Some will light a menorah alongside the Christmas tree this year.
Many multifaith families across Northeast Pennsylvania celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, but this year, the two holidays converge. While the first day of Hanukkah, traditionally celebrated by those of the Jewish faith, may fall anywhere from the end of November to the end of December, this year, it falls on Dec. 25, when most Christians observe Christmas.
The confluence creates an atypical amalgam of the two notable wintertime holidays. Welcome to Chrismukkah.
Monica Zourides’ mother is Jewish, but she married a non-Jew, so Zourides was raised celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah.
“I grew up with a Christmas tree and a menorah,” said Zourides, of Berwick. “And I still do that, because I feel that it is important. I like to carry on my family traditions.”
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Monica Zourides
Monica Zourides, left, and her husband, Steve Zourides, right, hold their daughter, Willow, beside an assortment of holiday decor depicting their household’s Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations. (SUMBITTED PHOTO)
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Monica Zourides
The Zourides family displays Christmas and Hannukah decorations. (SUMBITTED PHOTO)
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Monica Zourides
An assortment of holiday decor adorns the Zourides’ household, representing the family’s interfaith mix of Christmas and Hanukkah traditions. (SUMBITTED PHOTO)
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Monica Zourides
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Monica Zourides, left, and her husband, Steve Zourides, right, hold their daughter, Willow, beside an assortment of holiday decor depicting their household’s Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations. (SUMBITTED PHOTO)
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Zourides’ husband Steve, who is Greek, and their daughter, Willow, 3, are preparing, once again, for a December double duty. She explained that for her daughter, the holiday isn’t only about getting Christmas presents.
“Willow is excited to put the candles in the menorah,” Zourides said. “She loves doing it, she always wants to blow them out, and I have to explain it’s not a birthday cake.”
Zourides recalled that, when she moved out of her childhood home, she realized as Hanukkah loomed that she didn’t have a menorah, so she bought one on eBay for $15.
“It’s still the one I use,” she said. “My menorah holds a special place.”
She explained, however, that she decorates more for Christmas than Hanukkah. She described a ceramic tree with “little lights in it” from her paternal grandmother as well as three angels her grandmother made, a crocheted Santa, tinsel art, and a handmade stocking her mother made for her daughter.
“Everything has meaning and purpose,” she said. “Everything is handmade or handed down.”
She said her parents bought her a Christmas ornament every year when she was younger. “I thought it was stupid at the time, but when I moved out, I had enough ornaments to decorate the whole tree … all of them have meaning to me,” she said.
She also still uses the vintage red and green frame her mom bought in the 1970s at Kmart, positioning it to hold up her yearly, always very bushy Christmas tree.
“My husband is like, ‘that’s too big,’ and I’m like ‘no, it’s not!’” Zourides said. “I always get the really fat trees, and he’s like, ‘calm down, I’d like it to not take up the whole living room.’”
Michael Cohen, 20, a student at King’s College with plans to go to medical school, has a Jewish dad and a Catholic mom. He, his parents, his younger brothers, 15 and 17, and his extended family on both sides have no issues combining the star of Bethlehem and the star of David.
“Christmas Eve was the biggest holiday in terms of my entire family,” Cohen said. “The majority of my Jewish family would come over, and we’d all celebrate Christmas Eve together, and we’d celebrate Hanukkah at my grandmother’s house … it’s not as traditional … but we still get together and have food.”
He said with Christmas and day one of Hanukkah both falling on Dec. 25 this year, his family will make sure the Christmas tree and the menorah will both get time to shine.
“The timing of it is really cool,” he said. “We’ll be celebrating only Christmas on Christmas Day… and we are going to celebrate (Hanukkah) later in the holiday. We want to honor both traditions.”
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Michael Cohen, right, with his brother, Stephen, wearing Jewish yarmulkes as young children.
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Michael Cohen, right, poses in front of a Christmas tree with his brother, Justin, left and his brother Stephen, center, during a Christmas that took place about a decade ago.
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Michael Cohen, right, with his brother, Stephen, wearing Jewish yarmulkes as young children.
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Daniel Swartz, the rabbi at Temple Hesed, said that some multifaith families grapple with a convergence of the two holidays, especially those with young children.
He called it a “common complaint” around this time of year.
“I think when it’s two adults, they tend to feel like, well, you can do your thing and I can do my thing, but when you’re talking about the kids, then it’s like, well, what’s our thing?” Swartz said.
He added that extended family adds a layer of discussion.
