What Happens When You Love Christmas...but You're Jewish?

The Matzah Ball, Jean Meltzer
For years, Christmas has been Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt's safe place. The daughter of a famous rabbi and a fertility physician, she battles both Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the naysayers who claim it doesn't exist; although a devout Jew she both collects Christmas kitsch and writes famous Christmas romances under the name Margot Cross, both which she keeps secret from her parents. However, this year her pushy publisher wants to branch out and asks her to write a Hanukkah romance. (Frankly, I don't blame Rachel; the publisher just wants to do this so the company can say they're behind diversity, which is annoying.) Rachel feels lost after years of writing Christmas stories, and thinks she can get ahold of the proper spirit if she attends the Matzah Ball, a big specialty blowout dance for wealthy Jewish people. But all the tickets are sold out...unless she can get one from Jacob Greenberg, who's running the event, and also the boy who broke her heart at age 12 at Camp Ahava.

The characters in this are...okay. I sympathized with Rachel, who basically has a condition a lot of doctors don't believe in and who suffers terribly if she exerts herself too much, and how she didn't want her conservative parents to know her secrets. She's also been burdened for years with the idea that as the famous rabbi's daughter she was required to be Miss Perfect. Jacob also has had his problems: his mother was also chronically ill (from a different disease) and he grew up throwing himself into his work in order to escape his fears and his guilt.

Other things didn't gel too well. Except for Jacob's wonderful bubbie Toby, my favorite character in the book, all the people in the novel seem to be rich and I couldn't relate to them. The whole Matzah Ball thing seemed so over-the-top compared to the sort of amusements my Jewish friends partake in. It also struck me as weird that Jacob and Rachel couldn't get over this "thing" that separated them back in summer camp. I mean, they were twelve, and never moved on? And then there's Mickey. Don't get me wrong, Mickey is a great best friend—Rachel's a lucky girl to have such a great friend. But again...wacky gay friend. This is something like the third or fourth book I've read where the straight female protagonist has a wacky gay friend. Plus Mickey meets several other overdone tropes: he's a black gay kid who was adopted by two Jewish lesbians.

It's cute, but depends on your tolerance for two emotionally miserable people involved with what's basically a rich person's gathering.

Happy Hanukkah!

Hanukkah begins tonight at sundown.

You can read this classic book about the origins and meaning of Hanukkah customs at Archive.org. Registering is free, and you can borrow books just like at a library.

Hanukkah: The Feast of Lights: Compiled and Edited by Emily Solis-Cohen

This is a children's book with lively illustrations in the same vein:

Light Another Candle: The Story and Meaning of Hanukkah by Miriam Chaikin

And One Final Book Review for the Holiday Season...

Hanukkah in America, Dianne Ashton
I'm not sure what I was expecting when I bought this book, but I thought it was going to be more about how Jewish people have come up against the juggernaut that is Christmas each year and how they counter with a celebration from their own culture that was a minor holiday, but which has expanded in response to being in proximity to the Yuletide frenzy that happens in December.

It does indeed address that issue, but is a lot more in depth than that, and delves more deeply into Jewish tradition and pre-Jewish-American-culture customs. In hindsight, I wish I had known a little bit more about the latter to truly appreciate how Hanukkah affected Jews.

Again, Hanukkah was a minor holiday on the celebratory calendar, one that did not require you to not work during the holiday period. However, when Jews migrated in great numbers to the United States, not only did they face Christmas advertising and celebration in every store window and in their children's schools, but they also came into contact with American culture itself, some of which ran counter to Jewish custom from "the old country": longer working hours and working on High Holidays, a narrative of the past that included "action heroes" like the Western pioneers and scouts, greater freedom for women, etc. For instance, Judah Maccabee would be compared to men like Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill Cody, and for Jews he would be considered a patriotic hero who fought against tyranny, like George Washington, the Union soldiers of the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War combatants. It would only be later that the miracle of the oil lasting eight nights and celebrating each night with your family in lighting the menorah would be emphasized more as Hanukkah did go head-to-head with Christmas, to show that both holidays had similarities: celebration of Light, miracles, family gatherings, special food, specific games, and gifts.

