Throughout my childhood, being Jewish was defined in terms of what we did not do: go to church, wear a cross, celebrate Christmas or Easter. None of this was unusual: of course Jews don’t do these things. But for most Jewish families, at least the ones I knew as a child, such negatives were balanced by the positive things they did do: attend Hebrew school, celebrate bar and bat mitzvahs, observe the Sabbath, and the major Jewish holidays like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah.
Yet we did none of these either. My parents, and my father in particular, had their own spin on being Jewish. He and my mother had spent the years between 1948 and 1957 in the new state of Israel, ardently pursuing their own socialist and spiritual dreams. For them, being Jewish was inseparable from days spent in the Negev, planting trees and milking cows; from the sound of the hot, dry wind in the afternoons and the surprising and welcome cooling that came with the purple dusk.
Although I was born in Israel, my parents left before I was a year old. I spent my childhood listening to my father’s stories but as captivating as they were, they had as much concrete reality for me as Cinderella’s glass slipper. In the actual realm where my life was lived – Ocean Parkway, in Brooklyn – I wanted some tangible ritual and ceremony, something I could understand. And since Hanukkah had come only once or twice to our home, and tepidly at that, I focused on Christmas, or, more aptly, having a Christmas tree.
Trees were everywhere: in my friends’ homes, in the store windows on Flatbush and Church Avenues and on television. There was even a glittering tree in the lobby of our apartment building. I could not believe my older brother when he told me that the beribboned boxes that lay about its skirted base were, in fact, empty. To acquire this coveted object, I tried every childish strategy I could marshal: crying, begging, bargaining, but all to no avail. There was to be no tree in our house and that was that.
Eventually, I gave up the fight though later, many of my teenage Christmases were spent in the Bronx with my best friend, Wendy, whose parents, although Jewish, had no such scruples about having a tree.
When I reached my 20’s and was living on my own on the Upper West Side, I no longer wanted a Christmas tree. It seemed to be an anachronistic symbol of some imaginary intact family – my parents had long since divorced – and my Jewish roommate and I generally spent Christmas at the Thalia movie theater.
But when I married a man of Anglo-Irish descent, I soon found that Christmas – and Christmas trees – now had a legitimate place in my life. My Catholic husband had grown up in Portsmouth, N.H., and for him, Christmas trees were as a natural a part of winter as snow. Still, in our first years together, we did not have a tree of our own, but vicariously enjoyed the trees in the homes of his various family members. It was only when I became pregnant with our first child that I felt my old childhood longing for a tree return, as strong as ever. Together, we inspected the offerings of our Korean greengrocer on Second Avenue.
“Too spindly,” my husband said of one; “Too blobby,” was his verdict on another. Apparently this tree-picking business required expertise in which I was lacking. Finally, he settled on a small, shapely pine and lugged it up to our third-floor apartment, leaving a trail – magical as that of Hansel and Gretel’s in the woods – of fragrant pine needles on the stairs.
I hurried out to Pottery Barn on Lexington for ornaments, and came home with golden clocks, glass balls, wooden angels. I hung and rehung them until I was satisfied with the result. Strings of white lights were added. I stepped back as my husband flipped the switch and – lo! – all the childhood enchantment came rushing back.
In the years since, we have always had a Christmas tree. For our son and daughter, a tree will be part of their childhood. Yet having a tree does not make me into a Christian. I am not much different than I ever was: a nonobservant, still questioning and ever questing Jew. But now I am a Jew with a Christmas tree. Recently, I read that many interfaith couples have chosen to amalgamate their different traditions: think Christmas trees adorned with dreidels; Santa with a yarmulke. Although this compromise might satisfy the spiritual longings of some, for me it would dilute the very magic I am seeking. I want my symbols unalloyed, in their purest, most potent form.
On December evenings, I walk the streets of the neighborhood where we now live and see the bright and glowing trees in the windows of the brick and brownstone houses, fragile buffers against winter’s longest and darkest days. Then I climb the steps to my own house, where the tree in the window shines as brightly as any other, and know I have come home.