“With the grandparents and the in-laws, there’s an investment in the kids turning out a certain way,” Swartz said. “They always imagined the grandkids turning out like this, and if they’re not, that’s when you’ve got these tensions.”
He explained traditions further complicate the way the holidays unfold over the decades.
“Blue and white Hanukkah decorations are only about a generation old,” he said, adding, “you’re traditionally supposed to light your menorah by the window so that others can see it, there’s this idea of publicizing the miracle … but that was specifically with the menorah.”
He said Christmas decorations go back a few generations, but are “not an ancient tradition from medieval times … but once you’ve grown up with them, you feel like it’s been there forever,” he said.
He said parents of differing faiths may want to come out ahead in a holiday battle.
“(Comedian) Jon Stewart has a couple of fairly funny bits, about, ‘Hey Jews, you’ve got to step up your game, you’re losing this one,’ which I think is saying out loud what sort of goes out in parents’ minds, that it’s easy for something like this to become a competition around the ways that parents grew up.”
He said it’s important to figure out whether the discussion is about spirituality or family tradition, adding in his experience, it tends to be “a little all over the place,” but that “true religious conflict” is less common.
The Rev. Ryan Brogan, the director of Campus Ministry at King’s College, said that for many of his students, it’s their first time celebrating different holidays together on their own. He said the students ask him questions of both a practical and spiritual nature, for instance, ‘How do I navigate celebrating both of these holidays?’ or ‘How do I honor both traditions and their importance to my family while also coming to terms with what my beliefs are?’
“It’s a real privilege to be able to be part of that conversation,” Brogan said.
He said that students from multifaith families typically come from families who have love for both holidays.
“If a person has grown up celebrating both Christmas and Hannukah, it’s often the case that both religious traditions are important to their families,” he said.
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The Turetsky family LJ, 4, left, dad Ross, mom Abigail, and sister Lorelai, 7, share a playful moment in front of Hanukkah and Christmas decorations at their home in Dallas on Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. BILL TARUTIS / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
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The Turetsky family LJ, 4, left, dad Ross, mom Abigail, and sister Lorelai, 7, sit in front of Hanukkah and Christmas decorations at their home in Dallas on Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. BILL TARUTIS / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
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The Turetsky family LJ, 4, front, sister Lorelai, 7, mom Abigail, and dad Ross stand next to Hanukkah decorations Hanukkah decorations at their home in Dallas on Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. BILL TARUTIS / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
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The Turetsky family LJ, 4, left, dad Ross, mom Abigail, and sister Lorelai, 7, share a playful moment in front of Hanukkah and Christmas decorations at their home in Dallas on Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. BILL TARUTIS / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
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Abigail and Ross Turetsky, of Dallas, and their two children, Lorelai, 7, and LJ, 5, now embrace the charms of both holidays, even though the couple grew up observing only one in their childhood homes.
“I had never celebrated Christmas before, until I met my wife,” said Ross Turetsky, who was raised Jewish. “It was a foreign concept to me. It still feels awkward to me a decade later.”
His wife Abigail, said the families meld and combine to make the holidays work, and even included a mash up of the holidays on their family greeting card, which was a graphics option available via Walgreen’s holiday card templates.
“Traditionally, we have a dinner during Hanukkah, where even my parents come, and we celebrate the holiday together,” she said, adding that, in the past, her husband’s family attended Christmas dinner. “It’s kind of all mixed together.”
Abigail Turetsky
The Turetsky family holiday card proudly quips their celebration of a combination of Christmas and Hanukkah.
With Christmas Day and the first day of Hanukkah both falling on the same date this year, children of interfaith families look forward to holiday bonuses.
“They’re excited for the extra gifts,” Abigail Turetsky said of her children. “They’re your traditional 5- and 7-year-old.”
She added that her daughter is old enough that she has begun taking some interest in the differences around the faiths of each holiday, and that the children both also find joy in turning on the lights of the electric menorah, for each of the eight nights of Hanukkah.
For some Jewish families, the opportunity to celebrate Christmas with their children might even help to heal the childhood traumas from holidays past.
“Growing up, I really wanted to celebrate Christmas,” Ross Turetsky said. He prodded his mother for a Hanukkah bush and Christmas gifts, but she preferred to celebrate the holiday more traditionally, honoring her Jewish faith.
He said they did the stereotypical thing that a Jewish family would do instead, and went to the movies and a Chinese buffet.
“I’m glad my kids get to enjoy Christmas, because I would have loved that kind of childhood,” Ross Turetsky said. “They get the best of both worlds.”