Is anyone else here Jewish and celebrate Christmas?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
| My Catholic Church in a Jewish town was packed with Jews for midnight Xmas mass every year. The singing, decorations the whole thing was a show for them. Jesus was Jewish so it is actually celebrating the birth of the most famous Jew in history |
Anonymous
| My close Jewish friends have Christmas trees and celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas … that is not surprising given we are both Abrahamic religions with so much in common. I wonder whether members of other major world religions do as well ? |
Anonymous
Gotta call BS on this one. |
Anonymous
Anyone who grew up Jewish in Great Neck went to midnight mass. No different from I hit up the Perry Party or Matzah Ball Jew singles parties as a Catholic, religion is fluid |
Anonymous
I have now asked two actual Jews who graduated from GNN in 1990s and they said this was the nuttiest thing thing they had ever heard. |
Anonymous
PP, are your husband and his siblings happy and well-adjusted? If so, then all is good, right? The religious stuff is secondary to that. |
Anonymous
|
I grew up in a family where everyone was Jewish — not one person I can think of married outside the faith (it’s changed in my generation. I married someone Jewish but my siblings did not).
Anyway our nanny was Lutheran and our parents let us go over to her house and trim the tree, we even stayed overnight so we could see what Santa gave us. None of it was allowed in our home but they didn’t care if we “celebrated” over there because it’s not like we were attending Christmas mass. We just wanted to decorate the tree and open gifts. When my kids were little they wanted a tree and I thought, why not? Well just decorate in blue and white lights and make it a Hanukkah bush. My husband was a FIRM no. I have to admit I was looking forward to it, but he acted like I was bringing a baby Jesus manger scene in the family room. |
Anonymous
|
Christmas trees in Jewish homes: a brief history
University Professor Jonathan Sarna explains the rise, fall and subsequent rise of Christmas trees in Jewish homes. By Julian Cardillo '14 Dec. 16, 2019 Louis Brandeis was well known for becoming the first Jewish person appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. So it may seem surprising that he celebrated the winter holidays with a Christmas tree in his home. But being Jewish and decorating a tree wouldn’t have seemed remarkable to Brandeis. Christmas trees were common in the homes of secular American Jews at the time. What’s happened since then is more complex. “In the late 19th century, there were quite a few liberal Jews – especially those from central European backgrounds – who had Christmas trees in their homes and saw them as secular symbols of the season,” University Professor Jonathan Sarna told BrandeisNOW. Brandeis had a tree in his home when his daughters were young. “For him, this wasn’t an overtly Christian symbol. It was a way to take note of the holiday season,” said Sarna. Born in 1856 to immigrants from the present-day Czech Republic, Brandeis was raised in a secular household. Many other Jewish Amerians at the time shared Brandeis’ affinity for the trees, Sarna said. “I think Jews who had Christmas trees did not really see them as Christian symbols,” he said. “At winter time a lit tree is beautiful and adds light during the shortest days of the year. It was a pretty way to commemorate the winter solstice or winter holidays.” “Christmas isn’t even mentioned in the New Testament – trees were not necessarily ubiquitous at Christmas – so some Jews felt the trees were a symbol that could be shared by people of all faiths,” said Sarna. The number of American Jewish households that brought Christmas trees into their homes declined toward the middle of the 20th century. By 1942, the number of Jews in America had climbed to 4.2 million, up from 1.5 million in 1900, strengthening traditional Judaism. “The sense developed that Christmas trees – the very word “Christmas” – was overtly Christian,” Sarna said. “And whereas in the 19th century, Jews who had Christmas trees viewed them in no way antithetical to Jewish religious attachments, we see a change in the 20th century https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2019/december/christmas-trees-jewish-homes.html |
Anonymous
|
^^^Jews who were in the US in the mid-1800s were mostly from Germany and Spain/Portugal. The Jews from Germany were pretty assimilated and were more likely to take on habits of their Christian neighbors. It was they who started the Reform movement, and at one point or in some places (I'm doing this from memory) they wanted to do Sabbath on Sunday, for example. They also introduced the organ into services. So it's not surprising many had Christmas trees.
