Families forge tradition amid calendar crunch

PHOTO: The Pioneer Courthouse Square Christmas/Holiday Tree shines next to Chabad of Oregon's Chanukah 1800 celebrations Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023 in Downtown Portland. With the first night of Chanukah coming on Dec. 25 this year, interfaith families are navigating a compressed holiday schedule. (Rockne Roll/Jewish Review file)

By ROCKNE ROLL
The Jewish Review
In the depths of winter, the light of a Hanukkiah, the nine-armed menorah that is the focal point of Chanukah, is always appreciated. 
This year, in particular, the candles will illuminate something of a calendar crunch, with the first of the holiday’s eight nights falling on Dec. 25. As 42 percent of married Jews in Portland are wed to non-Jewish spouses, according to last year’s Community Study, there are plenty of families in Portland trying to navigate the overlap of not just Chanukah and Christmas, but other celebrations, as well. Kwanza, Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, and other holidays with dates late in the Gregorian calendar have the potential to overlap with Chanukah. Christmas, with its broad secularization and pop culture gravitas, is the biggest challenge to handle, especially when the calendars line up like this. 
“It’s the Christmakkah Dilemma, as it were; what do we do with our different holidays happening around the same time?” Congregation Neveh Shalom Associate Rabbi Eve Posen asked The Jewish Review Podcast. “How do we keep them separate and be respectful of that separation and not denigrate anyone’s tradition? It’s definitely a challenge to especially in a year like this year.”
One of the most important tools to help navigate those challenges is communication – early and often. 
“We had conversations very early on in our relationship about what that looked like and how that looked like and what felt right for our family,” Rachel Nelson, the Director of Educational Initiatives and Associate Director of Community Relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, said of how she’s negotiated the holidays with her husband, Jason who was raised outside the Jewish community, and their three children. “I think it’s a personal decision that has to be made by every single family and couple.”
They’re big decisions to make, and with so many holidays together, one of the decisions is how not to get them all jumbled.
“It always felt like it was a lot to navigate to keep the holidays separate and also maintain the idea that there are gifts at Hanukkah, but it’s also not Jewish Christmas,” explained journalist and Jewish Review contributor Jenn Director Knudsen. She and her non-Jewish husband, Dave, raised a pair of daughters who are now college age. “It’s fun to see as young adults that they look forward to Hanukkah.”
Lauren Marx is on that same journey in the present tense. Her non-Jewish husband has two children, ages 14 and 10, that live with the couple full time. It’s helped that her husband has mastered Jewish cooking and makes outstanding latkes, she explained. 
“I think it’s just a conversation every year,” she said.
This year, the family is headed to Florida, where they’ll embark on a multigenerational cruise around the Caribbean with Marx’s parents. Erev Chanukah/Christmas Day will find them in Jamaica. 
“I don’t know what that’ll look like this year,” she explained. 
While flexibility – and communication – are essential parts of navigating the season in a mixed heritage environment, another step is the development of traditions. For the Marx family, who came together through a mutual admiration of professional basketball superstar LeBron James, the National Basketball Association’s slate of nationally televised games on Dec. 25 is a key part of the season. 
“My favorite tradition this time of year is watching basketball on Christmas Day,” Marx said.
For Director Knudsen, their family’s Chanukah tradition is one of both togetherness and tzedakah. 
“The seventh night of Chanukah has traditionally been designated in our family as the night we each of us choose a charity that we’re going to give to,” she said. “Dave and I match the gift that the girls give to the charity of their choice.”
For Nelson, she makes her signature cheesecake recipe twice a year – for Shavuot and for Chanukah, the latter honoring the connection of Judith, the Jewish biblical heroine who plied an enemy general with cheese and wine before decapitating him, with the holiday.
Nelson has had the conversation with her children about Santa Claus and how their family looks at the bearded gift-bringer differently than some of their family members – or other kids at their school. 
“To us, Santa is a fictional character, just like in the movies and storybooks. To some, this is a real thing, and we don’t yuck other people’s yum, so we just don’t talk about that with our cousins,” she elaborated. “On the same token, I found out later that my sister-in-law had had the conversation that that my kids don’t believe [in Santa]; that doesn’t mean that Santa is any less real for them, but that that’s not something that lives in our home.”
For some, certain expressions of Christmas celebration are secular enough that it doesn’t feel like an impingement on their Jewish faith.
“The lights and whatever, you want to listen to like some Christmas music, that’s totally fine,” Marx said. “The second it starts to get religious, I’m not comfortable with it.”
For Director Knudsen, the first year she was engaged to her husband was the first year she had lived with a Christmas tree. That was 29 years ago – 28 more trees have come and gone since. It’s taken some getting used to.
“There were years where I was like, ‘Oh, there’s this thing in the corner. Look the other way.’ And then it was like, ‘Fine. It’s festive, it smells good, it’s very much part of what’s important to my husband, and that’s always going to be there,” she said. “I think part of my issue was, ‘Is this a threat to my own sense of Judaism?’ That went the way of the dodo bird many, many years ago.”
Director Knudsen’s family still lights their candles all eight nights of Chanukah, because that’s important to her. There are as many ways to celebrate the season as there are families – and each one gets to make the decision that’s right for theirs. 
“You have those conversations knowing what you feel comfortable with and knowing that this might evolve and change. What may have felt comfortable before you had children may not feel so comfortable once you have children,” Nelson said. “I think it’s keeping those open-ended conversations ongoing, keeping those opportunities to talk available and checking in with yourself and each other before each holiday.”
For more insight on how interfaith families can navigate the holiday season, listen to Rabbi Posen on The Jewish Review Podcast in “Managing Many Merriments with Rabbi Eve Posen,” available on all major podcast platforms and at rss.com/podcasts/jewishreviewpdx, along with last year’s Chanukah episode, “Chanukah Cuisine with Sonya Sanford.” You can also find resources for multi-heritage families at the Federation’s Chanukah Happenings page at jewishportland.org/ourcommunity/chanukahresources24. 