Not having background in traditional Jewish (read: Orthodox) customs did not keep me from appreciating this book, and how Jewish culture adapted and changed (like my own Italian culture) in order for the immigrants to assimilate as Americans yet keep their Jewish heritage. Enjoyable and approachable if you are looking for a more scholarly study.

What Are You Reading for December?

Here's my pile!

This is all but Merry Midwinter, which I liked so much as in e-book I bought a real one, but it hasn't yet arrived.

A Lakes Christmas, A Fenland Christmas, and A Wartime Christmas are part of Sutton Publishing's Christmas series; they are short excerpts of Christmas/Christmastide passages from various British novels, memoirs, and poetry books, with the action taking place in that shire or era. I buy these when I can find inexpensive copies (these were 38¢ each plus postage). I chose the fenland one in memory of The Nine Tailors (and was surprised to find the opening passages from that book in the text) and the Lakes book due to Beatrix Potter and Arthur Ransome and was equally surprised to find no contributions from either, although Potter's town of Sawrey was mentioned.

I've never read a Georgette Heyer book. I hear her Regency romances are better than the mysteries, but I shall try this one out. I love English country house mysteries.

There's also a book in one of my series (the Witch City mysteries) that is set at Christmas.

Of course I plan to re-read my annual favorites: A Christmas Carol, Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot, Christmas After All, and The Cottage Holiday.

What's in your book pile?

"A Great Miracle Happened There"

Sunset tonight marked the beginning of the eight-day Jewish feast of Hanukkah (also spelled Chanukah). How special that the most well-known of December holidays involve light: the tree lights, candoliers, candles and home decorations of Christmas; the menorah (hanukkiah) of Hanukkah; the candles of Kwanzaa; and the Yule logs of pagan festivals. December nights grow short, and in the past, when there was no electricity, not even gaslight or kerosene, and feral creatures moved in stealth through the night, the dark must have seemed like a sinister fate.

Whether you celebrate the Festival of Lights or not, may a candle of hope always burn brightly in your heart.

Feast of Lights

Light the Lights!, Margaret Moorman
This is a charming little picture book about a little girl whose family celebrates both Hanukkah and Christmas. The illustrations show her celebrating Hanukkah with her father initiating the celebration, and then Christmas with her mother doing so. The story emphasizes the commonalities of the two celebrations: special food, lights, family visiting, but doesn't really explain a lot about either of them, just simply showing the happy celebrations in the home. It's a sweet little book showing how a religously mixed family handles the two separate holidays, but if you wish to learn about Hanukkah's origins (or Christmas's, for that matter), this isn't the book.

A Great Miracle Occurred There

Hanukkah

Judaism 101: Hanukkah

7 Surprising Things...About Hanukkah

Virtual Dreidel Game

May the Light of Peace Be With You

 

Happy Hanukkah to all those who celebrate!

A Little Christmas Spirit for the Upcoming Sneezy Ordeal of Spring

Everlasting Christmas Movie Montage - Happy Holidays!

Other Christmas Books Read This Year

One was a "repeat," A Christmas Secret by Anne Perry, previously borrowed from the library, but I found an inexpensive copy at the library book sale. Domenic Corde and his new wife, Clarice, are assigned to a country parish during the Christmas holidays, to substitute for the vacationing cleric. Of course, a murder occurs. I have reviewed this previously.

Another was one of my annual Christmas reads, the Tuckers series book The Cottage Holiday. The Tuckers were a boisterous quintet of children, sixth grader Tina, fifth graders Terry and Merry (twins), second grader Penny, and kindergartener Tom, who lived in a big house in a town called Yorkville, with a stay-at-home mom and a dad who ran a variety store with his father. The kids play, quarrel, invent projects, and occasionally solve minor mysteries, as other juveniles from 1960s children's series in most of the books, but this one has a different slant: little Penny, the frail one of the family, is basically looking for her place in the scheme of things. She knows she's not as strong as the others, but she doesn't want to be forever sitting still and being careful. She comes up with the idea of the family spending Christmas at their lake cottage, where the kids prepare for the festivities, help some farm friends, and even participate in the adventure of an abandoned baby. But all through the story Penny also searches for her own strengths. It's warm, happy, and familiar, all perfect as a Christmas read.

