A Jew's Guide to Christmas

Like all Jewish children, I grew up loving Christmas. I would start listening to my Christmas playlist on September 1st, beg for a tree, and leave out Clif Bars and oat milk for Santa Claus. (Of course, if Santa drank oat milk and Clif bars, he might not weigh 400 pounds, but alas.) When visiting my grandparents in Florida, I would even make my grandmother take me to Christmas Mass at Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, the Episcopal church where President Trump attends.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I asked my mother: “If we are still in lockdown at Christmastime, can we get a tree?” After 15 years of refusing this one wish of mine, she said yes. Who would’ve thought that we would still be in lockdown by December 2020? That winter, we had our first Christmas tree — a tall, fragrant fir tree (O Tannenbaum! … I actually think I knew him from Hebrew school).

Now, getting a tree is our annual tradition, because once you sip the eggnog, there is no going back.

Below, you will find my guide to everything that a Jew needs to know for Christmas. I do not subscribe to the “Jewmas” traditions. I don’t want Chinese food. I don’t want to go to a movie theater — none of it. I don’t even like to go on vacation over Christmas. It’s a time to be jolly at home with family, presents under the tree, and a roaring fire. I want to wake up on the morning of the 25th to carpets of snow in my seasonal Roller Rabbit pajamas, blast Christmas music over the Sonos system, and open gifts with a shot of espresso.

Hand-stitched by my mother herself.

The Guide

Christmas Potpourri

The fragrance of the Christmas spirit should be wafting through your home. There is no better way to embrace Yultide than the simplicity of the nasal inhalation of merriment, gaiety, and mirth.

What you’ll want to do is get a sauté pan and fill it about 3/4 full with water. You will want to make sure that you have ingredients, and you can easily find recipes online, but I prefer my own whimsy to the 3,000-word essays of the modern-day millennial’s recounting of their time in Grandmother’s kitchen.

I like to use balsam fir branches. If you do not have these trees growing in your backyard, visit your nearest plantation or a pop-up sale. On the Upper West Side, where I live when not upstate or in L.A., I highly recommend the trees on Columbus between West 80th and 81st. They now accept Bitcoin.

I also like to use cranberries, pinecones (not fragrant, but aesthetic), orange peels — not the slices as some websites may tell you, take it from this Jew — cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, nutmeg, bay leaves, rosemary sprigs, and a splash of vanilla extract.

Please keep it on a low simmer throughout the evening. The house is sure to smell like the Elves’ sauna at the North Pole. However, the water will evaporate over hours, and you will need to refill it. That said, you usually won't need to add more ingredients —they remain aromatic even after being dried in the evaporating potpourri.

Please note that if you leave the stove on without refilling the pot with water, you have a relatively high chance of burning your house down.

Christmas Movies

Everyone knows that certain movies must be watched during the season. Last year, my parents forced me to see A Complete Unknown starring Timothée Chalamet (a fellow Jew and Manhattanite) as Bob Dylan (another fellow Jew who was enticed by Christianity).

Of course, it is absolutely compulsory to watch Home Alone and its sequels; It’s A Wonderful Life; Elf; and chief among all, Love Actually. But to focus on just the critically acclaimed movies would be foolish.

I also love any and all Christmas episodes of Gossip Girl — you can find a guide to all of its holiday episodes here, borrowed from Natalia Kobiakova.

Every single year, without fail for the last eight Christmases, my sister and I have watched A Christmas Prince, a made-for-Netflix movie. It got decent reviews, except for this one from Siena Yates in the New Zealand Herald:

So bad it's good? No. It's so bad it's just plain bad. Did I enjoy it? No. Would I watch it again? Definitely not.

A Christmas Prince checks all of the major boxes for those of us who love the Christmas spirit — one might call Ms. Yates a Grinch.

The premise follows a New York journalist desperate to be taken seriously (✅), so she is sent on a reporting mission to a small snow-covered Liechtenstein-adjacent European kingdom (✅), to cover the titular playboy prince’s (✅) ascension to the throne upon the untimely death of his beloved father (✅), mirroring the journalist’s own tragic loss of her mother (✅).

Obviously: a banger. The must-watch to end all must-watches.

Christmas Music

Reject modernity. Embrace tradition.

Well, for the most part. Don’t bother me with the Jonas Brothers or Meghan Trainor belting the classics into my headphones as if we live in some post-modern dystopia. I love some of the new classics, like Sia’s Snowman, Ariana Grande’s Santa Tell Me, Justin Bieber’s Mistletoe, and Kelly Clarkson’s Underneath The Tree, but otherwise, leave it to the masters.

We need Brenda Lee singing Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree, The Ronettes’ Sleigh Ride, Darlene Love’s Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), Eartha Kitt’s Santa Baby, anything by Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and, of course, from the soundtrack of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

One cannot enjoy the season without a proper playlist. I have my own, very subjective playlist — but for newbies, I highly recommend Spotify’s Christmas Classics.

The most important song of the season (aside from the hymns!) is All I Want For Christmas Is You. Mariah Carey owns Christmas music. I recommend watching her annual TikToks each November 1, heralding the season, which have amassed more than 430 million views collectively since 2019, and (I’m sure) have earned her enough money to max out the Roth IRAs of each of Santa’s nine reindeer.

Christmas Judaism

Worried about disrespecting your Jewish ancestors, who survived millennia of persecution just so that you could rock around the Christmas tree? Don’t be! It’s a Jew’s birthday after all. Jesus was a rabbi! What kind of person would not celebrate their rabbi’s birthday?

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I respect Christmas entirely as one of the holiest days for the more than 2 billion Christians worldwide. As I said at the beginning, I enjoy attending the religious services associated with the holidays to fully understand and appreciate the sanctity of the season that allows us to be so joyous. I am careful to say that Christmas is an “American holiday,” but in a way it is — it feels like a core memory of my upbringing and of the culture that surrounds all Americans. Like it or not (why wouldn’t you?), you sang Jingle Bells in elementary school, you saw the towering Christmas trees in public areas, and you saw people unwrapping their gifts if you weren’t doing so yourself. It’s a time to be festive, to show love, and to be joyous.

‘Tis the season!