Michael Goldfarb explains how his Jewish upbringing means he has a slightly uneasy relationship with Christmas trees ...
When you grow up in a non-christian home Christmas is the time of year when
you feel your own outsider’s identity most keenly. Christmas is simply too
pervasive spiritually, socially and commercially to fight. It comes into
your home regardless, the question for non-christians is where do you draw
the line and say we will celebrate the birth of Jesus this much -- and no
more.
How much like "everybody" we were expected to be was a subject of debate. We were Jewish,
after all, and that wasn’t to be forgotten either. The line was drawn at having a Christmas tree
in our flat. Hanukkah bush as my Grandfather called it. I don’t know why
the Christmas tree became the border post marking the place where in our
secular family Jewishness ended and Christianity began - it just did.
What we learn as children we act upon as adults.
When I finally got married, I married outside the faith. My wife’s Christian
upbringing was like my Jewish one -- secular. The one time of year where
the difference counts for anything is at Christmas. Come mid-december, when my wife would
start suggesting we go out and choose a tree, I found a thousand excuses to
postpone doing it. Around the 23rd of December I would say, let’s go get a
tree - and of course she would say The only trees that are left are scrawny
and ugly and I don’t want them in "my" house. In the arguments that
followed, I could always say it wasn’t my fault that we didn’t have a tree
... I offered to get one.
Many Christmases - and many Christmas post-mortems -- had to pass before the penny dropped: we
invest symbols with their power. The symbolic power of the tree for my wife
was the power of love and childhood -- her own and those lived by the
children we love. It was a much greater and universal symbolic power than
mine. And for the simple joy it brings into my wife’s life and the colour
and fragrance it brings into "our" little house it was worth dismantling the
border post put up in my childhood.
Now our tree is selected by mid-December -- short and plump to fit our
smallish living room. The tasks to make it Christmas ready are divided. My
job is to assemble the stand and screw the tree into place -- last year it
only fell over once. and, to be honest, come January it’s my wife who is
saying throw that old thing out, it’s shedding -- I rather like keeping it
until there are more needles on the floor than on the tree itself.
