The Dec. 25 menu is set for Denise Handlarski’s family: Turkey because it’s Christmas. Latkes because it’s Hanukkah.
Ms. Handlarski, a rabbi who lives in Toronto, will be navigating two important markers of the winter holiday season in her household this month when the first night of Hanukkah and Christmas Day converge for the first time since 2005.
The rare double celebration presents a conundrum for some who observe both holidays — which to prioritize, how to decorate and what food to serve.
Those who celebrate both holidays tend to be interfaith families like Ms. Handlarski’s or Jews drawn to the appeal of Christmas and a perfectly decorated tree. But that feeling is not universal. For generations, Judaism has encouraged practitioners to preserve their culture by maintaining a separate religious identity, and Jewish parents have told their children that Santa doesn’t visit them because they’re Jewish.
But some Jews like Ms. Handlarski believe that incorporating other cultures does not contradict Judaism.
“We adapt Judaism to the places and times we are living in,” said Ms. Handlarski, a rabbi at the online community SecularSynagogue.com. She never celebrated Christmas as a child but now does with her non-Jewish husband and their two children.
For many modern Jews, embracing both practices has come with some adjustment. (“It’s Time For Hanukkah” never quite lived up to the hype of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”) But the secular aspects of Christmas have eased angst around it — and for some, have even offered a touch of relief.
Ms. Handlarski sees Christmas and Hanukkah — an eight-day festival of lights that commemorates the ancient story of how the Maccabees restored the Jewish Temple — as prime examples of such adaptation. Those latkes, or fried potato pancakes, originated in Eastern Europe. The dreidel game, played with a four-sided spinning top, is a German tradition. Jewish American families flocked to Chinese restaurants on Christmas because that was all that was open.
“We pick things up along the way,” she said.
Hanukkah, which is on the same day of the Hebrew calendar every year (the 25th day of the month of Kislev), usually falls between late November and late December on the Gregorian calendar. This year, it starts at sundown on Christmas Day and runs through sundown on Jan. 2.
Celebrating both holidays is nothing new. But the TV show “The O.C.” helped popularize a term for it when the character Seth Cohen (played by Adam Brody) celebrated “Chrismukkah” in an episode in 2003.
Lisa Pontius, 37, never felt like she missed out on Christmas growing up Jewish in Scarsdale, N.Y. But when she married her husband, who grew up Methodist, and moved to Charleston, S.C., “it was almost like it gave me permission to celebrate.”
“I love Christmas so much,” she said. “In some ways not being able to do it as a kid means I go a little overboard as an adult.”
As her three children came along, she was a little worried Hanukkah would get overshadowed, and in some ways it has. Because “of the marketing around Christmas,” she said, “it’s everywhere.” But instead of trying to compete with Christmas, she focuses on holier Jewish holidays.
Still, she draws the line at church and Santa.
Next week, they’ll open Christmas presents in the morning and follow their first night of Hanukkah ritual: General Tso’s chicken, fried rice and lo mein with Hanukkah candles.
Hanukkah is not a major religious holiday, but its cultural importance has grown for many Jews, partly because it serves as the counterpart to Christmas.
In Britain, just like in the United States, Hanukkah plays an important role for Jewish and mixed families, said Dr. Carli Lessof, a researcher at the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research.
Christmas is so prevalent in Britain that Hanukkah now fills “that space among mainstream Jewish people who wouldn’t have observed it for religious reasons.”
Almost a quarter of British Jews light both Hanukkah candles and have a Christmas tree, according to Dr. Lessof’s 2023 research.
“It is a common experience to have a little bit of both,” she said.
That’s the case in Nico Wasserman’s East London household. Mr. Wasserman grew up in a Jewish family without any trace of Christmas, but his wife, a granddaughter of a vicar, grew up cherishing the holiday.
“We do it our own way,” Mr. Wasserman, 42, said. “We got weird Christmas decorations that we have collected over the years.”
This year, Christmas morning will include presents, as well as salmon and latkes for breakfast. “It’s the best blend of the two,” he said.
Davita Petty, 35, and José Sala, 48, also live in a mixed-faith household and always try to celebrate with a blend of both of their cultures. Ms. Petty is Jewish and grew up in Minnesota, and Mr. Sala is Catholic and from Puerto Rico, where they now live with their son.
“We do all the Jewish foods and then all of the Puerto Rican foods,” Ms. Petty said, adding that they serve latkes with arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas) and pasteles. Latkes also pair well with Puerto Rico’s long tradition of fried foods, and Mr. Sala has taken up frying duties.
This year they will go to Mr. Sala’s mother’s home on Christmas for a big family party and then return home that night to light the Hanukkah candles, sing a few Jewish songs and read a Hanukkah book.
Incorporating Christmas into her traditions wasn’t a challenge, Ms. Petty said, but she is thinking about how to strike the right balance with their 11-month-old son. This year she is starting to realize “how hard it is going to be to pull the weight of Hanukkah,” she said, especially in a place like Puerto Rico, where Christmas celebrations practically start after Halloween.
“How do I help make sure he feels this identity and this connection?” she asked.
Celebrating both holidays can also be about understanding one’s past and present.
Susie Felber, 53, and Adam Felber, 57, a contributor to NPR’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,” grew up in a Jewish household on Long Island believing in Santa Claus. Their father, Norbert Felber, even dressed the part on occasion, and their mother, Edith Felber, wrote a series of novels set around the holiday.
But the decision to celebrate did not come lightly: Norbert was a German-Jewish refugee who arrived in the United States as an orphan after his parents were killed in the Holocaust. They were not the only Jewish family in the neighborhood who celebrated Christmas, Mr. Felber said, “but there were Jewish families who disapproved of it and Christian families who thought it was weird.”
Their family’s choice to celebrate both holidays was in part an effort to assimilate to the American way of life, as was the case for many American Jews after World War II.
There were some ground rules though: No Christmas tree in the window, and Hanukkah candles would be lit by hand.
The siblings and their families plan to celebrate together this year by opening presents, playing with a dreidel and switching on the electric menorah — the day after Christmas.
“Previously I thought Hanukkah couldn’t hold a candle to Christmas,” Ms. Felber said. “Now I see, in the fullness of time, that it’s not a competition. It’s making room in your heart for all good things.”
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