My great-grandparents were Jewish, my grandparents were/are Jewish, my parents are Jewish, and I am proudly Jewish. I had my Bat Mitzvah, I went to graduate school to work in the Jewish community and I now work for Hillel, the center for Jewish life on college campuses. I've even had heated debates over which Fiddler on the Roof leading man would make a better mate, Motel or Perchik (my vote always lies with the latter), and yet I have a hidden secret--I grew up celebrating Christmas. And not just in the listening to Christmas music and watching Elf way (both of which I still do, without shame). Instead, every Christmas morning, my sisters and I piled in the minivan in our pajamas and my parents drove us to my grandparents' house. Inside we indulged in gingerbread, candy canes and many other Christmas delicacies. We had stockings with our names on them hanging from the fireplace and we even opened presents from Santa.
As a young Jewish girl I remember questioning why it was that I knew we were Jewish and yet still celebrated what I deemed the holiday of the masses. Little did I know, this pseudo-identity crisis I faced as a child would give me a modicum of an insider perspective into the lives of the many interfaith college students I would work with twenty years later.
Now to provide a little pop-cultural perspective: the early 2000s gave rise to many tan, blonde, WASP-y teenage heartthrobs (think Chad Michael Murray and Jesse McCartney). However, among all of golden locks and blue eyes, we were introduced to witty and awkward Newport Beach resident Seth Cohen, the curly, brown-haired product of a Christian mother and Jewish father (side note--am I the only one who is seriously lacking some Adam Brody in my life these days?). The OC's ultimate NJB (nice Jewish boy, for those not familiar with the lingo) introduced the millennial generation to the concept of Chrismukkah or Christmas and Hanukkah combined into one über holiday. Chrismukkah exemplified a phenomenon not new to American society, being a part of two separate cultures simultaneously. This concept of hyphenated identity is so ingrained in both American and American-Jewish society today that people don't think twice about living in the in-between, balancing between the multiple facets of themselves.
The oft-quoted 2013 Pew Study, A Portrait of Jewish Americans, sheds light on this increasing phenomenon. There seems to be a direct tie between rising secularism in America (not particular to Jews by any means) and interfaith relations. As the study shows,
Secularism has a long tradition in Jewish life in America, and most U.S. Jews seem to recognize this: 62% say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture...Intermarriage is a related phenomenon. It is much more common among secular Jews in the survey than among Jews by religion: 79% of married Jews of no religion have a spouse who is not Jewish...And intermarried Jews, like Jews of no religion, are much less likely to be raising their children in the Jewish faith.
With secularism on the rise, the resulting interfaith marriages and child rearing should come as no surprise. We are seeing an increasingly large amount of people who are the product of interfaith families with college students today being the prime example. We are seeing a whole generation of Seth Cohen's, living in two worlds and partaking of both. College is a unique time in our identity formation and being able to explore all aspects of who we are is a crucial part of the growing up process. While Chrismukkah has become emblematic of interfaith living, we can't look past the intricacies of bringing these individuals into the established Jewish communal fold. I feel it is necessary for the organized American-Jewish society embrace the complexity of the 21st century Jewish people and open our eyes to the new frontier of the American-Jewish landscape. Instead of picking out the differences in cultures, we should accept the reality of the world in which we live and foster a welcoming environment for those from interfaith backgrounds. There is a lot of work ahead of the American-Jewish community when it comes to embracing interfaith families and individuals, but I feel that accepting people for the nuanced beings that they are, Chrismukkah and all, will bring us one step closer to creating a kehilah, a sacred community of Jews exploring life's complexities together.