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THE XMAS MIRROR
Christmas has become a prism through which we Jews can see ourselves.
By Joshua Eli Plaut
hile for the majority of Americans Christmas is a time to celebrate the
birth of Jesus, for Jews it is a time to consider their relationship to the
wider society. Some Jews have chosen to adopt the Yuletide festivities. Some
have emphatically rejected the rituals and symbols of Christmas. Still
others have sought ways to meld Christmas and Chanukah. Christmas, in effect,
has become a prism through which, over time, we can view how living in this
land of opportunity and freedom has shaped our religion, culture, and
identity.
In Europe
For centuries, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe feared
Christmas-time. At any other time, pious Jews would be studying Torah in the
synagogue,
but not on Christmas Eve and Day. Wary of being attacked in the street,
they took refuge in their homes, playing cards or chess with their families.
The story was different in Western Europe, where, for the Jewish elite,
holiday symbols--such as the Christmas tree--signified secular inclusion in
society. Affluent German Jews often posed for portraits with their extended
families in front of elaborately decorated Christmas trees. The Viennese
socialite Fanny Arnstein, a co-founder of the Music Society of Austria, was
among the first Jews to introduce a Christmas tree into the home, an act
also practiced by none other than the father of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl.
In Berlin, the great scholar of Jewish mysticism and philosophy, Gershom
Scholem, grew up in a home that celebrated Christmas "with roast goose or
hare, a decorated Christmas tree which my mother bought at the market by St.
Peter's Church, and the big distribution of presents for servants,
relatives, and friends.... An aunt who played the piano treated our cook and
servant girl to 'Silent Night, Holy Night.'" These celebrations, Scholem
believed, reflected the view that Christmas was "a German national festival, in
the
celebration of which we joined not as Jews but as Germans." As a young
adult, Scholem would reject his family's celebration and, instead, attend a
Maccabee Jewish ball for single Jews in Berlin--a matchmaking idea that has as
its modern counterpart the "Matzo Ball," a party for Jewish singles slated
for this Christmas Eve in twenty-five cities throughout North America.
Coming to America
For most Eastern European Jews, it would take coming to America to ease
their fear of Christmastime. At the turn of the 20th century, these new
immigrants enjoyed the season for what it was--the national holiday for all
Americans and a day of rest for the weary worker. But the holiday was
evolving,
triggering a change in how the vast majority of Jews dealt with the
Yuletide season.
As early as the 1870s, Christmas began to change from essentially a
religious to a secular national holiday--a process accelerated by
commercialization and the custom of gift-giving, which over time spread from
the home to
the school and the workplace. In 1912, New York displayed the country's
first community Christmas tree, and that same year, the cities of Boston and
Hartford celebrated Christmas with open-air holiday-oriented concerts. By the
following year, 160 towns across America had sponsored similar musical
events that echoed the patterns of private celebrations at home and
church--gifts for the children, decorated Christmas trees, nativity scenes,
and the
spirited singing of Christmas carols. Aglow with Christmas decorations,
these city centers infused a celebratory ambience that dominated the
landscape;
for Jews, there was no escape.
In response, some Jewish families in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Hot
Springs, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Toledo staged their own celebrations
on the night of December 24. Incorporating both Christmas and Chanukah
symbols, regardless if Chanukah fell earlier or later on the calendar, they
decorated Christmas trees, exchanged gifts, and hung wreaths on the doors of
their homes and stockings on the fireplace. In addition, from the 1880s to
the beginning of World War II, American Jews of German descent hosted
balls--featuring dinner, dancing, and a concert--for their Jewish friends on
Christmas Eve. Opulent celebrations were staged: the grand masquerade ball in
1876 at Bellevue House, Cincinnati; the Christmas Eve party (on the Jewish
Sabbath) in 1881 at the Progress Club of New York; the opening ball on Chr
istmas Day in 1883 at the Apollo Club of Minneapolis; the Christmas Hop at
Marine's Hall on Christmas Day in 1885 at the West Chicago Club; and the
Christmas Soiree of 1888 at the Concordia Club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In short, America's new Christmas consciousness could not be ignored.
