As December came around this year, I received an email from a Jewish organization. “Some of us may be bracing for a month full of Christmas envy,” it cautioned, “and it’s easy to understand why. Christmas is everywhere, from the aisles of our local drugstores to the playlists of our favorite radio stations.” The email warned against a “plan to spend the next month staring longingly through neighbors’ windows at their tinsel-decked trees."

I was befuddled. Christmas envy? Christians should envy me. December 25 is one of my favorite days of the year. I don’t have to work. I eat a fun ethnic meal (the cliché is true: It’s sometimes Chinese). I see a movie. And I celebrate my own heritage: Being Jewish on Christmas is like having one’s Jewishness traced in bright, red-and-green ink.

Part of my love for Christmas is based on the same aesthetics that everyone else likes about the holiday. The seasonal/pagan elements are undeniably beguiling: I cherish the culmination of fall, the smell of pine, and the snow; and even I cannot help but associate them with Christmas. I love the songs—many of which, anyway, were composed by Jews. I enjoy glad tidings as much as the next person, whatever their theological origin. On Christmas Day, the streets are pretty, and empty, and when I find myself in the suburbs, parking is a breeze. (Closed businesses are only a minor inconvenience, I’ve found, and anyway Starbucks tend to be open until 4 p.m.)

Christmas is, in other words, a fête for the Jews, too. This seems obvious when you think about it. But in recent years all the hoopla over Christmas’ actual meaning—and the concomitant hoopla over the coastal elites’ alleged top-secret crusade to drain Christmas of said meaning—masks the fact that Christmas is also a holiday for the coastal elites. In other words: Jews like me! In fact, it’s more: to borrow from the liturgy of Passover, this day off is different from all other days off. Unlike Thanksgiving, there is no exhausting obligation to spend time with family. Unlike the three-day weekends, it is unlikely to be annexed by a wedding. And unlike New Year’s Eve, there’s no feeling of obligatory raucousness. You can just not work or go to school, and instead hang out with your friends. And if it happens not to turn out the way you want? Unlike a Christian, you probably won’t spend the next month in agony over whether or not you’re a loser from a dysfunctional family.

It’s the holiday equivalent of found money. And since you will likely be around only other Jews, you can do things like compare Jewish Christmas to “found money.”