From The Jewish Rewiew Podcast: The "Chrismukkah Dilema" this Dec. 25

Rabbi Eve Posen is Associate Rabbi at Congregation Neveh Shalom in Portland and a former Rukin Rabbinic Fellow with 18Doors, a foundation that supports interfaith families in Jewish engagement. She spoke with Jewish Review Editor Rockne Roll about strategies for how multi-heritage families can honor multiple winter holiday traditions in ways that work for them. A portion of their conversation is transcribed below. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. The full conversation is available in “Managing Many Merriments with Rabbi Eve Posen” from The Jewish Review Podcast, available on all major podcast platforms. 
The Jewish Review: So with so many different holidays on the calendar this time of year, what are some of the challenges that interfaith families face in navigating all of this merriment?
Rabbi Eve Posen: It’s the “Christmukkah Dilemma,” as it were. What do we do with our different holidays happening around the same time? How do we keep them separate and be respectful of that separation and not denigrate anyone’s tradition? It’s definitely a challenge to do, especially in a year like this year where Chanukah and Christmas are exactly aligned. Chanukah begins on Dec. 25 and ends on New Year’s Day, 2025. So I think some of the challenges are: How do you keep distinct traditions in a way that works for you? Especially with lighting the Hanukkah candles this year and it being Christmas, which do you choose or do you bring them together, and how do you bring them together? How does it feel if you’re celebrating a different faith tradition outside of Christmas, that festival at the same time as you want to have Chanukah and not put them in competition with each other?
I hear that answer often is “separate but equal,” but also in this space of not wanting one to seem better or more fun than the other, and limiting also the amount of resources we put into any kind of celebration. If you’re a parent, you’re likely exhausted this time of year, too. 
JR: What are some of the ways that you’ve come across that families can handle these sorts of challenges? 
REP: In my experience, the families that handle these challenges best are the ones where the adults are having conversations ahead of time. Now is a great time to be having those conversations, or at least having conversations outside of earshot of the children, because our children, we know, listen and pick up everything, especially the things we don’t want them to pick up in adult conversations. For some reason, their hearing is much better at that moment. So it’s having a pre-conversation about what it’s going to look like that’s as simple as if you’re going to have a tree. That’s a conversation to have. 
I think it goes back to what’s the essence of each holiday for the parent whose faith tradition it is. So if it’s not Chanukah without “x,” let’s say it’s latkes, but the day that you would normally make latkes happens to be the day of your co-parent’s Christmas party. Maybe it’s the smell of latkes. They have latke scented candles now. If the (Christmas) tree is triggering for a Jewish parent to have in their home, and the real reason that the non-Jewish parent wants to have a tree is because it’s not this season of the year without that smell of the tree, there’s candles. Thinking about what the essence is and what the core value of your own belief is a really good way of making sure that it’s not a tit-for-tat kind of situation, but sharing with the children why it matters to you will matter to them as well.
JR: I think you point out something important: that it’s not just a matter of accommodating the key pieces of both traditions, but the fact that some parts of one tradition can be triggering for someone who comes from another tradition and has had whatever experiences that they’ve had along the way as an individual person.
REP: I think that our larger world outside of interfaith families also struggles with this. There’s the ongoing “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas” or “holiday parties” that are Christmas parties in disguise, trying to be politically correct. It’s often easier and less frustrating for the non-Christmas celebrator if you just call it what it is. If you’re going to make Christmas cookies, make Christmas cookies. If you want to decorate Chanukah cookies, decorate Chanukah cookies. Calling them “holiday cookies” is way more confusing if you’re celebrating both holidays in some way, for children and also for adults. Every human wants to be seen. And when we whitewash it and say “happy holidays,” and there’s one blue snowflake and everything else is red and green, there’s a subtext there, and that’s what we want to try to avoid. We want to actually be clear in what we’re saying.

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