Christmas Stories

I suppose as a Jew, I have no right to complain about the state of the Christmas season, but I’ve had more Christmas than a lot of Unitarians I know.

Back in the early 1940s, my mom’s family moved to a heavily Catholic suburb of Chicago—one of the first Jewish families to show up. Early in her school days, my mom brought home a toy Christmas tree that had been given out at school. My grandmother proceeded to make quite a show of disposing of it. According to my mom, she vowed that day that as long as she lived in a Christian culture, she would not deny her kids the month-long goodwill and pageantry that is Christmas.

(Hanukkah is not the “Jewish Christmas.” It’s a minor Jewish holiday that has been trumped-up in Western cultures to keep Jewish kids from feeling completely left out. But it lacks the festiveness and all-around monumentalism of Christmas. Due to the fact that it changes dates every year and falls during one of the busiest times of the year, few Jews can take the holiday off or travel to visit family.)

We had some pretty impressive secular Christmases as a child. It was the only time of year where my parents really went all out. My dad pulled off some amazing feats of gift procurement related to my arcane hobbies. We always had a nice tree, had family over, etc.

It never seemed abnormal to me until my stepmother once told me how ambivalent those Christmases made my late father. I knew my grandparents didn’t come to our house on Christmas, but only as an adult did I understand why. (They didn’t agree with my mom’s choice, but they respected her enough not to denounce it to us. Not sure the current generation is so circumspect.)

Gradually, intermarriage loosened things up in our family, and there were Christmas trees in the homes of cousins and in-laws. I married a non-practicing Episcopalian, and we are raising our children Jewish. My wife did not want to give up Christmas, and neither did I honestly. But as the years pass, I wonder if Americans, the most religious First-World people on earth, have lost sight of what a secular Christmas is even about.

I’ve observed a greater and greater unwillingness of our culture to respect the season’s imperatives on family and togetherness, beyond copious lip service. It used to be things slowed down at the office around the holidays. Now, they seem to speed up. I am busier this month at work than perhaps any month in memory. It’s little different for my wife, who has worked every Saturday this month. And I hear the same from others. We have two school conferences this week of all times. Even the schools don’t care.

As I was getting my hair cut on Saturday, an older customer stopped by to drop off gifts for the salon staff. My mom used to do stuff like that. But it’s only older folks, families where a spouse doesn’t work, or those affluent enough to hire someone that make that kind of display of gratitude anymore.

Now, I don’t have to sign out 175 holiday cards, but all the other things on my to-do list are meaningful: finding special presents for the kids, cooking and having friends over on Christmas Eve, the evening we drive around town looking at holiday lights, buying and decorating the tree. And I’d like to find time to engage in many of the other special aspects of the season that make it so enjoyable—from holiday music to getting together with friends.

Instead, we’ve turned down virtually every social engagement we were invited to—too busy.

In the UK, there is no public transportation on Christmas Day, and during the entire Christmas week, it operates on Saturday or Sunday schedules because there is little demand. That culture still respects the season. But more and more on these shores, Christmas is just another three-day weekend, albeit one that requires draining hours of preparation that most of us don’t have working fifty-hour weeks.

Think about that before you ask anything more of your employees and colleagues in what remains of this season. The best gift you can give someone this Christmas is a few extra hours of his or her life back.