Ode to Goy: How Russian Jews Celebrate Christmas

With the holidays behind us and the doldrums of winter officially underway (to say nothing of the dreaded return to the workaday life), now is a time when the seasonal affective disorder can set in kinda hard. So let Bostonist forestall that sorry fate, if only for a little while, by regaling you with the tale of the how our Russian Jewish immigrant family celebrates the birth of Christ:

This year, December 25 marked two celebrations: Christmas and the first day of Hanukkah. Those of us in so-called mixed families got double the pleasure and double the fun of this double holiday. In case you haven’t already heard, the start of Hanukkah has coincided with Christmas only – are you ready? – four times in the last hundred years. Wow.

For some, this confluence of events causes angst. People agonize over “Merry Christmas” versus “Happy holidays,” interfaith couples work to manage their time and their in-laws, and parents try to keep Santa Claus out of the Hannukah story. (This doesn’t end after the winter holidays: Bostonist still remembers when Little Sister Bostonist insisted on painting eggs for Passover.) Russians love to celebrate anything and would never let little religious identity issues spoil the fun. Bostonist’s Russian-interfaith celebration had three key ingredients.

The Tree. Many American Jews celebrate Hannukah in part by denying themselves the tree. But Russians get a tree without guilt. They get a New Year’s Tree, a vestige of the government ban on religion in the Soviet Union. Now that they can practice their own religion, you might suspect that they would embrace the American Jewish traditions of Tree Self-Denial and Tree Envy, and indeed some do. But, once you’ve had a tree, who can give it up? Not Babushka Bostonist. Does she hang Israeli-blue lights, that strange compromise in interfaith holiday decoration? Of course not. She has colored lights, and all the tinsel at the store.(Pity the fool who tries to buy tinsel after Babushka Bostonist.)

The Dinner. This year, we started Christmas dinner at 2:00 pm – the afternoon dinner is something that these Russians learned from their WASP friends. The meal centered around a giant ham accompanied by mashed potatoes, cheese strudel, and prime rib. (Bostonist suspects that the prime rib was intended to alleviate guilt connected to eating ham on Hanukkah. But maybe every ham needs a side of prime rib.) In attendance were one toddler, one lapsed Christian (our stepfather, who reluctantly serves as our Jewish mother's excuse to serve a lavish Christmas dinner), five Jews, two half-Jewish atheists, and two non-Jews who pretended to be Jewish in order to leave the Soviet Union and now occasionally attend synagogue.

The Candles. Despite the fact that all but three people at this dinner were raised Jewish, only Bostonist knew the blessings over the Hannukah candles. But that’s OK. With bellies full of cheese strudel and ham, in the glow of the Christmas tree lights, the joy of sharing Hannukah with each other and with the younger generation came through. Especially when it came time to open presents.

Contributed by Anna Shusterman