6 women reflect on their experiences not celebrating Christmas
PERSPECTIVE | It can be an isolating time of year
There’s a lot to like about December, even if you’re not counting down the days until the Christmas.
I like the glow of Christmas lights at night and the window displays in the stores I pass.
I like learning about and sharing in my friends traditions.
I’m pretty sure “Elf” is one of the best movies ever made.
But the holiday season can also be a brutal reminder of a society that’s not quite as inclusive as it should be.
“Are you ready for Christmas?”
An innocent question, that I get asked all the time, while checking out at the grocery store, at the doctors office, by a co-worker I don’t know very well.
But here’s how it often plays out.
“Oh well, I’m Jewish so I actually don’t celebrate Christmas.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Well, at least you have Hanukkah,” they might follow up with.
Yes, Hanukkah, the gift giving, fried food filled festival of lights. It’s a wonderful and joyous holiday and it’s one that has become commercialized thanks to its proximity to the Dec. 25.
But that we liken Hanukkah to Christmas drives me nuts.
Yes, they both fall in December. (Hanukkah can begin anywhere between late November and early January.) And yes, gifts are exchanged. But that’s about where the similarities end.
It’s a really minor holiday in Judaism. Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Passover, even Shabbat, are religiously more significant.
It makes me feel welcome at a time of year where being different can feel extremely isolating.
But it’s a half hearted attempt at inclusion. We need to go further than that.
We should acknowledge the major holidays of all faiths, even when they don’t fall close to Christmas. We need thoughtful and educated recognition. Take time to learn why holidays celebrated and what that looks like. Show support and acceptance.
I think about this every year as the “holiday season” rolls around.
I was curious to know how other women who don’t celebrate Christmas perceive this time of year. So I asked.
Here are the experiences of six other women.
I am a Hindu. I have lived in this country for almost 20 years now and follow all the rituals and traditions, functions and festivals of Hinduism.
Though I don’t celebrate Christmas, I like the spirit of Christmas. December is usually cold and gets dark early where I live but I am always ready for a drive around the neighborhood to see all the colorful display of lights. It never fails to cheer me up.
I guess the basis of every religion is the same: Dispel the dark and embrace the light. In our religion, we celebrate Diwali or the festival of lights in the same spirit. The cheerful lights, colorful displays and the holiday songs lend a festive ambience to the malls and shops and turn them into winter wonderland. The twinkling lights wink at me as if they are telling me the secret of life-as they bring light and warmth outside, so we bring light and warmth inside, be it our houses or our souls.
— Jayashree Sitaraman
My religion of birth was vaguely Protestant, and for a few decades now I have been a spiritual person following natural cycles of the year. I observe Winter Solstice, Yule.
While many of us celebrate a form of secular Christmas, there are many cultures and religions observing joyfully at this times.
I find “Happy Holidays” greeting to be respectful, kind, and a beginning of inclusion. The insistence that “Jesus is the reason for the season” feel like aggression from the dominant and domineering over-culture. The insistence on Merry Christmas as a corrective is coercive and deliberately blind.
Truthfully, Easter is worse.
— Gail Wood
After years of unhappy holidays where my family would spend weeks getting on each other’s nerves, I bowed out a decade ago.
My husband’s family is Jewish, and he’d always wanted a tree and a big celebration, but we agreed that it wasn’t worth it.
It was scary to say no, but I love my new holiday schedule. We make it a priority to see friends in person and take time to catch up. I wrap up the last few things on my plate, relax and enjoy a slower pace so I can start the year refreshed. Instead of celebrating Christmas, we celebrate my birthday, which used to get overshadowed by the holiday hustle.
Christmas was a sad holiday where I used to be yanked away from my life for weeks. I would sleep in my old bedroom and go back to my old role where I was expected to play peacekeeper and carefully manage my emotions. I do miss seeing my cousins and extended family, but it’s a relief to skip the sniping and drama.
— Mary
I consider myself an atheist Jewish woman — someone raised Jewish and who celebrates the holidays but doesn’t believe in god. And I don’t celebrate celebrate Christmas. But of course, I do celebrate Christmas. I love driving through neighborhoods and bask in the beautiful Christmas lights. And I have my own Christmas traditions, like everyone else — they just happen to involve Chinese food and a movie!
And while I love the holiday season and explicitly “Christmas” traditions from lights to trees, it hurts when people forget that I don’t actually celebrate Christmas.
I was a Girl Scout for 12 years but the only Jewish girl in my troop. My senior year of high school, the mothers who planned the holiday party still were masking my difference, insisting on calling it a Christmas party and a secret Santa despite my pointed comments about a “holiday party” and “secret snowflake.” And while that I could live with, every food item at the dinner included pork. Somehow after 12 years of having me around, they still couldn’t remember that I kept kosher-style and don’t eat pork. At least there were cupcakes?
— Marni Morse
My SO and I give each other a few small presents on New Years’s Day, so Christmas is pretty chill for us.
No decorating. No tree. No caroling. If we aren’t traveling, we wake up late, read the Post, and hang out for a bit before going to the movies (Star Wars movies three years in a row!). Get a bite to eat.
Since we are atheists, there’s no focus on a religious holiday. And since our families live far away, there’s no holiday stress. It’s really peaceful.
— Melissa Floyd
I’m Jewish. I grew up in New York City and went to a liberal Northeastern college. My “otherness” as a Jew never felt isolating; it was an identity I shared with a large minority of my classmates, a set of foods and stories and secret Yiddish codewords that united us and were appealing and intriguing to our Christian friends. I never minded Christmas; it made my friends happy and all the lights were pretty.
In the age of Trump, I feel different. The world feels different. Bannon, Spencer, “Bernie Bernstein.”
They make my Jewishness feel embattled, challenged, at risk. Things that never used to bother me now sting. Friends recently invited me to a non-denominational, holiday-themed comedy show. I pictured myself sitting in the audience, feeling alternately marginalized and tokenized depending on the content of each skit. My stomach turned. I declined to attend. Tree-lightings and similar festivities at work (I’m a government employee) are infuriating to me.
Christmastime now reminds me of how I am viewed by so many fellow Americans: outsider, intruder, threat, curiosity, anomaly. More often than usual, I feel sad, angry, or scared. I look forward to it being over.
— Hannah