Others:
• Decked With Folly, Kate Kingsbury
This is part of the Pennyfoot Hotel mysteries featuring hotel owner Cecily Baxter. Mysteries seem to find her, and this one hits particularly close to home: a man is found drowned in their duck pond. Except not only has the man in actuality been murdered, but he's known to the hotel staff as a rogue who married their head housemaid some time before without bothering to tell her he was already married. Gertie the maid thus becomes the police's prime suspect.

This book series seems to be well beloved for its British Edwardian setting and its Christmas and New Year's-themed special editions. Perhaps if I'd read them from the beginning I would have enjoyed the story more, although enough was explained about the characters that I was never mystified by their pasts. But no one ever quite came to life for me and Cecily and her husband seemed to be almost too good to be true as employers. The mystery was fine; I just would have preferred more depth to the characters.

• Four Centuries of Virginia Christmas, Mary Miley Theobald and Libbey Hodges Oliver
This was a book I picked up at the Colonial Williamsburg gift shop, a simple but enjoyable read about the history of Christmas celebrations in Virginia, beginning with the stark holiday at the starving colony in Jamestown to the more festive celebrations as the colony found its footing. Theobald and Oliver chronicle the Christmas customs, food, and decorations over the years as they change or are amended to fit new eras or times of want like the Civil War. (A running theme is how the decorations at Colonial Williamsburg have changed, from greens to the "Della Robbia" period—the authors are quite pointed when they mention that in colonial times no citrus or tropical fruit would have been used as a door decoration; they were too expensive!—to the simpler modern wreaths and garlands featuring apples and greens only.) There are color and black-and-white illustrations, and many diary excerpts used, and the authors do not shy away from addressing "Christmas in the Quarters" (among the enslaved), although IMHO it was a bit glossed over.

• The Dreaded Feast, edited by Michael Clarke and Taylor Plimpton
Another buy from the Colonial Williamsburg gift shop, a collection of writers "on enduring the holidays." Again, some of these essays appear to have been written because people feel they have to conform to holiday "standards": buy the best gifts, set the best table, etc. (George Plimpton's essay was particularly tied to this syndrome, buying useless gifts for rich people who don't need them.) That isn't what Christmas is all about; it's what society has made us think Christmas is all about. Sadly, there are certain people who force others (their children especially) to conform to these standards, and for them Christmas is miserable, overspending, forced to spend time with people they dislike, with selfishness welling all around them. No one should be forced into Christmas. So I didn't mind the wry commentaries about Christmas, like Calvin Trillin talking about fruitcake, or Corey Ford's essay about the office party (do these drunken Bacchanalia still exist with today's DUI laws?), others were just sad and painful, like Augusten Burroughs and Charles Buckowski and Hunter Thompson. One question: what on earth was Mark Twain's "Susie's Letter from Santa Claus" doing in here? Anyway, glad this one was half price.

• A Kosher Christmas: Tis the Season to Be Jewish, Joshua Eli Plaut
Not only was this the most interesting book I read this Christmas, but it was one of my favorite books of the year, a discussion of the Jewish experience with the Christmas season in the United States. I was quite intrigued by the opening chapter about Jewish immigrants' experience with the pervasive holiday in the late 19th and early 20th century. Apparently German Jews celebrated the secular trappings of Christmas (trees, parties, gifts) as it was part of the society they came from; the more persecuted Eastern European Jews wanted nothing to do with the holiday, as any member of their congregation who stepped out on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in Europe was likely to be beaten up and possibly even killed by revengeful revelers who still blamed them for the death of Christ. Once here, many Jews picked up those secular customs to fit in, while others eschewed them. Another chapter addressed the "Chinese food on Christmas" trope. The most involving chapter is about how the minor festival of Hanukkah was remade to cope with Christmas: I knew that earlier it had been a minor festival only, but I didn't realize how extensively it had been "made over." Apparently the original gift-giving time at Purim was transferred to Hanukkah so that Jewish children would not feel left out when their Christian friends talked about Christmas gifts. The final chapters talk about Jewish people doing mitzvahs (good deeds) by helping out their Christian counterparts during the holiday season, and how "mixed holidays" like "Christmukkah" and secular holidays such as "Festivus" are appealing to modern interfaith and non-Christian families. Well-written with a lot of food for thought.

