Blending Jewish and Christian Traditions

Of course there now exists The Mensch on a Bench.

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Single and ready to mingle.

  And of course I bought one.

This is a candle in my hand, but I am also happy to see you.

In a moment of parenting desperation, my husband and I discussed using an Elf on the Shelf this year as a bribery tool to discourage fighting, fake drama, and destruction of personal property within our home during the holiday season. But when I spotted the Mensch at Super Target, I thought he’d fit in even better in our Jewish home. Also, his face looks less like something that might murder me in my sleep. So, now we have the pleasure of placing what appears to be an elderly man in pajamas all over the house to leer at people, and who wouldn’t love that?! I say you’re not really living until you’ve urinated in front of a plush orthodox Jew staring at you from the lid of a toilet tank.

I can’t say I’m 100% satisfied with this purchase. Like most of my visits to Super Target, I come home with 80% deliberately selected items, 15% impulsively chosen clearance clothing, and 5% schlock I throw in my basket without even looking (and I’ll refuse to return 100% of it). The trip that produced the Mensch is no different; he is here to stay. I let my kids name him Frank, and they’re moderately interested in him. So far, they’ve played with him for about a week and a half and only recently tossed him in the bin where they keep their shoes.

Oh wait, do you not know what Hanukkah is about? Let me back up here.

So, Hanukkah basically celebrates the military victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks. When the Maccabees reclaimed their temple after the victory, the first order of business was to re-light the eternal flame, but the story goes that there was only enough oil to last one day. A miracle occurred when, during the eight-day journey to acquire more oil, the flame remained lit in the temple as the oil unexpectedly continued to burn all eight days. (If you’d like more info, here’s a link to a site that is kid- and adult-friendly, and like many special religious and cultural holidays and their traditions, there is always more to the story and debate about authenticity and origins, which you can read more about here.)

The Mensch was not part of the original Hanukkah story. The Mensch on a Bench book depicts a helpful, selfless man (the Mensch) appearing at the temple and offering to stay awake all night to watch the light to make sure it doesn’t go out. He says he would be “happy to sit on this bench and watch over the temple.” As the days go on, he engages in various activities with the Maccabees and their children that conveniently introduce dreidels, gelt, gift-giving, and latkes (all activities we commonly associate with Hanukkah in contemporary times but not necessarily involved in the original story).

In theory, the Mensch sends a positive message. He’s a good guy who does good deeds, is responsible and has integrity, is someone to emulate, and all that jazz. The holiday-exploiting folks who created the Mensch perhaps could’ve done a tad more explaining as to how this Mensch, dressed in modern garb, time-traveled himself back to 166 BCE without arousing any suspicion in a group of people still on high alert after a horrific period of persecution and battle.

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Thank you for volunteering your services, kind sir! You appear not at all suspicious!

I also take issue with the impression that the Mensch is kind of boring. You know why he moves around the house? BECAUSE HE GETS SORE FROM SITTING IN ONE PLACE TOO LONG. Not because he’s watching you engage in good deeds or magically returning from teleporting himself to ancient times to help fellow Jews, but because, oh, his sciatica!

He can’t tolerate sitting down because it makes him sore, but he still loves to party! (Mental note: it may be hemorrhoids, so don’t forget the donut pillow.)

It appears that Elf on a Shelf uses his coy baby face to appear mischievous in all shenanigans (which, according to my Facebook feed, mostly involve Barbie-associated-implied-ménage-in-a-mug-of-hot-chocolate action). Similarly, the Mensch employs his toothy, over-eager old man grin to come off as kind of a pervert. He and his “I just came to party!” face verily guarantees he’s always going to come off as a borderline peeping Tom/lecherous vagrant who can’t stop making eye contact. He’s the creepy old guy you see at a party and ask, “Who brought that guy?” And when someone raises their hand you respond, “How dare you.”

But of course I’m keeping Frank and will continue to employ him and his creepy smile for years to come. Why? Because I love all seasonal decor, and I love winter.

My husband grew up in a Jewish household in Cleveland, a beautiful city with four distinct seasons where colorful fall foliage ushers in winters full of deep, white snow that I’ve seen fall even in April.

I grew up in a Christian household in San Antonio, a beautiful city with two distinct seasons, where summer lasts March through early November with a brief 3.5 months of temps below 65 degrees requiring all residents to immediately don protective gear typically reserved for Arctic explorers.

I don’t imagine my husband grew up with nearly as much anticipation for the winter season as I did, seeing as how it was guaranteed he’d have several months of cold temps, snow, and enough seasonal ambiance each year to make even the most fervent winter-lover say, “That’s it, Janet! We’re moving to Florida!”

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Meet RePete, the penguin my husband received on his birthday from a friend after walking to her house in a blizzard. My husband’s birthday is in mid-March.

On the contrary, I couldn’t wait for December because it meant summer was finally over. The lights would go up on the Riverwalk, and the A/C would go off in the car. You could overlook your parents shopping for Christmas trees in shorts because at least those evergreens mimicked the smells of colder climates.

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The only time in recent memory it really snowed in San Antonio. This was 30 years ago.