According to a dissertation by Rabbi Kenneth White, Jews responded in three
main ways--by accommodation, acceptance, and rejection--depending on the
strength of their own religious or cultural identities, their perception of
the
meaningfulness or offensiveness of Christmas, and their personal desire to
be fully part of American society. A fourth response would emerge in the
latter half of the 20th century--affirming Jewish identity.
Accommodation And Acceptance
Those Jews participating in the tenor of Christmas without partaking in
its religious elements would engage in selective borrowing of Yuletide
accoutrements, lending a festive spirit to Chanukah by appropriating
decorations
such as garlands, wreaths, and evergreen boughs. Consider Sinai
Congregation of Chicago's celebration of Chanukah, as reported in the December
27,
1878 issue of Chicago's Jewish Advance:
The fine Temple was crowded with grown people and children. The Chanukah
Tree was brilliantly illuminated with wax candles. The services commenced
with the singing of the first stanza of the Chanukah hymn by the
Sabbath-school children.
Another example: in 1879, the weekly national American Israelite, a
newspaper published in Cincinnati, reported that New York's Temple Emanu-El
had
hosted a Chanukah celebration for its religious school students:
The Lecture room was decorated with a profusion of evergreens. Dr.
Gottheil explained the festival, after which the children sang the Chanukah
song.
Recitations by Mrs. Louis, Miss Judith Ditternhoefer, Messrs. May and
Sanger closed the pleasant celebration. Some of the children having remarked
that "it looked just like Christmas," Mr. Sanger addressed a few words to them
pertinent to the occasion and told the children that Christmas was not an
event that should interest them.
So, too, the Sabbath Visitor, a popular Jewish children's magazine of the
time, encouraged the decorative use of evergreens during the Festival of
Lights. A story in the 1880 edition entitled "On Last Christmas" describes a
Jewish family's celebration of Chanukah; home decorations included pictures
of Moses and George Washington, a menorah covered with flowers, and the
liberal use of wreaths and evergreens.
Perhaps the most widely appropriated Christmas custom among Jews was gift
giving. The 1931 how-to classic What Every Jewish Woman Should Know, for
example, included the following advice:
It is a time hallowed Jewish custom to distribute gifts in honor of the
Hanukkah festival. If ever lavishness in gifts is appropriate, it is on
Hanukkah. Jewish children should be showered with gifts, Hanukkah gifts, as a
perhaps primitive but most effective means of making them immune against envy
of the Christian children and their Christmas.
And in the late 1950s, says Jewish ethnographer and historian Jenna
Joselit, "[c]onsumers were also encouraged to use a wide range of food
products
'lekavod Chanukah' ('in honor of Chanukah'), from Canada Dry ginger ale and
Goodman's noodles to Aunt Jemima pancake flour, 'the best flour for
latkes,' and Crisco shortening, which successfully allied 'Chanukah Latkes and
Modern Science.'"
Once a Jewish family adopted Christmas practices (even if devoid of
Christological meaning) and passed them on from generation to generation, they
were not easily abandoned. In San Francisco's high society, for example, the
Haas family, originally from Germany, hosted a large annual family
Christmas party for more than sixty years. Family member Frances Bransten
Rothmann
remembers those Christmas celebrations fondly:
I can still smell the fragrant aroma of fir and pine boughs in the
crackling fire. I can still sense the excitement and anticipation as we viewed
the
elaborately-wrapped gifts glowing in their incandescent papers, bows, and
promises of wishes fulfilled.