CHRISTMAS BOOKS REVIEW (and Another Holiday Offering)

(books from remainder tables after Christmas and just a couple not read during Christmastide...)

• Re-read: The Story of Holly and Ivy, Rumer Godden
Ivy, an orphan girl who has made up a fantasy for herself about spending the holiday with her "grandmother" instead being sent to the Infants' Home for Christmas, disembarks from the train in the town of Aylesbury, looking for her fictional grandmother, and sees a beautiful Christmas doll in a toy shop window. Like Ivy, Holly the doll is wishing for a real home, and is in terror that she will have to stay at the toyshop with the evil stuffed owl Abracadabra glaring at her forever. How they both find a home is the tale told in this charming book. If you saw the movie supposedly "based" upon this story (The Wish That Saved Christmas), pick up the book instead; it's a classic of love and faith...but mostly it's about wishing, and how wishes sometimes come true.

• Re-read: The Homecoming, Earl Hamner
The book that inspired the classic television special first broadcast in 1971. What you will read is the original story about the Spencer (not Walton) family, which, besides the difference in names, presents a slightly darker tale, but not in an unsavory way—just a more accurate portrait of the often grim lives of Appalachian families in the 1930s that were warmed by family and love. Even if you've watched the television movie for years, this story will provide fresh insights.

• 11 Days in December, Stanley Weintraub
Weintraub seems to be making a career of telling military Christmas tales: this follows his books about the World War I Christmas truce and about George Washington's Christmas farewell to his troops. This is his story of the Battle of the Bulge and the men who combated the last desperate push of the German army. Includes the true story of General George Patton's outrageous appeal to God before the battle. Great book for history buffs, especially WWII aficionados.

• God Rest Ye Merry, Soldiers, James McIvor
A wartime Christmas book not written by Stanley Weintraub, this slim volume talks about the American Civil War and how celebrations during the war led to a change in how Americans celebrated Christmas. The central chapters of the books are filled with diary entries and information gleaned from contemporary journals about the experiences of both Union and Confederate on the battlefield.

• Santa's North Pole Cookbook, Jeff Guinn
Guinn's characters in his "Santa Claus" trilogy supply their favorite recipes. A nice variety of ethnic dishes and a good mixture of sweets and savories.

• Once Upon a Christmas, James Dillet Freeman
These are chiefly religious-themed short stories about Christmas, some fanciful,some true-to-life, viewing the Nativity from different points-of-view (the stable animals, a scarecrow, and Joseph, just to name a few), with several others about family miracles at Christmastime, including the amazing story of a boy who rescues an angel with a broken wing. If you are looking for a collection of non-run-of-the-mill Christmas stories, you may enjoy this volume.

• Christmas by the Hearth, anthology, Tyndale Books
A collection of inspiring short stories for the holidays, from classics like "The Little Match Girl" and "The Gift of the Magi" to modern-day tales of faith in the vein of Chicken Soup for the Soul to stories based on old Christmas legends, like that of the Christ Child who arrives unawares. One story involves the reminisces of an older woman who we realize at the end of the story is a famous 19th century author. The collection is further enhanced with attractive pages that include black-and-white sketchwork.

and

• Hanukkah, Schmanukkah!, Esmé Raji Codell and LeUyen Pham
What if someone wrote a Jewish version of A Christmas Carol? Although it sounds improbable, the story is given an interesting treatment in this picture book for older children and adults, about a penny-pinching, embittered New York City sweatshop owner who pushes his impoverished employees to the edge. Nicely tells the story of Jewish immigration to the United States and the hardships faced by those who left the old country for "the streets paved with gold." The color illustrations perfectly capture the mood of the story.

Happy Hanukkah!

To all our Jewish friends, may each light on each night bring a small miracle to your life. L'Chaim!

Some links:

Hanukkah

Facts about Hanukkah

And, of course, Hanukkah Recipes