Fun With Play-Dough

We are so busy shaping our children’s Jewish identity, that sometimes we forget not everybody in Omaha is Jewish. We take them to a Jewish school, synagogue services, religious school, and Chabad summer camp.  We celebrate the holidays with other Jews, and eat the appropriate foods at the appropriate times.  Every now and then we get to be reminded that, in spite of what our daily life revolves around, we are still part of a minority.  For instance, when I took my then three-year-old daughter shopping, and she sat in the cart singing the “I am Proud to be a Jew” song at the top of her lungs.  Yes, people stared. 

With the Christmas season almost here, majority culture is about to explode all around us.  Every year, this leads to discussions about how to navigate between who we are, and where we live.  Come the month of December, we can’t leave our house without stumbling over an elf, a Santa, or being told to have a happy Christmas.  In addition to that, many of us have mixed families, and are more or less expected to attend a tinsel-party in some way, shape or form.  We can choose to be annoyed (tempting, I admit) or we can go with the flow, all the while keeping a firm grip on what we believe in.

For us that means a never-ending discourse with our children about the ‘why’s’ and ‘why nots’ of Christmas. Because every outward sign of this holiday either shines or blinks, it can look oh-so attractive to the little ones.  A tree with pretty things in it? Never.  Bright, flickering lights outside? Sure, as long as they are blue.  After Christmas sales? Always.  Attractively wrapped chocolates, shaped like Santa? No, absolutely not.  Although, believe it or not, many of them are kosher; don’t ask me why.  The truth of the matter is, if Christmas were a holiday mostly experienced inside a church, in a spiritual way, we wouldn’t have this dilemma.  It is the fact that it comes with ‘extras’, displayed in shopping malls, television shows, and even on people’s cars that makes it so hard to circumvent.  It simply is everywhere.  If you want to avoid it entirely, you must lock your doors or leave the country, and for most of us, that’s not exactly an option.

The key to a happy December is to not treat it as a competition.  We don’t need to buy bigger and better presents for Hanukkah, just because the stores are full of attractive displays; we don’t need to put wreaths on the front door just because the neighbors have such pretty ones on theirs.  However, we also shouldn’t avoid things that reek of ‘the season’ just to make a statement; we don’t have to prove that we are different, we already are.  Accepting ourselves as we are leads to accepting others.  So yes, I put out a Hanukkah flag, but I would anyway. I also put up lights all over the front yard, because I would feel a little sad if we were the only dark house on the block; to me that would send the message that we are too different to enjoy ourselves.  But it’s a slippery slope, and I can fully understand it if others decide they don’t need to be plugged in to that particular habit.  I guess, as with so many things, it’s about personal choices.  Whatever those choices are, we should forever stop feeling uncomfortable, we should never apologize, and we should all sing loudly in the supermarket.