For the primary time, Erica Foster took her menorah on the street this 12 months.
She, her husband, Tim, and their 3-year-old daughter, Olivia, made the 12-hour drive from Outdated Irving Park to Tim’s dad and mom’ home in rural Maryland final weekend to have a good time Christmas — as they do annually.
However this 12 months’s festivities might be totally different.
With the primary evening of Hanukkah falling on Christmas Day, it’s the primary time that Erica Foster, who’s Jewish, is celebrating Hanukkah in a house the place nobody practices Judaism. Her husband grew up Catholic and is not training, however his household has historically solely celebrated Christmas.
The beginning of Hanukkah hasn’t aligned with Christmas Day since 2005. It’s the fifth time the 2 days have coincided since 1910. The subsequent time that can occur is 2035, then once more in 2054.
“I feel it’s actually thrilling,” Erica Foster, 34, stated. “The thought of with the ability to have a good time each is superior. Who doesn’t need two events on the identical day? However it’s a little little bit of strain, as a result of it’s a balancing act of constructing positive that each are equally represented.”
Hanukkah, the Jewish Pageant of Lights, is an eight-day commemoration of the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Maccabees after their victory over the Syrians. The small quantity of oil left within the temple burned for eight days and was thought-about a miracle, inspiring the candle-lighting custom.
Christmas is a Christian vacation celebrating the delivery of Jesus that has additionally advanced right into a secular household vacation consisting of giving presents.
The Foster household will have a good time Christmas with presents beneath the tree and dinner, however “as soon as the solar goes down, [I’ll] gentle the menorah,” then hopefully make latkes, Erica Foster stated.
Tim Foster’s dad and mom are open-minded to their daughter-in-law observing her faith’s vacation of their residence. However their openness doesn’t imply the blended vacation will come with none confusion or a great deal of questions on Hanukkah.
“One of many issues that I feel folks neglect is that you just’re by no means purported to blow the menorah out,” Erica Foster stated. “You let the candles utterly soften and exit as they only run their course, and so I feel my mother-in-law is perhaps confused by that, or hesitant to let me have an open flame for hours.”
‘How can we have a good time each?’
The vacation overlap, generally known as “Chrismukkah,” is a microcosm of the selections Jewish-Christian interfaith households frequently make, but in addition presents a novel alternative to raised perceive the 2 religions.
“There’s that problem of how can we have a good time each,” stated Dan Olsen, director of the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Workplace for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. “When you’ve got youngsters, it’s like, what are we doing to share the face of the dad and mom and their heritage, their tradition, in these occasions whereas additionally retaining an identification inside our personal communities?
“Nevertheless it’s additionally a possibility to find out about each other,” he added. “What’s Hanukkah? What’s Christmas? Once they come collectively, there could be a dialogue about what it’s we do, and why, that may be actual fruitful, so there’s a problem however perhaps a present in all of that.”
Maris Garcia, who’s Jewish, was initially squeamish in regards to the concept of her husband, Antonio Garcia, eager to get a Christmas tree for his or her residence after their first little one was born.
Antonio Garcia is Puerto Rican and was baptized Catholic, however his dad and mom switched to a nondenominational church when he was younger. He now views himself as largely nonreligious, however his enthusiasm for the secular facet of Christmas has persevered.
Antonío Garcia reads a Hanukkah and Christmas themed youngsters’s e book to his daughter Amaya, 6, in the lounge of their Irving Park residence, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. The Garcia household is an interfaith household who might be celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas, which each fall on the identical day this 12 months.
Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Solar-Instances
The Garcias really feel they’ve established “essentially the most harmonious, commingled model” of yearly Hanukkah and Christmas celebrations through the years, and particularly now that their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter are being raised Jewish.
“It’s type of auspicious the way in which [Hanukkah and Christmas] falls, so it captures it nicely and perhaps this 12 months it does carry into focus a bit of bit extra what we’ve labored to construct or design in our household,” Antonio Garcia, 45, stated. “So in that regard, it’s reflective of the way in which our household works.”
The couple stated they’ve have discovered a center floor with a wood, architectural Christmas tree, they usually gentle a menorah for Hanukkah. They’ve additionally made Christmas extra about presents, whereas Hanukkah has turn into “extra family-oriented, with totally different actions” and themes every evening.
This 12 months, about 20 members of Maris Garcia’s household visited their Irving Park residence for an early Hanukkah celebration. Antonio Garcia’s household will then go to a couple of week later for a belated Christmas gathering.
For Christmas Day, the Garcias are staying residence with their youngsters and opening presents from Santa within the morning, then enjoyable till it’s time to gentle the menorah within the night. A part of Hanukkah’s first evening celebration additionally contains their youngsters selecting a charity to which the household will donate cash.
Hanukkah’s Americanization
Like Maris Garcia’s wince at her husband’s considered shopping for a Christmas tree a decade in the past, some American Jews may bemoan the “Chrismukkah” notion that has caught on in a Christian-dominant U.S. solely due to Hanukkah’s proximity to Christmas.
However Rabbi Steven Philp, from Mishkan Chicago, a self-defined “radically inclusive” Jewish synagogue, stated the confluence of holidays ought to be price celebrating.
The Jewish custom has at all times been syncretic, adapting and responding to the tradition round it, he stated. Hanukkah is “an awesome instance of this,” Philp stated, noting that the vacation’s traditions — like spinning the dreidel, consuming latkes or potato pancakes, and munching on sufganiyot or jelly-filled doughnuts — are customs that had been borrowed from neighboring cultures over time.
“With Christmas turning into such a pervasive function in American tradition this time of 12 months, I feel Hanukkah has responded in sort,” Philp stated, pointing to the gradual proliferation of Hanukkah sections in retail shops consisting of garden decorations and wrapping papers.
The Americanization of Hanukkah additionally signifies one thing deeper inside Judaism, Philp famous.
“Hanukkah turning into such an necessary vacation inside our calendar in response to tradition can be a mirrored image of the diploma of security and acceptance that Jews have skilled on this nation, which is unprecedented,” Philp stated.
“I do know we’re at a time the place issues may really feel extra horrifying, and antisemitism definitely is on the rise,” he continued, “however the truth that Hanukkah is current in big-box shops and the halls of presidency and lecture rooms and faculties, I feel, is a reminder of actually the superb welcome that we fought so arduous for on this nation.”
