the hard-working toy exec who has to learn about Chanukah — fast — to seal the deal with a new account, so he seeks help from a Jewish expert. Not seen it, but be thankful!
If Christmas were a Jewish holiday, the rabbis would have added as many new laws as possible. Such as: “Any species of tree is kosher for use as a Christmas tree, provided it has needles and not leave.” On how and when to decorate the tree: “Additional lights are set up around the outside of the home, each according to his own ability. The more lights and other decorations one sets up, the more praiseworthy he is.” As for the Christmas meal the rules would state: “In the evening, after three stars appear in the sky, the family gathers for the Erev Christmas meal. Opinions differ on what should be served.”
Accompanying the meal would be traditional songs:
“Who knows one?
I know one!
One is a partridge in a pear tree
Who knows two? I know two!
Two are the turtledoves….”
Wishing all readers a merry 25th December whatever you celebrate.
