In the fight between Christmas and Hanukkah, Christmas wins. Christmas just has too many weird traditions attached, hours and hours of songs, and an entire cinematic universe.
Christmas is its own religion.
I say this as an adult secular Jew who is desperate for something to celebrate during the late fall/early winter months. The year I entered kindergarten, my family lived in New Hampshire. At a diner one day, I saw a brochure for a theme park called Santa’s Village. There were roller coasters and reindeer, fake snow, and a chance to see Santa. My father had been clear from the beginning, that there was no Santa Claus, but somehow I convinced my mom bring us there. When arrived, there was no Santa on duty, and the only roller coaster was broken. Across the park, speakers blared popular Christmas songs, seemingly just for us. Fake white snow dripped from the roofs of the shacks painted red. Happy cartoon versions of reindeer popped out to sell us shit. The wet ground was covered in hundreds of pounds of dirty cotton fluff. Eventually the CD changer broke and the speakers started playing “Do They Know It’s Christmas” on repeat. The experience was what dementia must feel like.
As disappointed as that experience was, it still makes cultural sense that such a theme park could exist. There is and could never be a Hanukkah Village. Whose lap would you sit on? Henry Kissinger?
Also, in this made-up Hanukkah theme park, what music would you play over the speakers? Don’t even talk to me about “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.” To say nothing of the monotonous chorus, the premise doesn’t hold up. No one in the history of the world has ever made a dreidel out of clay.
In the second round of the holiday deathmatch between Hanukkah and Christmas, Hanukkah also suffers a bloody defeat. Some in pop culture have posited that the main problem with Hanukkah is that there’s no mascot. The ancient rabbis who first established a festival of lights in the Talmud perhaps missed the marketability of David Schwimmer dressed as an armadillo.
Last year, I attended a Hanukkah party, and after eating latkes, we struggled to find things to do. We played a Jewish themed edition of Cards Against Humanity, hard to connect to because most of the jokes got lost on the party goers, the majority of whom were not Jewish. I had to explain who Anne Frank was, which isn’t quite as fun as “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
What we needed was a mascot to keep us occupied, or at least a tree we could decorate. Faced with a theme party whose theme had run its course, we all just went home.
During Christmas parties, there is never a lack for things to do. At my cousin’s house, my aunt would bake a birthday cake for Baby Jesus, and we would sing to the li’l guy while my cousins blew out the candles. I always felt bad about eating a baby’s cake without him there. After I brought this up, my aunt started cutting a slice for him every year and leaving it out with a baby fork.
In middle school, my friend Toby invited me over for his family’s Christmas party. They had a miniature village set up that took up most of his living room. Every year he would get a new building to add to it, growing from village to midsized American city. “Christmas Cleveland” he called it.
Some of my Christmas friends have held onto their traditions in adulthood, and I have participated in my fair share of hot cocoa buffets, Hallmark marathons, and ugly sweater competitions. Most have a preferred day to open their presents and strong opinions about cookie decoration. Growing up without a Christmas tradition, I find many of these creepy, and some of them make me afraid.
My coworker still wakes up at 7am on Christmas morning to eat breakfast cake, and is in position to open presents by 7:30am. There’s an order of operations -- stockings, presents, kids, adults -- and this must be followed in exacting detail.
I’m not saying that Christmas is better than Hanukkah, I’m just saying there’s more to hold onto, and future civilizations stand more a chance of understanding Santa than Hanukkah Harry.
But no matter what, it’s unfair to place a value judgment on a religious tradition, and thankfully, there is no late fall/early winter holiday deathmatch. If there was, Diwali would win every time.
This is part 4 in my untitled Hanukkah series. Catch up on the previous emails:
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I’m really enjoying these. Thank you for writing them!