When millions of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe came over starting around the 1880s through early 1920s, they were much more religious and traditional than the German Jews that came before them. And the German Jews were different than these "new Jews." The German Jews being more assimilated and less religious. It would be highly unusual for this Eastern European group of Jews to have had Christmas trees, overall. Assimilation happened with this group but much more slowly. Intermarriage with non-Jews happened several generations later, for the most part. Most Jews in the US today are descendants from the Eastern European wave of Jews. |
Anonymous
| We are Jewish and do not celebrate Christmas at our home. If we are invited to a Christmas party or something, we happily participate. And we enjoy seeing everyone's lights, trees, and a sappy Hallmark Christmas movie or two. |
Anonymous
My great grandparents were some of those Eastern Jews, living in NYC in what they called the Jewish Ghetto (part of the Bronx). The first generation - the great grands - were Orthodox Jews, some Chabadniki, and were very religious. No Christmas trees. The second generation, the teenagers of the 20's and 30's, were pretty quick to dump the old ways, and many of them had Christmas trees. This is based on my grandmother's stories of growing up. My mother continued the Christmas tree tradition, and I also have one. Neither was religious, and they didn't see the tree as particularly religious either. Interestingly, about 20 years ago both my mother and grandmother stopped putting up the trees, purportedly because they are Jewish and the trees are for Christians. I have no idea what changed, but I still have my tree and I ain't giving it up. |
Anonymous
The fact that Christianity lays claim to the Hebrew Bible as its Old Testament doesn't actually mean that the religions have so much in common. It's honestly very surprising that any Jewish person would celebrate a holiday marking the birth of a messiah that Judaism doesn't believe in. |
Anonymous
Many Jews regard Christmas trees as secular not religious symbols. Perhaps Christians perceive themselves to have more in common with Jews than Jews do with Christians. The entire New Testament is rooted in Old Testament stories, prophesies and moral codes enshrined in the Ten Commandments. Jesus himself said he was the fulfillment of “The Law” (Hebrew laws and prescriptions). The symbolism used in the Eucharist is based on symbolism that celebrates the Passover. God’s saving grace and mercy is symbolized in both. History of both religions originated in same region. Many sacred sites are held to be sacred by both traditions. There are many more but I don’t have time right now - will provide links later . |
Anonymous
Many Jews regard Christmas trees as secular not religious symbols. Perhaps Christians perceive themselves to have more in common with Jews than Jews do with Christians. The entire New Testament is rooted in Old Testament stories, prophesies and the moral codes enshrined in the Ten Commandments. Jesus himself said he was the fulfillment of “The Law” (Hebrew laws and prescriptions). The symbolism used in the Eucharist is based on symbolism that celebrates the Passover. God’s saving grace and mercy is symbolized in both. History of both religions originated in same region. Many sacred sites are held to be sacred by both traditions. Will provide links to more commonalities later … |
Anonymous
Judaism and Christianity Judaism and Christianity are two monotheistic, ethical religions which share a part of their scriptures in common; the Bible or Tanakh of the Jews is the Old Testament of the Christians. These religions share many common beliefs: (1) there is one God, (2) mighty and (3) good, (4) the Creator, (5) who reveals His Word to man, and (6) answers prayers. Both Judaism and Christianity make (7) a positive affirmation of the world as the arena of God's activity, (8) as the place where people have an obligation to act ethically, and (9) which should be redeemed from injustice. Both believe in (10) a future life, as well as a doctrine of resurrection. Finally, both look to (11) a final consummation of history and (12) the realization of God's complete sovereignty on earth, through the coming of a Messiah or, in the case of modern forms of Judaism, a Messianic age. https://www.northampton.edu/Documents/Subsites/HaroldWeiss/World%20Religions/JudaismandChristianity.pdf Christianity and Judaism— Similarities and Differences in Belief and Practice A comparison Christianity and Judaism are closely related and, in fact, Christianity has evolved from Judaism. Out of all major world religions, Christianity and Judaism are typically regarded as the most similar. Today, there are around 2.2 billion followers of the Christian faith and 14 milllion followers of the Jewish faith worldwide. As the largest religion in the world, Christianity has adherents are all over the globe and is in a majority in Australia and New Zealand, Europe, and North and South America. Having originally existed only in Israel, Jewish people are now dispersed all over the world. Today, the majority live in Israel, the USA, Canada, Russia, France and England. Both religions thus share similar origins and a lot of commonalities, but also several key differences in both practice and belief Some major differences: While Judaism accepts converts, it does not actively encourage conversion to the Jewish. faith and has no missionaries as such. This is a stark contrast to Christianity, which encourages evangelism in an attempt to convince others to convert to the Christian faith. … Judaism and Christianity also have a different idea of the afterlife. Christians believe in the resurrection of both body and soul, and an eternal heaven or hell, or a temporary purgatory, depending on the denomination. In Judaism, on the other hand, the focus is on time on Earth now rather than on a potential afterlife. The concept of an afterlife is not given particular importance in Judaism, and there are a variety of different views on the afterlife among Jewish people. These include belief in the non-existence of an afterlife, reincarnation, another world to come, or a place of spiritual purification for souls (known as gehenna). |