Transcript
Thomas: As we enter the holiday season, many folks will begin to celebrate this time of year with different holiday traditions. However, many members of our community live in households that blend different religions and cultures into one holiday celebration.
Jack: For this podcast, we interviewed students who celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah and learned about how they celebrate the holiday spirit.
Thomas: I’m Thomas McCallum,
Jack: and I’m Jack Bilman,
Both: and this is Holidays in Harmony.
Thomas: We’re here With senior Asher Le Breton. Asher, can you tell us a little bit about how you spend your holidays?
Asher: Yeah, I always do Hanukkah with my mom, my dad, and my sister at home. So every night for the eight days, we light the candles and sometimes we do presents. But then we usually go to Los Angeles to see my mom’s parents and we spend Christmas with them.
Thomas: Awesome. Would you say Hanukkah is more of a religious celebration and Christmas is more of a cultural tradition for you?
Asher: Yes, absolutely. The Hanukkah, we’re more into the religious side of it, especially if we go to temple. And the Christmas aspect is just more of a fun thing that became a tradition when my grandmother, who also grew up Jewish, realized that Christmas had much more theme to it, like all the songs and everything. And she felt like she was missing out, so she started doing Christmas as just a fun tradition, and Hanukkah was more the religious side.
Thomas: So some folks that we’ve talked to have talked about blending the holidays in some interesting ways, but it seems like you sort of separate them separately. Is that the case?
Asher: Yeah, I keep it pretty separate. My dad, who grew up a Christian, he’s not very religious anymore, and he actually wanted us to be raised Jewish, so he’s very happy to do Hanukkah separately. So yeah, we don’t really blend them that much. It’s two pretty distinct things.
Thomas: I’m here with Bennett Sonnenberg, who’s a senior. Bennett, tell us a little bit about how you plan to spend the upcoming holiday break.
Bennett: Yeah, so we just celebrated the first night of Hanukkah. We like to do that with my grandpa. He kind of leads us in some prayers as we light the first candle. And then typically we like to do it as a family, but more recently we’ve been doing it over Zoom as everyone’s been so far away. And then we try to open some presents the first night, and then we light candles the rest of the night, although we don’t go on call to really do any prayer. And then we got Christmas coming up, and my family likes to host. They’re kind of extended family for Christmas and all try to get together.
Thomas: Gotcha. So when you celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah, does any one of them take more of a religious precedent and the other one’s more cultural, or do you try to balance both of them equally? Like, how does your family come to the point of celebrating both of those holidays?
Bennett: I think my grandpa definitely brings the religion part to Hanukkah, but we really just try to get together as a family. That’s what these holidays are about for us.We just really want to be together and spend time with those who we love.
Thomas: Gotcha. Yeah. Would you say that, so you said Christmas, you’d treat it a little bit more like a tradition rather than a religious (holiday)?
Bennett: Yeah, for sure. For Christmas, we all like to get together, the entire extended family, and meet up in person. I know my cousins actually spend the first half of the day with my family and then spend the second half of the day with their other cousins. So we really try to make sure we’re with family on Christmas because that’s really what it’s about.
Thomas: Are any members of your family Christian? Is there any reason why you guys tend to celebrate Christmas? Is it like some members of your family are and some aren’t, or is it just you’re sort of doing it because it feels like a cultural thing and it’s a fun time to have everybody around?
Bennett: Well, my dad, he grew up Christian, but I think it’s just been something we’ve always done. It’s just kind of become a tradition at this point, yeah, I would say. Just because it’s always been there for us to kind of have a set day for us all to come together, right? When everyone has off from work or school or whatever, so we can really spend the time with family.
Thomas: Gotcha. But you don’t really undertake in any other, like you wouldn’t be going to church or anything. It’s more of like a celebration.
Bennett: Yeah, no, we don’t go to church. We don’t, we don’t do any prayers. I actually don’t know what you would do if you’re religious and celebrate Christmas, but yeah, we just spend time together.
