Managing the December Dilemma Means Tackling it in January
Radically Redefining the American Holiday Calendar
American Jews have many wonderful winter traditions. We light candles, sing songs, recite prayers, visit family, give gifts, fry foods savory and sweet, and kvetch about the December Dilemma. In fact, although candles, blessings, and songs all have the trappings of religion, hand wringing is the only practice tackled with true religious fervor.
The “December Dilemma” can best be defined as the feelings of isolation, invalidation, and deprivation experienced by those trying to observe a non-Christian religion in the midst of an overwhelming Christmas season. This term may also be used by American Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and others, but it is most often applied to Jews and Chanukah.
The syndrome typically has three forms:
- Young Jews feeling alienated by an onslaught of Christmas imagery, entertainment, and celebration in a de jure (but not de facto) non-Christian country
- Public schools and other institutions attempting to balance the desire to publicly celebrate Christmas with the legal and ethical need to include minority religions
- Interfaith families trying to navigate holidays that are from completely separate religious traditions
Naturally, the Internet provides a treasure trove of advice for navigating these turbulent ethical, legal, and most of all, emotional waters. For example, the Anti-Defamation League publishes holiday guidelines for public schools, identifying the educational benefits of teaching about diverse religious traditions and cultures, warning school officials from favoring one set of holidays over another, and setting legal context for addressing Christmas in a public setting. The Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding provides December Dilemma workshops for teachers on cultural sensitivity, respect, identity, and community.
On a more personal level, Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, in The Tapestry of Jewish Time: A Spiritual Guide to Holidays and Life-Cycle Events, advises interfaith parents to define and discuss individual and family needs, choose a single tradition for the children, maintain the religious integrity of rituals, and set a year-long schedule for holiday celebrations. The Reform and Reconstructionist Jewish movements have published multiple commentaries on how to best separate the traditions of Chanukah and Christmas whilst simultaneously learning from each other. On paper, this all looks so easy. In real life? Not so much.
This is mostly about identity. The December Dilemma is more a problem among families in small or isolated Jewish communities. My mother grew up in the Bronx in the 40s and 50s but eventually settled in South Bend, Indiana in the 70s. She didn’t fully appreciate my cultural isolation. “What’s the big deal?” she once said to me. “When I was growing up, we all celebrated each other’s holidays.”
Recently, I chatted with an orthodox Jewish friend in Indianapolis about Christmas. She said, “my children don’t really interact with children from other religions since they go to the Hebrew Academy. They are aware of the other holiday because they live in this world. But it is pretty much inconsequential and has no bearing on their life. They are not feeling alienated in any way.” Neither my mother nor this friend are at all wrong; they just lived in vastly different worlds than I did.
My childhood in northern Indiana in the 70s and 80s was pretty typical, especially around Christmas. My public school felt absolutely no concern, legally or ethically, about staging a public Christmas concert year after year. A generation later, my sons’ public schools attempted some semblance of inclusion and egalitarianism with their “holiday concerts,” by adding a Chanukah song, a Spanish language Christmas song, and (if the teacher was particularly woke), an Eid al-Fitr song to the standard 10 Christmas songs. Swing and a miss.
Given all this, how do we even discuss the concept of the “December Dilemma,” when the very idea starts with a biased assumption of the full holiday calendar. When I was in college, a non-Jewish friend asked me what my family, “did for the holidays.” In response, I pulled out a calendar, and walked her through the year, describing what we did for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Chanukah, Tu B’Shevat, Purim, Passover, and Thanksgiving. She admitted later that she realized her mistake the moment she asked the question. In her mind, she was thinking of “the holidays” in its winter form (Christmas and not-Christmas). By the time she realized where I was going, it was too late, I was on a roll, and the best she could do was wait until I finally took a breath.
So, what does the “holiday calendar” truly look like? It’s all a matter of perspective.
A fivethirtyeight.com survey from 2015 provides an interesting model. In their survey, 1,095 respondents identified their top five favorite holidays. One can create a calendar wheel where the most popular holidays are displayed as red circles, with the area of each circle corresponding to the percentage of respondents. In this model, Christmas and Thanksgiving have nearly equal weight, followed by Independence Day, New Year’s Eve, and Easter. Not surprisingly, the holiday calendar is very winter-centric, creating a holiday season that expands from late November to the end of December. THIS is how the dominant culture view “the holidays.”
Compare this with the Jewish holiday calendar. In this wheel, holidays are displayed qualitatively, with large circles (most important holidays), medium circles (minor holidays celebrated by most Jews), and small circles (holidays only observed by a subset of Jews). It’s a highly subjective model to be sure, and more than one Jewish friend will no doubt challenge me on it. Shavuot, for example, is technically a very important pilgrimage holiday described in the Bible. However, few Jews regularly celebrate it, mostly because it comes after Sunday School lets out for summer break, and many just never learned about it.
Unlike the red calendar above, the Jewish holiday seasons is very fall-centric, with four big holidays happening within the span of a month. A spring holiday season provides balance with the major holiday of Passover and the minor (but extremely fun) holiday of Purim. The entire map has shifted its axis.
