These days, I am no more than a wind-up toy, the little cogs clicking and scraping inside me with every jingling bell and every overgrown shrub laden with glass baubles and plastic trinkets. I feel the crank tightening and tightening each day from November 1st ‘til January.
Though Christmas was always kind of a younger cousin that tagged along beside Hanukkah for me, I too was once a doe-eyed child waiting for Santa to bring me a dolly. I liked to pluck the meringue mushrooms from the Buche de Noel (Yule Log cake) that my Nana would make most years. I watched the Hallmark channel with my mom and adorned the house with strings of faux-apple garlands and ornaments kept in shoe boxes–little treasures that could be unearthed only once a year.
What happened? What made me turn Grinch?
Other than the obvious “growing up,” I also began to lean into my Jewish identity more seriously at the same time as I read more and more about capitalism and its alternatives. The hyper-consumerism associated with Christmastime (or the “holiday season” if you want to be “inclusive”) began to really weigh on me, and I found much more comfort in the nights I spent eating latkes and lighting candles with family than in any imitation of other Christmas-y rituals.
Let me back up a second. I am Jewish. I also semi-celebrated Christmas for most of my youth. Because Jewishness is matrilineal, despite my dad being ¾ Ashkenazi, since his mom’s mom was Catholic… Well, Christmas, it was. And some of my dad’s only warm memories with his mother centered around this holiday.
So it was passed on to me. And my mom, who had always been envious of the other kids and their joyous Yuletide rituals, was thrilled. Keep in mind, none of my “Christmas” celebrations as a child mentioned the Lamb of God and his Holy Immaculate Mother in the slightest. It was all secular, hence “semi-celebrated”.
During my early teenage years, Christmas may have switched teams, but it still stuck around. By this point, my parents had been divorced for over a decade, and both had remarried. My step-mom was not quite as comfortable with Doing Christmas and didn’t want to raise my sister believing in Santa or anything like that, so the holiday’s presence dwindled at my Dad’s house. But my (short-lived) “stepfather” brought Christmas to center stage for my mother. We got really into decorating, listening to Christmas music, doing stockings, and even went to his parents’ for Christmas dinner.
Despite what you may think, the Christmas-ing did not end abruptly with my mother’s second marriage. Even in the years after he abandoned us at that cabin in rural Iceland, we kind of kept doing it. I think partially out of force of habit and partially just because she liked it. But I was less and less of a fan. Not only did I now associate the whole aesthetic of the thing with someone who I never wanted to see again in my life, I also began, in true angsty fashion, to become increasingly disillusioned with the over-commercialized aspect of it. As an edgy teen and a bona fide member of our school’s Young Socialists Club, it was time to put an end to ‘ol Mr. Fat-n-Jolly’s tyrannical reign. I told my mom I wasn’t really interested in Christmas anymore.
I was never the type to rail against Christmas or try to suck the light out of people’s eyes every December. With the exception of a few rants to family and friends, I have tried to keep my Grinch card close to my chest. But, as I age (and the joy and naivete withers), I find it harder and harder to not be an insufferable Scrooge.
Now, my Big Boy job is–wait for it–cashier. So as a victim–I mean employee–of the retail industry, my feelings of unease towards the holiday season have crystallized into solid revulsion. And before you write “religiously intolerant” on a dunce cap and make me wear it… This is not just Christmas but “The Holidays”- including Hanukkah AKA blue-and-white Christmas. In areas with a semblance of a Jewish population, a corner of the store window display is always relegated to this: an electric menorah, blue and white tinsel and lights, tacky dreidel-designed merch (i.e. Happy Challah-days), etc.