Thomas: Gotcha. Alrighty. Sounds good. Thank you.
Thomas: We’re here with Senior Alex Kritzer. Alex, tell us a little bit about how you celebrate the holidays.
Alex: So in my house, my mom is Catholic originally, Italian American, neither of them are that religious, but my mom is Catholic and my dad is Jewish. And we celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas. So it’s very hectic around the holiday season. We have, you know, it’s a great time. We got a lot of presents as a kid. And we just celebrated the first night of Hanukkah last night, so it’s fun. And we decorated the Christmas tree a little before that.
So sort of a cultural fusion.
Thomas: OK, so during this time of the holidays, does your family sort of tend to blend the traditions of the two holidays or sort of keep them separate and celebrate them on their own?
Alex: Yeah, thanks. So I think that, you know, it’s interesting that we sort of do separate them. But, you know, even though there’s not exactly there’s not like religious tension in my house or anything, but we kind of keep the tradition separate. And that, you know, usually when we celebrate every night of Hanukkah, we do that as its own little ceremony. And, you know, there’s a little corner of the house with the menorah and everything’s blue and white and silver and whatever. And we sort of isolate that as a tradition. And then we do Christmas. Some years it’s complicated because they overlap. And so they do like mix a little bit, I guess, when our family celebrates. But, yeah, most of the time we keep the sort of cultures of both of them intact and celebrate them separately, which is interesting. But, you know, it’s not like my Jewish dad only does the Hanukkah stuff and then my mom does the Christmas stuff. The whole family celebrates all of them. But the traditions, I guess, you know, now that I think of it, we do kind of keep them the same.
Thomas: So in terms of extended family, like grandparents and, you know, cousins or anything like that, do you ever find that like you’re in your do you ever celebrate either one of the holidays with just one side of the family? (6:36) Or would you ever have like a larger celebration with the whole family, you know, for each of the holidays or would they all come together for one of the holidays? (6:45) Like, how would that work?
Alex: Yeah, it’s tricky. So historically, we only really meet up that much with my mom’s side of the family. My grandparents on that side and they’re the Catholic ones. So we always meet up with them for Christmas. But we kind of celebrate Hanukkah privately because we don’t keep as much in touch with my dad’s side of the family. They’re kind of crazy, or at least the parents are. But we when we meet up with my. It’s all right. My aunts and uncles and cousins on that side who are cool and we hang out with them. You know, we will sometimes celebrate Hanukkah with them. It’s just rare that they come over at that time. But we definitely celebrate Christmas all together as a family.
Jack: That’s really interesting. So do you celebrate these holidays as more of a religious tradition or like a family cultural tradition?
Alex: Yeah, thanks. I think it’s an interesting question if you celebrate both, right? Like and it’s going to and it’s going to differ holiday by holiday. You know, obviously, if you celebrate Hanukkah in any capacity, you probably have some Jewish ancestry. Because it’s just you can’t really link that with, you know, it’s still very cultural. It’s just the way we perceive it. But like in America, pretty much everyone celebrates Christmas and it’s become commercialized. It’s not even really a sort of a strictly religious thing anymore. And so because both of my parents come from these different religious backgrounds, but neither of them are particularly observant, I guess is the word you’d look for. Because neither of them are particularly observant, it has sort of become just like part of the part of the tradition. Like I don’t like I don’t see Christmas the way we celebrate it as necessarily a celebration of Christianity. But it is definitely like just part of my life because that’s the culture we live in. And then it’s it’s interesting because like Hanukkah, we do celebrate because we’re Jewish or at least my dad’s side of the family is. And so it has something of, I guess, a different vibe. You know, you really only relate to other Jews or people whose families are at least part Jewish about Hanukkah. But with Christmas, like it’s so universal that I didn’t even think of it as like a religious thing that I was celebrating it because everyone talks about.