Christmas-time Jewish Traditions
Even Jews who did not appropriate Christmas customs, such as displaying a
tree or exchanging gifts, could not ignore America's most celebrated
holiday. As an antidote to feeling excluded some Jews invented their own
Christmas-time traditions. Jewish immigrants living on New York's Lower East
Side,
for example, chose in large numbers to spend the evening in one of the
city's forty Nickelodeons; thus was born the custom of Jews going to the
movies
on Christmas. In fact, so many Jews turned to movies on Christmas that in
1908, facing pressure from Christian leaders, New York Mayor McClellan
closed the city's cinemas for the holiday. After one year, however, the law
was
repealed, and movie-going on Christmas continues to our own day.
Rejection
Yet, as early as the late 1800s, rabbis and other influential Jews
criticized the practice of decorating and displaying trees in Jewish living
rooms
as a shameful blurring of Christian and Jewish customs. Henrietta Szold,
for example, then Baltimore correspondent to the Jewish Messenger, wrote on
January 10, 1879:
Why need we adopt the Christmas tree, ridiculously baptized a Chanukah
bush? Have we not the Menorah, connected so closely with the visions of the
prophets and the allegories of the Bible?
"The December Dilemma"
This debate over acceptance, accommodation, and rejection was given a new
name in the 1950s--"The December Dilemma." As Rabbi Bertram Korn of
Congregation Keneseth Israel in Philadelphia explained in a December 15, 1950
sermon:
Every year at this time every thoughtful and serious Jew faces a problem
which is intensified at this season: how we as Jews deal with the popular
aspects of the majority faith of our neighbors...how we adjust to the
temptations of the tinsel and the holly...where we take our stand as Jews....
Indeed, every December, parents across the US struck private bargains with
America's Christmas culture. Some resigned themselves to take their
children to Macy's department store to sit on Santa's lap. Others advised sons
and daughters that it was permissible to sing Christmas carols in schools,
providing that one did not vocalize "Jesus" or "Christ." Some American Jews
organized against Christmas displays and Bible readings in public schools.
But most Jews, reluctant to set themselves apart and afraid to jeopardize
the goodwill of their neighbors, acquiesced to religious observances in the
public square--that is, until Engel v. Vitale, the landmark 1962 Supreme
Court decision declaring school prayer unconstitutional, empowered an
increasing number to protest. In the process, these activists claimed a
distinctive
place for Jews in American political culture--as staunch upholders of the
separation of church and state.
What were the consequences for Jews who embraced Christmas traditions?
Starting in the 1950s, sociologists conducted a number of studies. In his 1958
study of second-generation immigrant Reform Jews on Chicago's South Side,
clinical psychologist and rabbi Milton Matz revealed that in the second
generation parents often agreed that a Jewish child might need a Christmas
tree to "hyphenate the contradiction between his Americanism and his Jewish
ethnicism." Matz's study also demonstrated that members of the third
generation were increasingly likely to recognize the inherent contradiction in
adopting the religious symbols of another group; they would eventually give up
the Christmas tree and find other ways of expressing their acculturation
into American society.
Sure enough, in a 1993 study Stanford religious studies professor Arnold
M. Eisen validated Matz's findings, demonstrating that the majority of
American Jews no longer had Christmas trees; in 82 percent of entirely Jewish
households, a Christmas tree had never been displayed. So too, sociologist
Marshal Sklare's research in the 1950s and '60s on second- and
third-generation Jews established that Chanukah--formerly a "minor" Jewish
holiday--had
gained in importance when it became the Jewish alternative for Christmas.
"Instead of alienating the Jew from the general culture," wrote Sklare,
"Hanukkah helps to situate him as a participant in that culture. Hanukkah, in
short, becomes for some the Jewish Christmas." Ironically, by elevating
Chanukah as a Jewish alternative to Christmas, American Jews had invented
their
own holiday tradition through a Christmas mirror.
The Christmas Mitzvah Season
Toward the end of the 20th century, many third-generation American Jews
were seeking more authentic Jewish ways to express their "at-homeness" in
America during the Yuletide season. One of the main ways centered on the
time-honored practice of "doing mitzvot"--charitable deeds that one's
Christian
neighbors were also expected to do in "the spirit of Christmas."
