Every December, my holiday season officially begins when I arrive at my parents’ home and see the Star of David ornament glimmering from the branches of the Christmas tree. We don’t go to church; we eat latkes with our Feast of Seven Fishes (though Hanukkah is almost certainly already over). Yet on December 25, there are a few moments that bring about true feelings of fellowship, dare I say spirituality, even for a group of distinctly not religious people.
“Christmas is America’s most popular national holiday,” writes Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut in A Kosher Christmas: ’Tis the Season to Be Jewish. It’s the only federal holiday with a religious foundation that is celebrated both privately and publicly—in religious and secular households; in houses of worship and civil spaces. “Whereas Jews in the United States can participate in Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day celebrations, Christmas does not belong to all Americans…If not celebrating Christmas, then what is a Jew to do on Christmas in America?”
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