Winona Horowitz I’m a nice Jewish girl. Well, I’m a Jewish girl. The rest is up for debate. I was raised in a Jewish home where bacon was never fried in-house, children were sent to Hebrew day school, and I was expected to be a mensch, not necessarily a “good person.” Of course, it was a “casual” Jewish household, meaning that when I came home with my first tattoo at 17, I was berated for hours, not beaten for days. My brothers did not wear “kippot” (or yarrrrm-yul-kas, as I’ve noticed some people call them) unless they were in class, and I was Bat Mitzvah’d in Israel, as were all of my siblings, mostly because it was the only way my miserly parents could justify spending money on travel. I’m about as Jewish as a semi-observant-Reform-Jew-who-dates-mostly-non-Jews can be. And I love Christmas. It feels good just to say it out loud, really. A secret like that, it’ll rot you out from the inside like a clementine left in the sun. Like an egg left out of the nog. Like a chestnut you forgot to roast. See??? At the end of ninth grade, there was a big pot bust on our “Torah Trip” in northern Manitoba. Yadda yadda yadda, I ended up in secular school. That’s when it began: it being Christmas Envy, which is an actual thing that exists. You might not believe. You might think it doesn’t affect you. Not you. Never you. But even if you’re one of the lucky, happy Jews (ha!), you know a Yid who suffers–either publicly, or with a vast private shame–from this malady. In fact, Christmas Envy is so common among Jewish people today that author Sandy Goldman has tried to break that pattern by writing “There’s No Such Thing as a Chanukah Bush,” a children’s book meant to set straight every whiney kid with a hard-on for Santa. Unfortunately for me, this book wasn’t around when I was a youngster. I watched Home Alone and ate the candy canes that my mother bought–usually because they were on sale –and was even allowed to sit on Santa’s lap at the mall once or twice. Now, I’m an adult, and those early symptoms have developed into full-blown Nogaholicism. Worse, nobody’s surprised. For two years I’ve lived in sin with my goy-friend, and since moving away from home at 19, I’m lucky to make it to synagogue even once a year. Sure, we nailed a mezuzah to our doorpost when we moved into our new house, but the little silver box containing a prayer on parchment is completely overshadowed by the 8-foot plastic pine standing in our living room right now. At our holiday party, we had not a menorah, but tea lights. We bought a gingerbread house from Metro. We played Justin Bieber. I told myself I was doing all this WASP stuff out of love, and I was–my deep, prolonged, utterly incurable love for Christmas. But oh, the guilt! There is no more Jewish guilt than the guilt of Christmas-love. As I sat wrapping gifts in reindeer-patterned paper, helplessly watching Home Alone again, drooling slightly while daydreaming of sugarplums, I wondered: what have I become? And more importantly, what would my Bubbie say? Like any concerned young meidl, I went to the only person in town who could help me, the only one who might cure me of this crippling affliction. Not my therapist – she’s off until January – but to a rabbi. Mark Zelunka is quite a guy. He’s funny, he’s smart, and, at just 35 years old, he’s become one of Toronto’s most well-known rabbis. Over the phone, I explained my plight to him. “I’ve heard of Christmas Envy,” he said finally, after a few minutes of requisite rabbi chit-chat. “It’s very hard for people, especially those who have never been particularly religious, to avoid it.” He then pauses to think, resuming with a question. “How many times a year do you go to shul?” “Usually just on the high holidays,” I answer, instantly feeling ashamed. “Exactly. You go on Yom Kippur,” he says, before launching into an impression of, well, me. “What? You want me to stand in one place all day long, squished into a stuffy synagogue next to people with bad breath, and starve myself for 24 hours, while not wearing leather and refraining from sex? Yeah! Sure! Sign me up for that!” I laugh because this is funny. And it’s funny mostly because it’s true. Yom Kippur is a bitch. “I’ve never understood why Jews pick the worst possible days to give synagogue a shot. No wonder so many Jewish people think that our religion is no fun,” he roars. According to Zelunka, it’s these infrequent exposures to Judaism in its full scope, paired with an over-exposure to commercialized Christmas, that causes young Jews to look elsewhere for God. And for fun. “The sad truth is that some people think Chanukah and Christmas are more or less the same thing,” says Zelunka. “Optically, both holidays are about being with friends and family and celebrating. They both typically fall in December, and they both start with the letter C. But, other than that,” he pauses, “they’re nothing alike at all.” Sure, there are subtle differences. For example, over the holidays, Jews wear regular clothes rather than donning “gay apparel” (LOL) and we would never frighten our children with the image of an obese old man who sees you when you’re sleeping, and spends all year meticulously compiling a naughty list. However, according to Zelunka, it’s the fundamental differences that really matter. People often think about what you do on Chanukah, and not about what the holiday really means. When I actually sat down to think about it, I realized that I had sort of forgotten what this holiday, the only one not mentioned in the Tanach, really means. Thankfully, God invented the internet. And it was there that I was reminded. Turns out that in the second century B.C., this Antiochus character had control of Jerusalem, and he was, like, super keen on all that Hellenistic stuff. Naturally, he expected the Jews to adopt these same beliefs, and when we didn’t, the persecution began. Jews were being slaughtered all throughout Jerusalem, until finally a group of Jewish tough-guys, known as The Maccabees, took a stand for our people. The battle was long, and shit got ugly. And, after some time, the Maccabees’ supplies began to dwindle, and the oil that was used to make their fires started to disappear. But then, amazingly, one day’s worth of oil kept the temple’s candelabra lit for eight straight nights, allowing the Maccabees to claim victory over the evil tyrant, and take back what was rightfully ours. Talk about fuel efficiency. Hearing it again, I have to say I feel a certain sense of pride. My people banded together during a dark time and fought for what we believed in. Kind of like in that movie Remember The Titans, or something. That’s a hell of a lot cooler than celebrating some guy’s birthday, ya know? “Think of it like this,” says Zelunka. “Imagine you have a lottery ticket, and your buddy has one, too. Do you wait to see if he won, or do you check your own ticket first? What ruins my sleep most nights is the fact that we’re not checking our own tickets before we throw them out, before we check to see if someone else’s ticket won instead. If you never take the time to check your numbers, how can you ever know if your ticket won?” I’ve never really been one to play the lottery, but what he’s saying makes sense. Although the concept of stockings filled with something other than dead skin and lint seems really exciting at first, maybe there’s something just as magical to be found in Chanukah? Turkey may be lower in calories, but dammit, latkes are fucking delicious. I’ll still be celebrating Christmas this year with my boyfriend’s family. After all, I already spent most of my paycheck on presents and we’re fully stocked on powdered gravy. But when I open up that envelope with the scratch-and-win card, the one you always get from the person who doesn’t really know you all that well, I’ll be sure to remember who I am, and where I’ve come from. And I’m sure my semi-observant-Jewish-mother-who-eats-mostly-traif would be really happy to hear me say that. Carli Stephens Rothman has a doggy style blog and last wrote for the Toronto Standard about ’90s streetwear.