In order to keep my sister from that classic Jewish kid Christmas-envy, my step-mom goes all out. A yearly Hanukkah bash where all the neighborhood kids would learn the story of those freedom fighters, the Maccabees, and of course God, whose respective bravery and miracles are commemorated by stuffing our faces with fried goodies. Blue lights. Mucho decorations. Many hand frosted dreidel sugar cookies. The works. I have always openly mocked the fact that they go so hard for Hanukkah despite not even celebrating the two times to which we refer with the phrase “Twice-a-year-Jew,” the High Holy Days and Passover. Hanukkah is, as you may know, not an important Jewish holiday. It is, however, in close proximity to Christmas. You do the math.
In retail, they school you on the specific language that you are allowed to use surrounding The Holidays. Some stores expect you to tiptoe around “holiday shopping”. Now instead of avoiding “Christmas,” we also avoid assuming they celebrate any holidays. This is made all the more ridiculous by the fact that our stereo is blasting everything from Justin Bieber’s Under the Mistletoe to Bing Crosby’s Christmas Classics at any given moment and I’m standing under a giant Frosty the Snowman in a candy-cane forest with Santa leading a bunch of elves to freedom. Oh and like 70% of our annual sales rely on the like 80-90% of Americans who celebrate Christmas in some capacity. They know it. You know it, I know it. We all know what we’re here for. So what’s the sense in being coy?
Let me back up a second. I am Jewish. I also semi-celebrated Christmas for most of my youth. Because Jewishness is matrilineal, despite my dad being ¾ Ashkenazi, since his mom’s mom was Catholic… Well, Christmas, it was. And some of my dad’s only warm memories with his mother centered around this holiday.
So it was passed on to me. And my mom, who had always been envious of the other kids and their joyous Yuletide rituals, was thrilled. Keep in mind, none of my “Christmas” celebrations as a child mentioned the Lamb of God and his Holy Immaculate Mother in the slightest. It was all secular, hence “semi-celebrated”.
During my early teenage years, Christmas may have switched teams, but it still stuck around. By this point, my parents had been divorced for over a decade, and both had remarried. My step-mom was not quite as comfortable with Doing Christmas and didn’t want to raise my sister believing in Santa or anything like that, so the holiday’s presence dwindled at my Dad’s house. But my (short-lived) “stepfather” brought Christmas to center stage for my mother. We got really into decorating, listening to Christmas music, doing stockings, and even went to his parents’ for Christmas dinner.
Despite what you may think, the Christmas-ing did not end abruptly with my mother’s second marriage. Even in the years after he abandoned us at that cabin in rural Iceland, we kind of kept doing it. I think partially out of force of habit and partially just because she liked it. But I was less and less of a fan. Not only did I now associate the whole aesthetic of the thing with someone who I never wanted to see again in my life, I also began, in true angsty fashion, to become increasingly disillusioned with the over-commercialized aspect of it. As an edgy teen and a bona fide member of our school’s Young Socialists Club, it was time to put an end to ‘ol Mr. Fat-n-Jolly’s tyrannical reign. I told my mom I wasn’t really interested in Christmas anymore.
I was never the type to rail against Christmas or try to suck the light out of people’s eyes every December. With the exception of a few rants to family and friends, I have tried to keep my Grinch card close to my chest. But, as I age (and the joy and naivete withers), I find it harder and harder to not be an insufferable Scrooge.
Now, my Big Boy job is–wait for it–cashier. So as a victim–I mean employee–of the retail industry, my feelings of unease towards the holiday season have crystallized into solid revulsion. And before you write “religiously intolerant” on a dunce cap and make me wear it… This is not just Christmas but “The Holidays”- including Hanukkah AKA blue-and-white Christmas. In areas with a semblance of a Jewish population, a corner of the store window display is always relegated to this: an electric menorah, blue and white tinsel and lights, tacky dreidel-designed merch (i.e. Happy Challah-days), etc.
