At our house, we call it "von
Hahnukkah." It's that special time of year when you find yourself
humming White Christmas as you shop for menorah candles, and your
husband yells up the stairs that he can't find the tree ornaments
while you're in the midst of frying up six dozen potato latkes.
Some see the Virgin
Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich. Others find Jesus in a burned
fish stick. We observe our mixed-faith tradition in a gumbo. Leave
it to a hit television show, however, to turn our own humble confusion
into a full-fledged phenomenon.
It was just last year,
on the wildly popular teen soap opera The O.C. that the character
Seth Cohen, whose father is Jewish and mother is Protestant,
filled his new foster brother in on the intricacies of their
holiday tradition.
"Christmas or Hanukkah?
. . . In this house you don't have to choose. Allow me to introduce
to you a little something that I like to call Chrismukkah. . . .
It's the new holiday and it's sweeping the nation."
Teen sarcasm aside, the show's
writers were on to something.
This year, as The O.C. gears
up for the season with a full-on Chrismukkah special episode (airing
Dec. 16 on Fox and CTV), those of us with half-Jewish backgrounds
(whose ranks include, according to the highly informative website
http://www.halfjew.com, designers Michael Kors and Stella McCartney,
singers Marianne Faithfull and Paula Abdul, filmmakers Christopher
Guest and Roman Polanski, as well as the truly weird trio of Sharon
Osbourne, Frida Kahlo and J.D. Salinger) can now purchase holiday
wares designed especially for Chrismukkah.
Warner Brothers has released an O.C.
soundtrack for the season called Have a Very Merry Chrismukkah,
which has hit the record stores just in time for the newly minted
holiday.
On http://www.mixedblessing.com,
one can purchase totes, mugs and ornaments bearing mixed-tradition
messages and images. And at http://www.chrismukkah.com, started by
Jewish Ron Gompertz and his Protestant wife Michelle after the two
caught last year's O.C. episode, are a series of cutesy holiday cards
($15 U.S. for packages of 12) with greetings such as "Oy Joy,"
and "Merry Mazel Tov," as well as up-with-mixed-faith images
of a snowman in a yarmulke, a Christmas bush and a candy-cane menorah.
It may sound like a joke but if it
is, the joke is on us: According to a 2003 survey by the U.S.-based
United Jewish Communities federation, nearly half of the 5.2 million
Jews in the United States have married outside their faith. Pre-1970,
that number was only 13 per cent. (For Canada, a 2004 survey by
the Jerusalem-based Institute for Jewish People Policy Planning
puts the rate of intermarriage at 35 per cent.) In all likelihood,
these numbers will continue their climb.
According
to The Wall Street Journal, Gompertz and his wife hope to sell 25,000
cards in their first Chrismukkah season. Their expectations may be
too conservative
On the
15-year-old http://www.mixedblessing.com, (which, according to the
Associated Press expects to sell 200,000 cards from its line this
year), the "sacred season ornament" -- otherwise known as
a Christmas tree decoration -- that reads "Yahweh" (for
God, in Hebrew) has sold out.
Unsurprisingly,
others are getting into the act. Hallmark Cards, the Kansas City-based
giant in the field of warm fuzzies, whose goods can be found at more
than 42,000 retailers in the United States alone, is doing a brisk
business in cards with mixed-faith holiday messages.
Its chief competition, American Greetings, has
introduced a 10-card Hanukkah-Christmas collection.
Panicked leaders in the North American Jewish
community see the rise in dreidel-spinning under the Christmas tree
as the last straw in what some call the "new Holocaust."
The watering-down of traditional observance,
in their view, is the first step in a process that will ultimately
finish what Hitler failed to accomplish. Perpetually paranoid extremists
though they might be, they do have a point: Mixed-faith mongrels
such as my two kids are, according to the UJC survey, significantly
less likely to go on and raise their children in the Jewish tradition.
In the case of Chrismukkah, the assimilation
of Jewish culture takes on particular poignancy, as Hanukkah, which
was never intended to be a major celebration in the Jewish calendar,
has its roots in a historical affirmation of a separate faith: The
Hanukkah story tells of the rebellion of Judah and the Maccabees
against Antiochus's soldiers, who defiled the temple and attempted
to impose Greek gods and ways on the Jews.
At our house, however, von Hahnukkah feels less
like a capitulation than a victory.
In my view (and in the minds of many other intermarried
families we know who splice their own traditions), the future really
can be as diverse and friendly as the shiny, happy people pictured
in the Unicef and Benetton ads. But only if, rather than fear assimilation,
we as Jews welcome the chance to affect and partake in the larger
popular culture.
Chrismukkah may sound silly, but its arrival
on the radar is a wonderfully appropriate seasonal reminder that
the only road map to peace is one paved -- if not with kosher fruitcake
-- then, at the very least, mutual tolerance, openness and understanding.