An overlay of maps, with the Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter now in green, highlights this difference. Based on this map, how can one even begin to discuss the December Dilemma without addressing the Fall Dilemma, the Spring Dilemma, the Late Winter Dilemma, etc.?
Plain and simple, we can’t start our discussion of the December Dilemma in December. It has to happen in January and follow us around the year. Any Jewish child without a solid cultural identity, an appreciation for tradition, and comfort in their Jewish self is pretty much screwed by Christmastime.
The same goes for public institutions. Schools should tackle diversity head on or ignore it entirely, but sometimes a token effort is worse than no effort at all. True diversity requires an understanding of the broader holiday calendar, not just holidays proximal to Christmas.
For those Jewish parents who just went through the trials and tribulations of the December Dilemma, I offer my own advice as a former Jewish child, a current Jewish parent, and a part time Jewish educator. Your work starts now.
Create Sacred Space and Time
I know very few Christmas celebrants who say, “December 25 is just not good for me this year. How about we do it on the 28th?” Whether or not Christmas is celebrated religiously, it is celebrated RELIGIOUSLY.
If only all Jews celebrated their holidays with the same fervor. If you are not taking off work for Rosh Hashanah, if you don’t know where you are spending Passover at least a month in advance, if you don’t know who is going to help you put up your sukkah (shelter) on Sukkot, time will undoubtedly get away from you. Sacred space is not necessarily a religious concept, but rather a statement of what is non-negotiable. My wife watches football every Sunday afternoon. It’s sacred. And definitely non-negotiable.
Tradition!
About a decade ago, I learned an old Iranian Jewish Passover custom. During the chorus of the song Daiyenu, sung early in the Passover seder, everyone beats each other with green onions. Despite me not being Iranian, I brought this tradition home to my family and my boys ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT. It is now an immutable tradition in our household. Even if my sons decide not to keep kosher, lead a seder, or recite prayers, I know that well into their adulthood, they will beat the snot out of each other with green onions.
Traditions are anchor points that create a sense of comfort and belonging. They create an emotional connection that tethers people to their religion, culture, or identity. As such, they are essential for children to weather any dominant culture not their own.
Get Loud
Decades ago, I began sending boxes of hamantaschen (triangular jam-filled cookies) to my co-workers for Purim, the Feast of Esther. It was a ploy, and it worked. Not only did I get repeat requests and sometimes demands for the cookies, but I created a small shift in their perception of the holiday calendar. Even if they saw Purim as the “Jewish Mardi Gras” (Which it’s not. At all.), their horizons were expanded just a little bit.
Parents, you are now the emissaries to your community. Visit your children's classes on major holidays. Let everyone know you are here. Be loud, be proud. Wish someone happy holidays…in September. And March. And August. And give food. Lots of food.
Get Crazy
When my sons were very young, my wife instituted a new Chanukah tradition: they could select a box of any breakfast cereal they wanted, no matter the sugar content. For one week (or at least one box of cereal), the parental rules of nutrition did not apply. My boys liked eating latkes, playing dreidel, and opening presents, but they LOVED their sugar cereals.
Jewish holidays should be crazy fun, even when they are somber, traditional, and/or religious. On Purim, dress up in costumes, eat unhealthy treats, give presents big and small, and make fun of the sacred texts. On Passover, see who can eat the most horseradish in one setting in a manly show of strength. On Sukkot, build a sukkah (shelter) and camp out under the stars. Your children should not only look forward to each holiday, but they should pester you to make it happen.
Get Commercial
For most of the 20th century, the traditional commercial entertainment market did not allow for commercially produced pop songs related to Chanukah, much less any other Jewish holiday. Irving Berlin, a Russian Jewish immigrant, is possibly best known for White Christmas, but his lovely song “Yiddisha Nightingale” is buried very, very deep in his songbook. And thus it was for most of the last century. A millennia of Jewish tradition fell subservient to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Then in 1995, Klasky Csupo created “A Rugrats Passover”, followed a year and half later by “A Rugrats Chanukah.” It was a new paradigm in popular entertainment, a watershed moment where a popular cartoon took Jewish holidays mainstream on their own merits, not as a side note to the dominant culture.
The Internet changed the paradigm once again, allowing creators to target specific audiences. Any child looking for Chanukah songs is only a YouTube search away from original music, such as Matisyahu’s “Miracle” and Michelle Citrin’s “Pass the Candle”; clever parodies, such as The Maccabeats’ “Candlelight” and Six13’s “Arianukah (An Ariana Grande Chanukah)”; and the truly bizarre stuff from the mind of Smooth-E, such as “Honika Electronica.”
But it’s not enough. We need more. Lots more. More original Purim songs. More original Rosh Hashanah videos. More original Sukkot TV episodes. All you creators out there, I’m talking to you. Get on it. Please.
I don’t guarantee that any of this will mitigate the December Dilemma, but hopefully it will help you and your children enjoy the dominant culture as you build an appreciation for your own. If nothing else, you’ll get to beat each other with green onions. And that’s almost enough to make up for Santa.
