It’s the season of Xmas squabbles
“I could access the diamonds and I still had the craftsmen and so I said ‘yes, I can help’. I realised I loved the trade and I missed it.”
Then her diamond supplier suggested she become a member of the male- dominated London Diamond Board (Bourse). Membership, amongst other things, requires many years diamond experience, plus referrals from two traders. She passed the test and in 2014, set up her own company, Olivia Grace, named after her two daughters.
She creates colourful statement jewellery as she tries to bring back some of the glamour of the 1920s at affordable prices.
“Women are putting all their valuables in the safe and wearing inexpensive fashion pieces which can’t be handed Celebrity clients: Lancaster and Stewart down. There’s no value to the pieces. I am doing solid gold pieces with high quality diamonds and craftsmanship that are affordable, and yet can still be inheritance pieces.”
Her most popular line is the rose gold Venezia collection, inspired by the Cote D’Azur’s vibrant colours. “We look for cut in the diamond, to achieve that brilliance of light coming from a stone. You want it to absolutely shine.” The success of this collection has led to her dressing celebrities for award ceremonies, and she exhibited at London Fashion Week in September.
Fine says the diamond trade is cut-throat. But she prefers to focus on the pleasure that creating beautiful objects brings to both her clients and herself. “I’d rather earn less and make the customer enjoy the whole experience.”
Her hope is to keep a person’s story alive through her work. This explains the two brightly coloured 1950s ornamental ashtrays, pride of place in her living room, which belonged to her late grandmother.
Orphaned as a child due to a fire, her grandmother was left with no family possessions.
“I was very close to my maternal grandmother Sybil and we lived together when I was 18. She died ten years ago, but when I look at the ornaments I strongly feel she has never left me.”
TOO MUCH shopping, too much food, arguing with your family — Christmas is surely the quintessential Jewish festival? If it weren’t for that teeny matter of whatsisface slumbering away in a manger, we could definitely count this one as tailormade for us, the Chosen People (or semi-Chosen in my case).
But, for me, the season of joy is more like the season of squabbling as The Husband and I flex our debating muscles for the Grand Final of the Annual Arguing Calendar: Should you celebrate Christmas if you’re Jewish?
We have had more arguments about this than just about anything else (and we take our arguing very seriously so it’s not as if it isn’t up against an awful lot of competition). Even in less quarrelsome Jewish households, Christmas seems to be the C-word that must only be whispered and spouses often disagree about the extent to which it should be enjoyed, tolerated, ignored, or actively shunned.
Despite its name, Christmas is fundamentally a pagan/secular/ non-Christian feast. Much of the imagery and traditions — evergreens, cakes and puds packed with nuts and fruits, candles, tree-glorification — have deep roots in their pagan origins. Christmas falls when it does because, in order to get the Brits to accept Christianity, it was simply dumped on top of the existing festivals: the ancient English one of Yule, the Roman Saturnalia which culminated in the high point of Brumalia on 25th December, and of course the physical fact of the Winter Solstice. Ask any theologian and they will agree that yes, it’s pretty certain that Jesus was not even born on that date.
The Husband, despite generally priding himself on being a rational creature, with statistics at his fingertips (sometimes made up, I’m sure, but still they do give him an air of authority) isn’t swayed by any of this. He thumps his chest (literally, not exaggerating) and says, “I don’t care! Not having a tree and not sending Christmas cards are part of my identity as a Jew. It’s the same for me as not eating pork.” Of course, this is very annoying because I can’t argue with it. I can say that my Jewish Dad loved having a real Christmas tree (which is true) and that my non-Jewish mum didn’t give a figgy pudding either way (also true), but you can’t tell another person that how he feels is wrong.
Still, despite the chest-thumping and the refusal to let a perfectly innocuous fir tree cross the mezuzah line, I notice that there are some Christmas traditions he really does like. Jury will please note the following:
Item A: Crackers. The Husband is really very sweetly fond of crackers as if he is seven years old. He always angles for expensive ones because he actually cares about the gifts inside; I don’t mind about the contents as long as the outsides complement the table settings.
Item B: Traditional meal. Even though having roast turkey is no more, nor less, Christian than having a tree, he would behave as if badly cheated if I tried to fob him off with egg and chips. Turkey it is, plus all the non-treif fol-derols: homemade cranberry sauce, enough roast potatoes to feed the whole of Greater Manchester, spiced red cabbage (a little nod to the heim), etc.
Item C: Mince pies. I always put a pastry Magen David on the top when I make mince pies, so The Husband can tell himself that they are a little bit Jewish. In fact, they descend from the medieval English custom of having pies for Easter and Christmas filled with ground meat, dried fruits and spices (then a rare treat as these last two were imported so very expensive) so are not actually Jewish in any way whatsoever.
But now I’ve unearthed the fact that, as recently as the late 19th century, the Saturnalian tradition of persecuting the Jewish community on Christmas Day was alive and well (though not in the UK, as far as I can tell). I’m torn between my love of all things Christmassy and my sense of fairness: Do I tell The Husband that his instinctive dislike of Christmas might in fact have sound historical roots after all? And if I do tell him, will we end up sad, treeless and giftless — just the three of us having beans on toast on the 25th as we’ll have avoided all Christmas shopping?
But, as descendants of diaspora Jews, maybe it’s a good thing for us to celebrate the most-loved festival of our host nation, given that the Jew-baiting has now been ditched? Or is that merely a way of ennobling what is really just a love of eating, drinking, and having presents? For my part, I love the delicious food, choosing gifts for the people I love, and spending time with family (The Husband’s family obviously; mine drive me crazy). What could be nicer than eating, talking, laughing and sharing with the people you love?
And I can’t be alone, or why else does the local glatt kosher butcher advertise kosher turkeys?
Joy to the world…and I wish you all a very happy thingummyjig.
I put a pastry Magen David on my mince pies
Zelda Leon is half-Jewish by birth then did half a conversion course as an adult (half-measures in all things….) to affirm her Jewish status before a Rabbinical Board. She is a member of a Reform synagogue.