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What’s a Jew to Do on Christmas?
By Null / December 14, 2007
I'm not going to pretend that I'm a fan of Anthony Bourdain. This is a man who has labeled all vegans as "rude" (ironic, considering he's easily one of the rudest people on television) and calls them the "Hezbollah-like splinter-faction" of vegetarians. This is a man who has said that "the sooner we asphyxiate in our own filth, the better." This is a man whose appetite is whetted by watching a live cobra have its still-beating heart ripped out, then served to him in a dish. Clearly, Bourdain and I have very different world-views and principles. Perhaps the one thing he and I agree on is that Rachel Ray is really, really insufferable.
Though I often can't stomach his Travel Channel show, No Reservations, thanks to his caustic and surly hosting (and penchant for the cruel), clearly I'm in the minority. People seem to love (maybe it's love/hate?) the guy, so much so that Food Network, home of his first television series, A Cook's Tour, has announced that they'll be reprising the series with a marathon on Christmas.
The series, featuring outspoken chef Anthony Bourdain, returns to Food Network with a Christmas Day Marathon, airing four back-to-back episodes on Tuesday, December 25th from 9-11pm ET/PT. The series will then join the primetime lineup in its new timeslot on Tuesday, January 8th at 10:30pm ET/PT.
The Christmas Day marathon includes:
9:00pm "So Much Vodka So Little Time" — Russia 9:30pm "Dining with Geishas" — Japan 10:00pm "How to Be a Carioca" — Brazil 10:30pm "Stuffed like a Pig" — France
So, there you go: order in some Kung Pao and Moo Shu and celebrate the winter solstice with Bourdain.
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ProudJew –
Does anyone call themselves Jewish because they think it’s "trendy"? Seriously? Since which decade?
When I was a kid in the 1960s, it was pretty scary to be any part of Jewish, because Christian White People hated us, and I was given the impression that being Jewish was a good way to end up dead. My mother said in her neighborhood Jews got beaten up on the street just for being Jewish. She told me to keep it a secret. I had Nazi nightmares for about the first ten years of my life. My father wasn’t Jewish, so I’m one of those "children of intermarriage." I might be a lot older than you, and I can tell you right now, being the child of an intermarried couple in a hostile WASP-dominated, anti-Semitic culture is no picnic. It takes courage to claim a Jewish identity with zero support from the Jewish community as well as paranoia from Jewish relatives who decided to assimilate (presumably due to economics or atheism or anxiety – ?)
That being said, my childhood experience of "Christmas" was as a secular and commercial event, devoid of religious meaning, packed with consumerism, not much of an ethical or spiritual message. It just meant a tree, gifts, food, visiting my father’s family, and having to listen to terrible music. I don’t miss it – in fact, I hate that stuff now, it depresses me, I’m relieved I don’t have to have anything to do with it.
But I can see how people could go through the Christmas motions and have that not impact their beliefs one iota, because for many people, it is a secular holiday not a religious one. I know it is easy to view all things Not Jewish as, by definition, Christian, but there are degrees. In a secular household, Christmas is a secular event. Granted, there is a difference between a secular Jew and a secular Christian, or a Jewish atheist and a Christian atheist. I don’t know why a Jewish person would bother with any form of Christmas, but it doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it means. It could just be a party with stuff.
My best Christmas memories are of hanging out with my atheist husband at a Chinese restaurant in the only part of town where anything is open on Christmas, ordering steamed salmon and pot stickers, and watching frost gather on the windows behind the colored lights.
As Rabbi Hillel said, what is hateful to you, do not do to others. That is the whole of Torah, the rest is commentary.
…detests microgreens. I buy them almost every time I go to Trader Joe’s.Â
I suppose my palate is truly unrefined (I’m also a vegetarian). But I do love his show and his perenially irascible demeanor. Without it, he’d just be another talented chef.Â
They're Gentiles who call themselves Jewish because they think it's trendy. The fact that they don't see anything wrong with celebrating Christmas shows that they're not real Jews.
Your boyfriend is not Jewish if he celebrates Christmas and his mother is a shiksa. You're dating a Gentile and probably a repressed Christian. You need a real Jewish boyfriend because the one you have now is definately not a member of the tribe.
 Having pride in our traditions and refusing to celebrate Christian holidays doesn't make us bigots. It makes us proud Jews.
I was born Jewish, my husband converted. Celebrating Christmas with his family is no threat to our nuclear family. We're very involved in our congregation, have the extended family over every Shabbat, and our kids know who they are. The threat is when you allow religion to divide you from your family. If you want to stay with your boyfriend long term, you can't use your religion as a wedge between him and his parents. If you know who you are, then you can manage a day with people who find meaning in things which you think are silly. If you were Bat Mitzvahed, you probably invited kids who weren't Jewish. And you might consider going to the baptism of a friend's child. Your Bat Mitzvah was important, and this is important to people who may be grandparents to your children one day. It's not your thing, but it's only lose-lose if you sit there in sullen judgement over the way they celebrate their holiday.
Maybe you could do what we do on Christmas Eve, which is to invite over a bunch of other Jewish families and eat lasagna and latkes. L'Chaim.
Good to know I'm not the only bigot. My wonderful, fabulous Jewish boyfriend also grew up in an interfaith home and we can't seem to stop fighting about Christmas. I almost wish I was dating a Christian, because our Christmas conversation would consist of "Jews don't celebrate Christmas" and I could curl up with the Game Show Network's Family Feud marathon. Instead, I have to decide to either do something that makes me feel really uncomfortable, or refuse to indulge their convenient emotional disconnect (having a tree and exchanging gifts isn't celebrating Christmas, or if it is, one can absolutely do so without be (a) Christian or (b) a materialist). It's a lose-lose for everyone.Â
one would think the subject would have been exhausted by now…
You can't call yourself a Jew if you celebrate Christmas. What a joke! How does a phony Jew get on Jdate anyway? Have their standards gone so low? What a disgrace to our ancestors.
I too love ot jog on Christmas. There are no cars on the road and it is the quietest time of the year.
Otherwise, I can enjoy enjoy the season without myself getting involved in it. I love the light displays on some of the houses and a general mood of celebration.
Last year I went out to jog, and this year, I'll do it again. Ignoring pagan holidays is not difficult for me to do.
Unless the same Christmas music plays over the loudspeakers over and over.Â
I admit it. My adorable and wonderful and irreplaceable JDate boyfriend, without whom my life would sink into serious sewage, was raised in la casa de intermarriage. That means that now, instead of Chinese and movies, I actually sit around a Christmas tree, opening presents. And while I love the QT with the boy and his fam, I admit that part of me really misses the non-Christmases of yore.
My wife and I go out to a movie and then we go out to eat at a good Jewish Deli in Brookline.
This year we'll go to zaftigs, a great place to eat.
Like a good New York Jew, how could I ever pass up the opportunity to scarf down some greasy Chinese food and watch fiddler on the roof for the umpteenth time in the midst of checking my Jdate email?Â
However, the thought of Shacking Up with Anthony Bourdain is beyond reproach. I for one will leave that to the more-than-capable boys of WeHo.
Though I must say, traveling the globe and unearthing local delicacies (no matter how bizzare) and projecting those flavors to the obese sitting in their double-wide has its virtues…last I checked they renewed the show for a reason….no?
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