Arts & Culture

What Do Jew Do on Christmas: Rachel Shukert, Author

By Rachel Shukert / December 24, 2010

Like a lot of Jewish parents, my mother and father felt the the best way to imbue me with a strong Jewish identity was to deny me a Christmas tree, visits to Santa, and any other aspect of mainstream holiday cheer.  This policy had the unwelcome effect of turning me into this crazed Christmas fanatic, like how if you deny your kids sugar they grow up to be compulsive secret eaters.  When I got a little older, I was sometimes invited on Christmas day to the house of a sympathetic Gentile friend.  I would sit there sadly, watching the Gentiles open all their mountains of presents.  Sometimes they would give me a little something, which was almost always an ornament for the tree I wasn’t allowed to have.  Once I pointed that out, I said: “You know, I don’t have a Christmas tree because I’m Jewish,” and the grandma said, “Oh, well, then I guess you can just put it on the thing that opens the blinds.”  ON THE THING THAT OPENS THE BLINDS.  Fuck you, Gentile Grandma.

To this day, I still desperately want a Christmas tree.  My husband won’t let me have one.  We’ve had no fewer than three screaming fights on this subject this season alone, all of which have included the phrases: “Maybe you should go marry some goy then!!!” and “MAYBE I WILL!!!!”  It’s stupid.  We both know my parents would never have paid for the wedding if I’d married a non-Jew.  For sure they wouldn’t have sprung for a sit-down dinner.

We’ll probably have this fight again on Christmas day this year.  Then we’ll probably go to a movie neither one of us really wants to see, and then we’ll go wait in line at Joe’s Shanghai in Chinatown in the freezing cold until we give up and go eat at some shittier place around the corner.  Wait, I forgot–this year I want to go see the re-release of Shoah. It’s playing at Lincoln Plaza and it’s nine-and-a-half hours long, so by the time we get all the way downtown the crowds will have died down, and we might get a decent freaking soup dumpling for once.  Ho ho ho.

Rachel Shukert’s latest book is Everything is Going to be Great: An Underfunded, Overexposed European Grand Tour

POST A COMMENT

  • By A Huff 2/7/11 at 11:27 p.m. UTC

    Christmas is actually a pagan feast dedicated to the queen of heaven who gives birth to the sun god Mythra, at the winter solcise annually. Dec 25 was chosen by Ceasar who fancied himself a god and the guardian of the sun god. Google the latin words on a ancient Roman coin to see for yourself. What I am trying to say is that Christmas is to Christians as was the golden calf to Israel. Do not allow yourself to be led by apostate Christians and miss the HOLY ONE OF ISRAEL! Blessed be the name of YAHSHUA BEN ELOHIM OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID!

  • By A Huff 2/7/11 at 11:01 p.m. UTC

    Christmas is not all it seems to be. For one Christians, are alot like the Jews whom Yah delivered out of Egypt. When they experience salvation they think that they can follow the same pattern of disobedience, and treat God’s commandments like a buffet where they pick and choose what is OK in their opinion. To give you an example, back in 2007 I was a volunteer at a food for the homeless kitchen in Florida. It was supported exclusively by the Christian churches in that area. For Christmas dinner they planned a lavish banquet of a flock of fresh turkeys as the main dish. With the tables all covered and decorated we also enjoyed popular Christian songs and a movie about how God loved us so much that he send his only begotten Son who came and gave himself for us so that we could be forgiven and set free. There were only a few regular volunteers there that knew that I am a Messianic Jew. But this Christmas day there were so many volunteers they were comming out of the wood-work. After the meal one of the Christian Ladies got right in my face and was scolding me because my little boy, Caleb, was going around shareing what I had taught him concerning santa claus. I explained to her that Caleb being only 4 yrs old at the time, I taught him the best way I knew how and somewhere in the teaching I told him that God’s children will have nothing to do with a lie. And that the truth of the matter is that santa claus is a liar. all this time my voice is getting progressively louder. I taught him that it is God who knows all the children by name and that every good and perfect gift comes from God. Besides all that , I too am a volunteer here, unlike you thought, and the people here know that I am a Messianic Jew who will not celebrate Christmas or celibrate lieing to children anually. The woman looked as though I gave her a spanking! At about that time guess who walked in the door? Yes it was old St. Nick himself! I was so digusted that I gathered up Sarah and Caleb and made a dart for the door never to return. Maybe the specticle that day cause one or more to turn from the leavening of wickedness. Please build your husband up! Do not tear him down. Do not covet what the Christians have. It is not worth it. Do you really want to teach your children that they are entitled to anything they desire with their eyes? I do not think so! May YAH bless your husband and all his house.

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