By Dahlia Lithwick for Slate.com
If
you are a little Jewish kid, Santa Claus does not enter your home via
the chimney on Christmas Eve. Instead, he arrives in late fall, usually
by way of the Target catalog and the television set. And if you are a
little Jewish kid confronting old St. Nick for the first time via
Frosty, Rudolph, Charlie Brown, or the 1966 animated version of How the
Grinch Stole Christmas, you may find yourself with a lot of questions.
"Mamma, who is Center and where are my presents?" asked my 3-year-old,
rather randomly, in October. "Mommy, is Santa real?" my 5-year-old asks
pretty much daily. In the way of 5-year-old boys everywhere, he follows
that one up with "Mom, if Santa and Judah the Maccabee got in a fight,
who would win?"One needn't be virulently anti-Christmas to experience the seasonal anxiety felt by parents who want their children to enjoy the winter holidays while avoiding religious indoctrination. That's what makes parenting Jewish kids at Christmastime such a fraught proposition. Jewish women who as children were whisked away to Jewish vacation resorts in Florida marry Jewish men who hung Hanukkah stockings next to a Hanukkah bush, alongside the plate of gefilte fish they'd left out for Santa. It's hard enough reconciling two deeply held versions of the Jewish holidays. Just try blending two deeply held traditions regarding the noncelebration of Christmas.
I, for instance, grew up in a household that viewed only How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas as acceptable Jewish holiday fare. My husband, on the other hand, tells me he grew up with unfettered access to the whole panoply of animated Christmas specials. When we discussed this for the first time last weekend, I gasped: "They let you watch Rudolph?" I confess that I spoke the words as though his family had permitted him to spend his Decembers camped out in a crèche.
Whether you are Christian or Jewish, come Easter and Passover, The Ten Commandments represents one-stop entertainment shopping. But there are few winter holiday movies that speak to all religions. So last week I sent out an e-mail and posted on Facebook asking Jewish friends how they decided on the permissibility of the Christmas television specials. The responses were amazing. And also bonkers.
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