A Lonely Jew on Christmas

We’ve always had an ambiguous relationship, Christmas and me. As a kid at Glasgow’s only Jewish primary school, December was full of dreidels and songs in praise of the glory of the Maccabees, with ne’er a Santa’s elf in sight. And every year, as the streets of the southside lit up with fairy lights announcing the arrival of the main festive event, I was a little Jewish orphan, face pressed up to the window, staring into the Christmas house where Christmas people gave each other perfectly wrapped Christmas gifts as they stood around their impossibly alluring Christmas tree. God I wanted a Christmas tree.

No volume of sugary doughnuts and oily latkes could remove that feeling of being a lonely Jew on Christmas.

Not that our home was a Christmas free zone. Far from it – present-wise we kids were the most fortunate of double dippers. Over the eight days of chanukah we received our main haul. But our mum could not bear the prospect of her children missing out on Santa. So every year she took us along to his grotto, conveniently located in Lewis’s department store. Once in front of the Man in Red, I would stutter out my wish for an Evel Kneivel stunt set, anxious that Santa would sniff out my Hebraic lineage, denounce me as an imposter and send me packing. But Santa always turned up on Christmas Eve - in the form of our mother sneaking into our dark bedroom once she was sure we were asleep (we weren’t). My brother and I would grope around the packages at the end of our beds, getting a sense of gifts to come. And after a fitful night’s sleep, we’d be up first thing to get stuck into a bag full of plastic, tubes of jelly tots and a tangerine. For some reason there was always a tangerine.

Secondary school put the Christ into Christmas. Jesus, he was everywhere. I rather enjoyed the carol singing, cunningly swapping “Jesus” with “Moses” to reassure myself that I still knew which team I was on. But all that talk of the little baby messiah was a reminder that Christmas really wasn’t for the likes of us.

Christmas Day at home meant all-day TV marathon. Starting early with Roland Rat’s Winter Wonderland, through the Queen’s speech and on, inexorably, to The Wizard of Oz. We had lunch, of course. Mum may even have cooked a turkey, and put out some “festive” crackers, because…why not? But this was no Christmas lunch, no siree. Despite remarkable similarities to the way every other family in the country spent their day, this could not have been a Christmas celebration, because we did not do Christmas. And we would never, ever, have a Christmas tree.

But life moves on. In 1999, just a few days before the dawn of the new millenium I ended my stint as the Worst Banquets Waiter in the Southern Hemisphere by taking on a very special role at the hotel where I worked. I embraced my new position with gusto, and wrote home to share the exciting news with my parents that I had made it to the top of the greasy (north) pole. As my father declared later in one of his legendary speeches:

“Seven years of primary education. Six years of secondary education. Four years of tertiary education. For seventeen years of education, I supported you. And all so you could end up as Santa Claus.”

Sydney’s first ever Scottish-Jewish Santa?

I’d crossed a rubicon. One by one, we stopped resisting the symbols whose absence stood as our points of difference at Christmas time. I suppose that that is the very meaning of integration. As Lois and I began raising a family in London and establishing our own traditions, the big Christmas Day celebration became one of them.  

And now every year a group of our friends gather at one of our homes. My parents, now also relocated in London, always join in the fun, and having them there is truly priceless. There’s a (kosher) turkey so large it must surely be 50% bird and 50% growth hormone. There’s an annual quiz which we, the most competitive of families, never win. There is cheese, there is booze, and there is cheesy boozy karaoke.

All the friends’ kids who have grown up together through this landmark annual gathering look forward to it as much as we do. Truly, it’s the most wonderful time of year.

And yet…

Even as we have come to almost entirely embrace our secular form of Christmas celebration, I still have my limit. It remained a point of principle (though I’m not entirely sure which principle) that, however much the children protested, we would not have a Christmas Tree.

Middle child got back from university last week. A few nights ago, while I was sat watching a film, kidding myself that I was king of my castle, master of my own destiny, Orli got busy. And when she was ready she came to me with that cheeky grin which always means she’s got one over on me, and there it was. Crowned with a homemade magen david to reassure us that we do still know which team we’re on.

 It feels like the right year to go the whole way. It’s been a strange and tough one in many ways, and lord knows, we could all do with a break and a celebration. Tomorrow the first day of Chanukah falls on Christmas Day, so we will host our big lunch, we will gather with good friends, stuff our faces and sing our hearts out. And in the evening we will light our chanukiah while I give that Christmas tree a wry smile and feel enormous gratitude for this best of both worlds we’ve been so lucky to enjoy.

Wishing all of you happy Chanukah, and a merry Christmas.