Not-Christmas

Some scrap thoughts from beside the fire

I’d like to propose a new holiday. It takes place on December 25th, and it’s called Not-Christmas.

DALLE: Here is an image of a whimsical tree in a serene landscape, distinctly different from a traditional Christmas tree. It features vibrant colors and a tranquil setting.

I’m not much of a holiday guy. I probably bat a respectable .800 to .900 on the celebrating the Jewish holidays, and usually crack a few beers and eat a few dogs on the 4th, but the easters, Columbus days, diwalis, festivii, and ramadans pass me by without much thought, assuming I remember when they’re happening. But Christmas? Christmas is different. The seismic shift in the zeitgeist, the takeover of every radio station, the lights around the neighborhood, and the mountains of ham and fixings in the grocery store make Christmas un-ignorable, even for an aspiring hermit like myself (ok not really, but man have I become a homebody). The interesting thing about this is that Christmas is so prevalent, that not celebrating it has become a holiday of its own. The modifications to grocery runs, the planning around everything closing, the crucial traditional Chinese food meal, the never as obnoxiously large and bright as I’d like mehorah in my window…. Celebrating not-Christmas has, somehow, wormed its way into my list of yearly festivities.

Now this may read thus-far as an anti-Christmas screed, but my intention is actually quite the opposite. Not only have I found joy and reflection in not celebrating Christmas, I quite love it for the folks who do celebrate. Bringing some light and beauty to contrast the grueling 4PM sunsets? Sign me up. Cashiers replacing the usual drudgerous grunts with cheery well wishes? More of it. Eleven days off of work? Throw another one in July.

While it seems the world’s celebration of Christmas has been largely static over my lifetime, my own treatment of the day has evolved, being ever refined by my surroundings, my social circle, and my connection to my own religion.

As a kid, celebrating Not-Christmas was pretty easy. My friends were largely Jewish, so it was a great day where everyone was free for a play date, and someone’s parents would order Chinese food.

High school and college got a bit less social, since I moved to non-religious school, but it was a day off from thinking about homework, and sometimes my family would be on vacation, scouting out the Chinese food of a different closed-down city than our own (you might be sensing a culinary theme to not-Christmas). Friends were always off somewhere with their own families, but it was a nice day of rest.

Post-college took a bit of a turn, and veered awfully close to Christmas-ville. I began spending the day with my then girlfriend, now wife’s family, celebrating almost Christmas. I opened presents, sat at a family-filled table, and the big tree certainly wasn’t a Hanukkah bush. That said, there was still a distinct othering, or not celebrating, happening too. At Christmas eve, they recited foreign to me graces and ate non-Kosher main dishes, so my plate always looked a bit different (to my in-laws’ immense credit they are/were amazingly accommodating to foreign restrictions and chronic grinch-ism). Christmas morning I became breakfast chef while everyone was at church¹, and then opened presents exchanged amongst themselves, carefully selected based on years of knowing each other’s taste. My contribution to the gift exchange generally took the form of, ideally, both gifting and receiving alcohol, the classic but uninspired safe gift for everybody and at any price range. I greatly enjoyed these Christmases, but they were always in contrast to the prior days we spent with my family nearby, going through the more comfortable to me winter celebrations with family I knew better.

This year marks a new not-Christmas celebration for me. Meghan and I are holed up at home. Meghan is in the process of converting to Judaism, so our trusty synthetic Christmas tree from the basement is in disguise this year, all dolled up in blue and white, with a distinct lack of santas, towering over gifts wrapped in menorah paper, vestiges of the Hanukkah celebrations earlier in the month and gifts that arrived too late to open on her birthday. Tonight we’re having some friends over, assorted not-Christmas celebrators of all sorts of not-Christmas celebrating backgrounds.

In writing all this out, I realized that the form that my celebrating of not-Christmas has taken has been an outward manifestation of my relation to my own religion and my confidence in emphatic self-expression. As is fairly common, my personal religiosity waned throughout my early 20s, but has been firing back of late due to some combination of Meghan’s conversion, thinking about starting a family (closer to thinking about thinking about starting a family, but ya know), rising anti-semitism, and finding a really fun Rabbi. My confidence, too, is in places that high-school Ben would be happy with, too. I am comfortable in many ways, am surrounded by people who let me be myself unashamedly. All of this has let me craft the not-Christmas of my dreams. All of that is helping me make not-Christmas a bright spot in a dreary (and frustratingly warm) December.

Anyways, lunch is beckoning.

To those celebrating the Christmas tomorrow, I hope you have a wonderful day of family, joy, presents, and copious amounts of meat. To those celebrating not-Christmas, I hope the same, with the added fun of getting to swap in and out whatever you want from the day. I’ve also prepared a convenient schedule template below, should you need some help planning your day.

Saturday Dec 23

1pm: Completely forget how fucked the grocery is going to be, attempt to do your regular weekly Sunday grocery shopping and get run over by like 7 shopping carts. Retreat home.

7pm: Respond to various text messages from people wishing you a merry festivus, lament that people are texting you Seinfeld references in 2023, even though you enjoy hearing from them.

Sunday Dec 24

10am: Go to the gym before they close, relish in how blissfully empty it is.

11am: Get home, write a Substack post

noon: Light lunch, you’ve got a big night of eating ahead.

1pm: Nap

5-6pm: your crew should be rolling up. Prepare to battle over what Chinese dishes you’re ordering. Get extra scallion pancakes. Crack some beers, or begin your other relaxation method of choice.

630pm: walk over to the chinese place. Almost certainly take a selfie with a bunch of other semitic looking folks in the background. Pay for your food and chit-chat with the cashier. This will be the first transaction this month where neither party wishes each other a happy holidays of any kind, and it will feel weird. Both refreshing, but also like it’s missing something. Walk home with your food.

7pm: Load up a plate, grab a spot on the couch, it’s movie time. Pick a movie that everybody can eat and talk through. The only rule is that it can’t be a Christmas movie or a Hanukkah one.

7-???: Eat, drink, be merry.

Monday Dec 25th

???: Roll out of bed whenever you can. Open the packages that have shown up from your in-laws. Curse the fact that your cardboard only gets picked up for recycling every other week.

11am: Dog gets a long walk and an extra treat. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, don’t miss the opportunity to spoil the man in charge.

1pm: Mandatory nap.

6pm: Eat whatever you want, without anybody’s annoying aunt/uncle/cousin/??? yapping

8pm: Go hang out at your Rabbi’s house for Hebrew class. Genuinely wonder if he even knows it’s Christmas and wonder what it’s like to be one of 7 people on earth whose schedule wasn’t in the slightest bit interrupted by December 25th. Secretly hope nobody other than you and your wife show up for class so you can just shoot the shit.

1. One of my favorite parts of being a jew on Christmas is being able to be a hero for picking things up for folks up who are celebrating the holidays. I get to make your day for exactly zero extra effort on my behalf? Sign me up.