Volunteerism conferred equal status for the volunteers vis-à-vis other
Americans,
making them feel like insiders on a day they might otherwise experience the
sting of alienation from friends, neighbors, and colleagues. In so doing,
they could proudly proclaim Jewish identity in the face of seasonal
marginality.
One such volunteer was the late Albert Rosen of Milwaukee. He began
Christmas volunteering on December 24, 1969 after encountering a man who was
upset about not being with his family on Christmas because he had to work.
"That night," an Associated Press writer would later write, "Rosen called a
local radio station and asked the disc jockey to announce that a Jewish man
wanted to work for a Christian on Christmas." For the next twenty-eight years
Rosen stood in for strangers, doing their jobs on Christmas. He filled in
for a police dispatcher, bellman, switchboard operator, television
reporter, chef, convenience store clerk, radio disc jockey, and a gas station
attendant--and, as the AP story noted, he would train for each position in
advance:
The first Christmas was among the toughest for a man who never drank
anything stronger than soda pop. He [Rosen] spent a week apprenticing at
Sardino's South mixing martinis so bartender John Volpe, Jr. could have
Christmas
off for a change. "He wasn't much of a mixologist," recalls Volpe, "but he
was very good with people, a genuine guy." The bar was mobbed that night
and a couple of people complained about the drinks. But Rosen basked in the
attention from TV and newspaper reporters....His stint at the Pfister Hotel
went more smoothly. "He looked like he'd been a bellman all his life," says
Richard Ross, the bell captain who trained him. "He had a nice
personality, bubbly, upbeat. I would have hired him." Occasionally Jews asked
him why
he would want to ingratiate himself with Christians. "I do this because I'm
a Jew," he told them. "Judaism is about being a light unto the world."
Perhaps the most ironic manifestation of the Christmas mitzvot phenomenon
is the Jewish volunteer in a Santa suit. For more than twenty years, Harvey
Katz, a lawyer from Glastonbury, Connecticut and a member of Congregation
Kol Haverim, delighted children with his cheerful "ho-ho-ho" at the only
place in town with a Santa--the Glastonbury Bank and Trust Company (where he
served as the first Jewish trustee). Jay Frankston of New York City also
took up the role of Santa in 1960, at first to amuse his children. Later,
upon discovering that the third floor of the city's main post office served as
the storage place for letters addressed to Santa Claus, he managed to gain
access to the letters and decided to send telegrams to eight of the
children saying, "Santa is coming." Dressed as Santa, Frankston then made good
on
the promise, bringing the delighted children their presents. By 1972, he
was providing gifts to 150 children. Publicity about Frankston's good deeds
attracted donations--donations that he, in turn, gave to charitable
organizations to distribute at Christmas. "Before, Christmas didn't belong to
me,"
Frankston explained. "Now, Christmas belongs to me."
Today, thousands upon thousands of American Jews have become vested in
Christmas through the doing of mitzvot--volunteering in soup kitchens and
hospitals, visiting the homebound, preparing or delivering Christmas meals,
buying Christmas presents for the poor, or substituting for colleagues at
work. Increasingly, volunteerism has become an established means of combining
the Jewish values of tikkun olam, repairing the world, with the Christmas
message of bringing joy to the world.
Who would have imagined that this once-feared holiday would become an
occasion for many American Jews to affirm their identity with confidence and
pride, both as Americans and as Jews?
Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, Ph.D., a historian, photoethnographer, and
cultural anthropologist, is author of the forthcoming book, Silent Night?
Being
Jewish at Christmas Time in America: Proclaiming Identity in the Face of
Seasonal Marginality and executive director of the American Friends of Rabin
Medical Center. He welcomes unusual Christmas-time Jewish traditions and
stories
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