December Dilemma - NOT

Oy – do I think folks have this one all wrong. Here is how the dilemma is posed: What do intermarried families (Jewish and non-) do during the Christmas season? To celebrate or not, to visit or not, to participate or not, to enjoy or not.

My husband’s family is Catholic. I always joke that he left the church long before his mom could blame me. He and his brother were primo altar boys, the ones tapped for nun’s funerals. He left the church when he left home for college and although we have been together for 16 years, he joined my people in the synagogue only five years ago. But that’s another story.

For us, Christmas is a holiday half our family celebrates and we celebrate it with them in their homes with their customs and feeling their love. We created our own Christmas minhag/tradition. (Bet you never saw those 2 words together—Christmas Minhag) We stay at the local Marriott and go swimming at midnight. OK, I knit but the other 3 swim.

Here is the thing: we love our family and love that all our children, Catholic and Jewish “get” and respect each other. We sit through their communions and they dance at our Bat Mitzvahs. We all learn through love.

So what is the dilemma? Here are two for starters:
1. What if your cousin’s wedding is on Yom Kippur? She didn’t vet the date with you—why should she? What do you do?

2. What if your in-laws come to visit during Pesach, bringing a box of Entenmanns’s crumb cake and you say Thanks, but the family is not eating cake right now. They say, Oh right, well, we’ll eat it ourselves and you say I’m sorry, you can’t bring that box in the house right now. How could a non-Jew ever understand that? Here is his dilemma – how can I understand this new life my son has chosen where cake can or cannot be brought into the house.

Christmas is one day (although it starts in October) a year. How do intermarrieds negotiate the 364 other days?

We do it in the context of love and respect and knowledge that religion has divided and conquered for too long. Intermarried families have the opportunity to make the world a little smaller and more tolerant – with the added gift of diversifying the gene pool.

Merry Crispness.