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I’m Jewish. My entire childhood, every year, my life fell apart in late November.

Why? Because the very day after Thanksgiving people start obsessing about Christmas. It’s not only Christian people. If it were, I feel as if I’d get it more. It’s all the people who love it, of all kinds of cultures and creeds. You can’t watch a cartoon, buy a magazine or walk down the street without feeling as if you are somehow not good enough if you don’t buy candy canes and hook them all over your house. And the truth is, Christmas is so inviting, it’s almost unfair. It’s hard to denounce toasty cinnamon warmth, after all.

Every year, my sister and I would approach my parents with a newly crafted plea to get a Christmas tree.

“We won’t believe in it,” we’d whine, holding pine needles behind our backs so the holiday scent might penetrate the decision-making part of our parents’ brain.

“We will get a really odd-shaped one, one that doesn’t look like a Christmas tree at all,” we’d beg.

“We know Santa won’t come, we know he doesn’t exist, we don’t care,” we’d try.

“Hanukkah bush?” we’d squeak as a last resort.

And every year, my parents refused, citing our Jewish roots, end of story, that’s it, that’s all.

Now, we were not a particularly religious family. On the contrary, actually. But we were very Jewish. I have had fight upon fight with friends about how this is possible. What I have determined is that we, as a people, need another word for being “culturally” Jewish. We have our own food, our own traditional ceremonies, our own dances, our own music, and definitely our own diseases (ask any Jewish woman you know about being tested for genetic issues before she had a baby). Some of it is tied to our religion, but frankly, most of it is not.

I would venture to say that part of what defines us as culturally Jewish in this country is that we are not mainstream Christian. The absence of wreaths is more telling than the presence of menorahs.

(By the way, I find a bit depressing that we’ve had to exaggerate a relatively trivial holiday just so that people don’t feel too bad for our children around the holidays. What it has become is a chance for us Jewish parents to ease the guilt of not conforming to the American Christmas culture. In some ways, that’s lovely. In other ways, it’s sort of sad.)

So, after a childhood of wanting, yearning, needing a Christmas tree, I married a Christmas-er. Not a Christian really, but someone who had Christmas his whole life and celebrates it as a yearly yuletide occurrence. We spend the holiday with his family. And it’s lovely. They have a lovely tree. And because he can celebrate Christmas with his family in their home, my husband doesn’t really care so much about having Christmas in our own house, and is happy to live however I please for the winter. But that’s the point, isn’t it? My husband had Christmas, so doesn’t care about it very much. While I never did, and wanted it like you can’t imagine.

So then we had a child. And then we had another one. And you’d think that I’d be beside myself with glee, because it gives me the go-ahead to sprinkle tinsel and smell up the house with piney loveliness. Of course, this is a pretty common dilemma, but it was one I never anticipated having to deal with. I always figured I would embrace Christmas wholeheartedly as an adult, considering my intense youthful yearning. But I haven’t. I haven’t sprinkled any tinsel. I have never bought a tree. Instead, I am terrified.

Just yesterday, as I was helping him brush his tiny teeth, my 4-year-old son turned to me and said, “Can we just pretend to have Christmas?”

Ooh, good one – I should have thought of that!

I balked.

Other people have asked me similar questions:

“Come on, it’s an American Holiday at this point, it’s not religious, can’t you just deal?”

“Can’t you just participate at home? It’s so fun, sparkly decorations – your favorite!”

“Don’t be a Grinch about it, O.K.?”

What I try to explain is that I respect the holiday. I really do love it. I love to visit it, I embrace the people I love who celebrate it. But it isn’t my holiday. There’s nothing that will change that. It’s not, as Jon Stewart tells us, “A War on Christmas.” It’s just not my thing.

I turned back to my son and said, “No, babe, we can’t pretend.”

He pouted, but he got over it quickly. This time. But I eagerly await the day that both my little ones look at me the way my sister and I used to look at my parents with longing, disappointment and confusion. But it’ll be worse, because I’m only one Jew, not a pair, like my parents were. I am terrified because I don’t want to want Christmas, anymore. I have learned why it is important that I don’t have a Christmas tree. It took me more than 30 years to really get it. That being able to live with out it – because of, not in spite of, who I actually am, is really the important part.

I need some help figuring out how to explain this to these curious little people I love so much. Regardless of how much I reorganize it in my head, they will always be half Jewish. In the end, it isn’t really about me anymore, even if we have agreed to raise them in a Jewish home.

Should I get them half a tree?