Chrismukkah

I wasn’t going to say anything about Chrismukkuh.  The Catholic Bishops and Jewish Rabbis recently put out a joint statement condemning the term as offensive to both Christianity and Judaism.  And I get it.  I know that you can’t just make up holidays, and that people have died over the differences between the two religions, and that Jews are concerned about intermarriage finishing the job taken up again and again by one anti-Semitic group after the other.  I don’t take any of that lightly.  Any yet…

…I really wish it were okay to wish people a Herry Chrismukkah.  I love Jesus and Judaism and Christmas and Hanukkah.  I love Christmas trees and menorahs.  My Christmas lights are strung three feet away from where a mezuzah graces our doorpost.  My kids sang the Messiah at Dunster House last week, and played the dreidel game this Tuesday.  It may make people uncomfortable, but it’s our life.

Still, I don’t ever call our particular configuration of celebration by that name; I don’t need to offend people just because the sound of it makes me happy.  In my heart, though, there’s a little bit of Chrismakkuh music playing this time of year.

My Daddy is a Jew.  My mommy is a new-agy, lapsed Lutheran.  I love Jesus.  I’m married to an ordained Baptist.  And we go to a Pentecostal church.  It makes choosing a holiday card a bit more difficult, but it all works together for me.  I can’t imagine being a Christian without Judaism.

It can be more difficult for the boys, though, so I try to make the connections whenever I can.  This week, as friends gathered around our table to eat latkes, light the menorah, and recount the story of the Maccabees, we told the boys that Jesus celebrated Hanukkah in the Temple, and that Jesus told people not long before Hanukkah that he was “the light of the world.”

“Why do you think Jesus said that he was the light of the world?” I asked.

They weren’t sure, but Ezra make a guess: “Because he only weighed ten pounds?”

Not quite what I was going for – I’ll admit it.  I thought we might have a deep reflection on the nature of the temple, God’s presence in the temple, the destruction of the temple, and the light of Christ.  Not there yet, it seems.

Next, I showed them pictures of their great-, great-great, and great-great-great-granparents, trying to remind them that they are descendants of Abraham.  Zach’s response to great-great-grandfather Brownstein?  “Did he come over on the Mayflower?”

We’re definitely not there yet.  But we did have a lot of gelt and a hard time falling asleep after all of the sugar.  That counts for something, yes?

Oh well, there’s always next year.  “In Jerusalem.”  Oh wait.  That’s for Passter. But, please, don’t tell anyone I’m thinking of calling it that.