Slice of Life: Christmas confuses me: learning not to be the Grinch
From the moment Halloween ends and we turn our calendars to November, my neighborhood is decked out with twinkling red and green string lights and pine wreaths. Christmas meets Thousand Oaks as quickly as gossip meets my bubby and as enthusiastically as Manischewitz wine meets a 13-year-old on his Bar Mitzvah day.
Being Jewish in Thousand Oaks has put me in many awkwardly hilarious situations that make me want to react as rashly as Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” I’ve sat through many conversations where my peers share their hatred for my diasporic family. I nod quietly and contemplate if I should confess if their so-called enemy is closer than they thought.
I don’t mind being told “Merry Christmas,” as I’m aware we live in an overwhelmingly predominantly Christian society and there is no malice behind the greeting. But I like to mimic my younger self, new to the concept of the holiday, when I respond: “Happy Christmas.”
I’ll never forget when I first learned about Christmas. I was in first grade, no longer at my temple’s religious preschool, and my classmates gathered to brag about the “hundreds” of presents Santa Claus had brought them.
I was bamboozled to learn that there was a fat man who laughed in a repetition of a word I wasn’t allowed to say flew from the sky in a carriage drawn by flying reindeer, and was coming down the chimneys of all of my peers’ homes in the middle of the night to leave them presents as a reward to their obedience, or lumps of coal as a mockery of their defiance. One would have been more successful trying to teach me quantum mathematics.
Unsurprisingly, my mother received angry phone calls from parents after I had tried to dismantle Santa’s fantasy to their precious, impressionable children. But after several ruined dreams, touched Elf on the Shelves and unintentional mix-ups of Santa Claus and Jesus Christ, I’ve eventually gotten the hang of navigating winter as seemingly one of the only Jews in Thousand Oaks. And although I may never understand the prevailing excitement for Christmas, I am a supporter of whimsy, joy and community.
Even as my peers and I have grown older and selectively wiser, my confusion about Santa Claus is easily comparable to their disbelief that I don’t celebrate Christmas. “Like, at all?” No, Emily, not at all.
But unlike Santa, Americans who don’t celebrate Christmas aren’t mythical. Now that the shelves are stocked with Christmas merchandise, I’m looking forward to laughing at the culture shock on my peers’ faces with my fellow non-celebrating friends, as well as wishing my celebrating friends a “Happy Christmas.”
