A Jewish perspective on Christmas

To all of my Christian friends and family members, I wish you a day of joy as you celebrate the birth of Jesus.

I am not wishing a merry Christmas to my Jewish friends, whose determination to celebrate this holy day is diametrically opposed to the fundamental beliefs of Judaism. We do not believe in the Trinity. We believe in one God, not God and His son.

Our forefathers and foremothers faced persecution for thousands of years because of our beliefs, because we were different. And many of them, sadly, in their desperation not to be different, are teaching their children that what we believe doesn’t matter because Christmas is just a big holiday, like Thanksgiving, that everyone celebrates.

Thanksgiving celebrates the momentary peace between the colonists and the Native Americans, whose land the colonists were taking. It is a story about immigrants, which everyone needs to hear. When I was in school, no one ever suggested that the Second Americans had all but destroyed the Native Americans, who rightly viewed them as conquerors, not freedom fighters. It’s a bigger, and more troubling, story than that. And it’s not about football games.

On Christmas, my family had Chinese food. When I got older and my mother and I were the only members of our small family still living nearby, I picked her up on Christmas to go to a movie and then join the other Jewish families at Dave Wong’s China Sails. No Hanukkah bush, no presents. Not easy in a Massachusetts town where Jews already were second-class citizens, reflected on the colored real estate maps that agents used to use.

There were aunts and uncles who celebrated Christmas, but not us, and not my father’s parents, who lived nearby. I learned early — when the teacher said I couldn’t play Mary, even though I had the longest hair in the class (the usual standard), because I was Jewish. My father couldn’t help but laugh a little, because Mary was a Jewish girl, like me. When I was taught that the Jews killed Jesus, the rabbi went to the Hadley School in Swampscott. I made my mother promise me he would not mention my name.

I remember an Orthodox rabbi telling me many years later that if a Jew celebrates Christmas, it’s very likely her grandchildren will not be bar or bat mitzvahed; that those who think it’s fine to join in the celebration will eventually find themselves alone in the synagogue on Yom Kippur.

Don’t worry. I don’t sit in judgment of anyone but myself. Religion is personal. But it was with great joy that I watched my sister at the new synagogue on Yom Kippur. She had cancer at 32 and is now suffering heart failure, but there she was, looking as beautiful as ever, telling the story of our family and the temple we grew up with. Although that temple is now a town building, the ne’er tamid (“eternal light”) was moved to the new synagogue.

Which is where I belong.