44 years ago was the last time I celebrated Christmas.
I was 24 years old.
Four months later, I converted to Judaism.
Converting to Judaism is a journey that begins long before the day of the conversion ceremony. And that journey continues long after that day.
My journey began with losing faith in the Christian understanding of God. That happened at least eight years before I converted. I was looking for answers to deep questions about God and fairness. Christianity did not provide answers that satisfied me.
I also had other motivations. I wanted a community where I could belong. And I needed more celebration and ritual than I found in the religion of my youth.I began studying Judaism. I began to see that being Jewish would fit the real me better. I came to believe that I was born with a Jewish neshama. Deep down, I felt I was meant to be Jewish. I had been awaiting that discovery. Once I knew it, I realized that I had to live as a Jew in order to express my Jewish inner identity.
After completing that initial study, and concluding the ceremonies of conversion, I officially became Jewish. But the journey continued. I still had much to learn. I was not immediately certain just how to be Jewish. Sometimes I even felt like an imposter.
I knew I was fully Jewish. It took me a while to recognize that I nevertheless was different from Jews by birth. They had always been Jewish. I was and always would be a Jew who used to be a Christian. I would always have memories of my Christian life. Those memories were most powerfully rooted in the celebration of Christmas.
My original family was Protestant. Protestants do not generally have a rich ritual life. No dancing. No lively singing. Not a lot of food. Very little pageantry.
But on Christmas? That’s different.
We celebrated Christmas in the Congregational Church in our home town of Darien, Connecticut. The whole family went to church together on Christmas Eve.
Here is the scene. The church is crowded. Every pew is filled. The service ends after midnight. It is the first minutes of Christmas Day. We all light candles. Each person carries a candle, including the children. We walk out of the church holding our lit candles. The night sky at first seems dark. Then we see that there are a million stars to light our way along with the candles. As we walk, and then as we gather in a group when everyone is outside, we sing Christmas carols and hymns to welcome the birthday of the baby Jesus.
At dawn, my sisters and I are eager to get downstairs to the living room. The tree stands there, bright with the decorations we put on the tree during the previous days. Dad turns on the lights. We stand there wide-eyed with our mouths open in wonder at the beauty of that sight. Then we see that there are many presents under the tree. Mysteriously, there are even more than when we went to bed. We exchange presents, rip off the colorful wrapping paper, read the books, play with the toys, and later enjoy a very special Christmas meal.
When I converted, back in 1967, those memories were still fresh. I had celebrated Christmas just four months earlier. But eight months after my conversion, when it got to be Christmas time again, I did not go back to my childhood home for Christmas. Nor was I ever with my parents and sisters for Christmas again. It’s not that I couldn’t have gone. I just didn’t in the early years, probably because I was working on establishing to myself that I was really Jewish and so didn’t celebrate Christmas any more. As the years passed, I became more comfortable with the idea of being with my family on Christmas, but in fact I never have: both of my parents have passed away, my younger sister converted to Buddhism and doesn’t celebrate Christmas, and my older sister has established a pattern of celebration with her daughters and her grandchildren that doesn’t really have a place for me.
My family had various reactions to my conversion. My mother’s adjustment was the hardest.
My mother came from a very religious family. Her parents, who were born and married in Minnesota, moved to Beirut, Lebanon, in 1904 where they served as Presbyterian missionaries for more than 50 years.
Both my mother and her mother had a very lively belief in the divinity of Jesus. For them, Christmas was a religious holiday, celebrating the birth of Jesus.
They believed that you had to believe in Jesus in order for your soul to live after your body died. They thought that immortality of the soul was denied to anyone who did not believe in Jesus.
My mother struggled to accept my conversion. She really tried very hard to understand my choice. She tried to make peace with the fact that I would not have life after death because I no longer believed in Jesus. That was very difficult for her, but she did her best.
Even my grandmother was able to make the adjustment, to a degree that surprised me. Alice and I had our first child, a son, born in September of 1968. In December that year we received a greeting card from my grandmother. I expected it to be a Christmas card. It was not. It was a Hanukkah card addressed to our son, Ben. My grandmother wrote on that card, “I am sad to know that my 14th great-grandchild will not know the joy of Christmas. But I have been happy to learn that you have a beautiful festival of lights.” What an extraordinary level of acceptance from such a devout Christian.
Although I never went back to my childhood home for Christmas after I became Jewish, we visited often at other times. And when we did, we encountered some of the same issues that arise for other converts who visit their original families at Christmas.
The most common issue is what to eat. Even with all good intentions, a Christian family is likely to serve non-kosher food. Forget about the issue of separate plates and a kosher kitchen. I’m talking about the Christmas ham that is the main entrée in many Christian homes on Christmas Day.
My family never served us ham. I think my mother understood that it was treif. It also was not a food of her childhood since she grew up in Beirut and ham was also not eaten at her family’s meals.
But beyond the absence of ham, the details of kashrut were understandably challenging for my mother. She understood that meat and milk were not to be mixed. But what about chicken? Is that meat? What about cheese? Is that milk?
I usually found a way to eat as much of the food that was offered as I could. When it comes to a contest between kashrut and peace in the home, shalom bayit, I believed that shalom bayit should win most of the time. I did not want to make my mother uncomfortable if I didn’t have to.