If you’re like me, and you look outside and see it’s 60 degrees and sunny in winter, you may feel an ache for a more Dickensian scene with snow-frosted windows, children ice-skating on frozen ponds, and men with monocles and top hats aimlessly wandering about. For me, the easiest way to heal the ache is to attempt to bring the winter and its totems into the home, but this is complicated because I proudly attempt to maintain a Jewish household. I just can’t help longing to sneak in a bit of the old winter traditions from my childhood this time of year, not because of any religious connotations but because of the 30+ years of memories and activities I associate with family, comfort, a genuine sense of an uplifted spirit, and pretending 60 degrees is cold enough to wear my favorite pea coat because it looks like winter in my house.

Let me restate that I take pride in raising our children within Judaism and deeply respect the values and tasks associated with that responsibility.

Our children are three and four years old, and I’m proud to say that with my help they’ve memorized and can recite the first few lines of The Shema in Hebrew and have been doing so for over a year (brag). Ensuring they grow up with a solid understanding of their faith and culture is important to me. I treasure the tradition of lighting candles and saying prayers each night of Hanukkah. We turn the lights down in the house, and my husband, two kiddos, and I are all focused in reflection together, and it’s a beautiful, intimate moment.

But I also want my children to be well-rounded folks who have an awareness of and appreciation for a few of their mother’s family traditions.

(And I am greedy, and eight nights is not enough winter holiday celebration.)

Please trust that I have Hanukkah decor up around the house waaaaay before Hanukkah even begins and leave it up after it’s over and would love to light candles for an entire month (that’s not how this works; that’s not how any of this works, I know), but lately I need more. In addition to engaging in Hanukkah traditions, I want to smell a fresh evergreen, cuddle with my husband in the electric glow of lights after a long day, and engage in one of my favorite past-times of being creative and decorating (anything) with my children, like a tree. This is selfish of me, and I honestly mean no disrespect to our Judaism; it’s just that I love winter and its seasonal decor. I know the pride I felt in my responsibility to decorate such a prominent display in our home and how seriously I took my job as a child being given such an important task, and I’d like to give my children the gift of that tradition and all it endows. I want them to have the gift of exercising independence, creativity, and ownership and feeling joy and pride in a job well done and seen to completion that is for the entire family to enjoy.

Out of all the childhood traditions I left behind (or at my parents’ house, where Santa still visits our family), I don’t really miss any because I’ve been given the gift of creating new traditions with my husband and children. But the little piece of my heritage that I want to give my children during the holidays is the tree. And also the tacky A Christmas Story village and figurines from my favorite winter movie that I got from the Walgreen’s clearance aisle.

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Is there anything more representative of family than a put-upon father whose most treasured keepsake has been molested by his children and “accidentally” broken by his wife?

My husband is loving, kind, endlessly patient, and hugely understanding of all my quirks, especially my fondness for nostalgia. Together, we created our Ham and Games holiday party that has spanned over ten Decembers, and together we’ll continue to pave our own way in creating special traditions for our family, even if we’re the Jews with a lighted tree and miniature statue of Flick’s tongue frozen to a flagpole.

I’ve had a great time teaching my husband the two key, unwritten commandments of winter decor:

  1. If you’re putting up a tree, your first preference should be green, unless the tree is made of tinsel, in which case any colors are acceptable. But never flock your tree, because despite it being the most winter-ish thing you can bring in your house, it’s not really a “thing.” (Unless it’s your thing, in which case go crazy and remember the first rule of flocking is to have fun and be yourself.)
  2. There are five acceptable non-Santa, non-Nativity themes to collect and display in winter: angels, snowmen, nutcrackers, gingerbread men, or reindeer. Any deviation, such as oversized ornament balls, should not be tolerated.

All this being said, I should let you know that our tree has been up a total of four hours, and at least three times I’ve walked into the living room only to be startled into believing it is a six-foot-tall home invader waiting to murder me.

I’ve also noticed I have an underlying fear of being murdered by various holiday decorations. Is there someone I can see about this?

Happy Holidays, Y'all!
Happy Holidays, Y’all!
Ashley
Ashley is a back-up dancer for circa 1989 Janet Jackson in her dreams and a mother of two preschoolers in her waking life. An Alamo City native, she spent her college and post-college years in TN, CA and AZ (all lovely states completely incompetent in the fine art of breakfast tacos). After crying everyday in radio sales, working next to a sheep pen at a rural telecom, being totally confused in agriculture, and completely giving up and drawing cartoons of co-workers at an online university, she finally found her calling in grant writing for a non profit arts organization. And then her husband (who, no joke, watches college football for a living) was like, “Hey! We can move to San Antonio to be closer to your family if you want to!” And then Ashley was like, “Hey! That’s good timing because remember all that drinking I was doing last week because I thought I had really bad PMS and wanted to power through it? Well, that PMS is a baby!” So they moved to S.A. and Ashley found a job with a rural non profit, but when she tried to go back to work after the baby, living on no sleep with a newborn and a traveling husband unable to share in the workload, she quickly learned she was about five seconds away from a mental breakdown. Cut to today where she is a full time mom, loving the freedom to run all over the city each day with her kids, despite a 98% decrease in her ability to pee alone/do less than 19 loads of laundry each week. She chronicles her most embarrassing childhood moments and photos at This is Me at 13-ish (http://meat13.tumblr.com), in hopes that she never forgets that as difficult as it is to be a parent, it is just as much of a struggle to be a kid.

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