In order to keep my sister from that classic Jewish kid Christmas-envy, my step-mom goes all out. A yearly Hanukkah bash where all the neighborhood kids would learn the story of those freedom fighters, the Maccabees, and of course God, whose respective bravery and miracles are commemorated by stuffing our faces with fried goodies. Blue lights. Mucho decorations. Many hand frosted dreidel sugar cookies. The works. I have always openly mocked the fact that they go so hard for Hanukkah despite not even celebrating the two times to which we refer with the phrase “Twice-a-year-Jew,” the High Holy Days and Passover. Hanukkah is, as you may know, not an important Jewish holiday. It is, however, in close proximity to Christmas. You do the math.
In retail, they school you on the specific language that you are allowed to use surrounding The Holidays. Some stores expect you to tiptoe around “holiday shopping”. Now instead of avoiding “Christmas,” we also avoid assuming they celebrate any holidays. This is made all the more ridiculous by the fact that our stereo is blasting everything from Justin Bieber’s Under the Mistletoe to Bing Crosby’s Christmas Classics at any given moment and I’m standing under a giant Frosty the Snowman in a candy-cane forest with Santa leading a bunch of elves to freedom. Oh and like 70% of our annual sales rely on the like 80-90% of Americans who celebrate Christmas in some capacity. They know it. You know it, I know it. We all know what we’re here for. So what’s the sense in being coy?
Come one come all, and witness the grand consumerist carnival of Christmas.
Step right up and meet your hero: some strange man in a red tracksuit who probably gets like a million communicable illnesses from each child that sneezes upon his wire framed spectacles. Like Christmas music? No? Well too bad, that's the omnipresent soundtrack of your life for the next two months. (I cannot express enough the utter loathing of Christmas music that working retail instills in a person. I am sure that if the CIA ever needs some info out of me, a loop of Let it Snow will have me singing like a canary in no time). And yes, I said two months. My brethren in arms (retail workers) will be the first to tell you that the holiday season seems like it just keeps getting dragged out further. But it’s not just us brave cynics. A surprising amount of my customers have recently expressed distaste for the Christmas Creep- how the decorations seem to be put out a little earlier each year. Go ahead, milk every last drop from the shiny shrink-wrapped shit that will end up in a Sea Turtle's stomach in a couple years (if they even still exist then).
You can wax poetic about the "true meaning of Christmas" all you want, but to me, it's little more than a shrine to consumption. From every movie that extolls the virtues of coming together and peace and joy and love for your fellow man, there are millions of dollars generated at the box office or on streaming to kick around in some millionaire’s bank account. For every person who spends the holiday doling out meals to the homeless, there are twenty who are more tight-fisted than ever. No spare change for ya right now, Joey. I spent it all on Objects that Prove My Love and Devotion to the people around me.
Well that was depressing. And annoying. Can’t people just enjoy things? Don’t we, in the dead of the winter when it’s pitch black at 4pm, deserve some festivities to brighten our spirits? Curling up by the firelight or just lighting a bunch of candles, sipping cocoa or mulled wine. Sledding, building a snowman. Eating fruitcakes or sugarplums and laughing with family and friends.
You know, perhaps ironically, these days I prefer the actual religious observance of Jesus Christ’s birth. I much prefer that sincere expression of devotion and faith to the hollow promises of bright colors and presents. Am I saying what we really need is to return Christmas to its actual stated purpose? Or shall we go even further back to its ancient roots as an amalgam of various pre-Christian winter solstice traditions? Am I advocating for a stricter adherence to organized religion? Fuck, I don’t know.
I also find more personal spiritual practices and pagan traditions around this time to be just as restorative as the Christian (or in the case of Hanukkah, Jewish) ones– and these are something I am interested in exploring more this year. In fact, I prefer “Yule” to Christmas in general. There are no Yule movies on Hallmark or Limited Edition Yule Bath and Body Works collections, so that’s a win for me.
All I know is: I think it’s okay to openly reject what this season has become and try to make your own meaning.
My heart may not grow three sizes this year, but… The other day, my boyfriend and I baked gingerbread cookies. We had so much fun making and decorating them, and they were so delicious.
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