Rob's Blog

A Jewish Christmas

For some reason it's a Jewish tradition (see  DallasNews Religion , Jacquline Passey , Fat Old Artist among others!) to go to the movies and eat Chinese food on Christmas Day. I asked my Rabbi about this and he actually had a theory. First of all, Chinese restaurants seem to always be open. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, depsite the shellfish and pork, by nature Chinese food is kosher. No dairy. Have you ever heard of Moo Shu Parmigiana?! Cream of Wonton soup? In fact there are actually some Chinese Kosher restaurants around. Our family did a revised version of this tradition, going into NYC on Christmas Eve day and eating at the Carnegie Deli, which serves HUGE mounds of corned beef on their sandwiches. The rye bread is basically an afterthought, although my kid asked for his sandwich on white bread which is very WASPY. Oh well. He was never Bar Mitvahed either. Then we took a nice stroll up Central Park West and visited the American Museum of Natural History, which was very nostalgic as we always used to take our kids there when they were younger. We did eat Chinese food that night at Ollie's and it was indeed a Kosher meal. Well, mostly anyway. We enacted the remainder of the tradition by seeing Dreamgirls on Christmas Day, which I found disappointing, though I seem to be in the minority. I prefer the real Motown to the Hollywood version. See A.O. Scott's review in the New York Times.

Christmas/Hanukkah

  Christmas Tree, or Hanukkah Bush

 

             Menorah

I was talking to my "Shiksa" friend about the difference in holiday celebrations in the Jewish and Christian traditions. There are certain similarities. Both Christmas and Hanukkah are ritualistic celebrations, revolve around meals and involve presents. They are also both perfect opportunities for familes to get together, bond, argue, dysfunction and generally remind each other why they don't get together more often.