When Alice and I visited my family, Alice faced an additional challenge. My family’s practices were very familiar to me, of course. But Alice had no experience of them. She sometimes had no idea what was going on or what was expected of her.
I recall a visit that Alice and I paid my parents early in our marriage. At about one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, after my parents had returned from church, we were all chatting over drinks with the guests they had invited for lunch. As it was time to go to the table, but before we sat down, my mother said, “Now we will have the doxology.”
I knew, and could tell also from the look on her face, that Alice had never heard that word. She obviously had no idea what my mother meant.
Everyone else then started singing. The doxology is a Christian prayer. It is often sung as a grace before meals.
Alice and I did not join in. Alice remained silent because she did not know we would be singing and she did not know the song.
I also remained silent. That was partly just to be in solidarity with Alice. But, more importantly, I knew the words of the doxology. And I knew how it ended.
It is very short, just four lines. The first three lines are straight out of the Psalms. Those three lines praise God as the source of all blessing, praise God here below and call upon the heavenly host to praise God above. Okay. But the last line of the doxology is, “Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” I was not going to say that. So I said nothing.
I am sure my mother noticed our silence, although we said nothing about it, then or ever. Alice and I remember the moment vividly. It is the kind of moment of awkward tension that comes up for converts visiting the Christian family, whether at Christmas or any other time. Alice and I always try to be sensitive, but we won’t say or do anything that is just too much in conflict with being Jewish.
Christmas for converts does not have to be only about awkward moments and distance, however. For example, Alice does a great deal to bring the extended family together, even at Christmas time. For many years, right up to now, Alice has bought and wrapped Christmas presents for our Christian nieces and nephews. Alice bakes cookies. She bakes coffee cakes. She writes notes to my family. We send the presents and goodies to my family
What about my own feelings about Christmas?
In the early years after I converted, I didn’t know what to do when someone would greet me by saying “Merry Christmas.” This might be said by someone I knew but did not know well. Even if they knew my name, the name Van Lanckton really does not sound very Jewish, so they could easily think I was Christian.
When someone says “Merry Christmas,” you have two choices. You can reply “Merry Christmas to you.” Or you can say something like, “Gee, thanks, but that's not my holiday. I’m Jewish.”
When I first converted, I knew I was Jewish but also knew I had been Christian. It was particularly important to me that I demonstrate clearly that I really am Jewish and not Christian. I did not want to respond with a simple “Merry Christmas” if that might imply that I was Christian.
As the years have passed, three changes have made this less of a problem. In the first place, I learned that a response saying “that is not my holiday” is quite unwelcome. The other person then has to say, “Oh, I'm sorry.” Then you have to say, “No, that's all right.” To avoid that awkward exchange, I just got cooler about it and replied with “Merry Christmas to you.”
The problem diminished for a second reason: society has increasingly recognized that there are many minority religions. People now generally just say “happy holidays.”
And for the last eight years or so, ever since I’ve been wearing a kippah all the time, not many people mistake me for a Christian.
The early years after conversion presented a more serious problem for me than the question of exchanging Christmas greetings. As a young man, whenever I heard a Christmas carol or other music of Christmas, I would remember very positively the joy and family solidarity that I associated with Christmas. But then I felt very conflicted about my emotional reaction. I felt guilty and embarrassed. I thought, “I should not be feeling this fondness for Christmas; I’m Jewish.”
This would happen most powerfully whenever I heard Handel's Messiah. The words are quotes from the Bible story of the birth of Jesus. That's a story whose every word I learned as a child. When I heard those words, and the gorgeous voices that were singing them, I would cry. Then I would try to hide those tears. I would think, “I am a Jew. I'm not supposed to be moved to tears by Handel's Messiah.”
Over time, that changed. Gradually I learned that it's okay to recognize that, look, I am fully Jewish, I have been ever since I converted, but of course the memories of my youth are still powerful. Some of that music is so powerfully beautiful it moves me to tears, but that is not a reason to feel guilty. In fact, in about 1990, I finally bought a recording of the music. Now, at this season, I will sit and listen to that music. I may even cry. But I am no longer guilty about that feeling.
And I do know that there’s more to those tears than just the beauty of the music. I also do have a sense of loss because of my more distant relationship from my birth family, particularly at Christmas.
Converting to Judaism is a journey. I am still on that journey.
Jewish now for 44 years, I still remember fondly the Christmas celebrations with my original family.
Alice and I have learned how to eat with them. She has learned some of what to expect from them, and she helps us to stay close with them.
I no longer worry about how to return a greeting of “Merry Christmas.” And I don’t try to fight the feelings I experience when I hear Christmas music.
Today is Christmas Day. It is a holiday for Christians, a day of rare celebration for them.
As a Jew, I am grateful for our very many days of celebration throughout the year. The rabbis regard today as the most important of them all. It is a day we are commanded both to remember and to guard. The reference to this day in the Ten Commandments is the only reference there to anything that is called holy. And in the creation story, in Genesis, God rested on the seventh day. God blessed it and declared it holy.
Today is not our holiday.
Today is our holy day.
Today we do not wish each other “Merry Christmas.”
Today I wish us all “Shabbat Shalom.”
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