It’s that time of year. Lights, trees, music, happy people gathered around the fire, stockings on the mantle, peace on earth. It all looks so beautiful and inviting. Some years I feel like Scrooge, disdaining everything about the holidays. Annoyed that most of the people celebrating Christmas are diluting a religious holiday into a massive rush to capitalism and annoyed that those celebrating Chanukah are probably doing the same thing! Other years I look forward to joining in the fun; going downtown to look at the trees and beautiful celebratory shop windows. I decorate my house with hanging dreidels and blue and white tinsel. I dig into my sukkah decorations to see what I can use around the house. If you can’t beat em - join em!

But I always feel like the “other.” I’m one step off, not quite getting the season right. I’m neither Christmas nor Chanukah. Sure, I light candles and sing songs; I often light a fire in the fireplace for that cozy feeling. But the history of Chanukah is not cozy; playing dreidel isn’t the most fun game in the world, and I can’t get it out of my head that dreidel was traditionally played so that Jewish hands would always be above the table and above suspicion, just in case the Cossacks come to burn the house down. And just how many latkes can a person eat? I can’t imagine how crazy it must feel to be to be Muslim or Hindu, or some other religion/culture that doesn’t celebrate a holiday at this time of the year. 

I’ve read quite a bit about the “December Dilemma” and I know that some people feel as I do, some just don’t “do any Christmas” and put their effort into a dazzling Chanukah, some do both, and some have special Jewish Christmas traditions. Last week, though, I read one parent’s take away regarding her 10 and 12 year old daughters’ experience of confusion and disappointment of another year without Christmas. This parent asked an interesting question: “How do we teach our children to act around something that doesn’t belong to them?” Christmas belongs to others.  It’s beautiful, it’s cozy, it’s fun…but it’s not ours. So if you are one of those people who would like your children to celebrate Jewish time, without Santas and trees, or eggs and chocolate at Easter, perhaps one approach would be to teach that not everything is ours, that others may have things that we want, be they toys or food or vacations, or cars etc. Sometimes it’s appropriate to share. At Christmas time, we can probably go over to another person's house and share their celebration, (by the way, I recently decked the halls at my gym - with some Chanukah decorations too!) but Christmas is simply not something we own. It can be a hard lesson to learn, but extremely valuable in the long run. In the meantime, I am just seeing how I feel this year - will it be Scrooge? Chanukah Harry? or peace and light for a world sadly in need of it.

Shabbat Shalom