You thought Jews and Muslims didn’t celebrate Christmas? Think again

Danielle’s Christmas tree:
a burst of a joy in an inter-ethnic household

Anyone who knew my mother would have to admit that she was firm in her opinions. Indeed, they might have found a far less complimentary term than ‘firm’ for her determination to get her way. She had many excellent qualities, above all an outstanding intelligence, but this trait of hers could cause a certain irritation. In particular, that was the case for us, her family, whenever Christmas rolled around.

This was a matter on which she was completely immovable. The family had to get together with her for a Christmas lunch every year, without fail. What’s more, Christmas lunch was something that had to be eaten on Christmas day, the 25th of December, come what may. 

I say ‘eaten’ and not ‘enjoyed’ because, in England at least, the opportunities to enjoy a meal on the 25th are strictly limited. Your options are restaurants that lay on a special meal for the day, where ‘special’ applies principally to the charge – the kind of price tag that requires the negotiation of a second mortgage – with the alternative a second-rate Chinese or Turkish restaurant, the only other kind of restaurant likely to be open on Christmas day in Oxford, where she lived. I should say in passing, that ‘second-rate’ is probably a tad overstated.

‘Why don’t we go out on Christmas Eve?’ I would sometimes plead with her, ‘there are so many more restaurants open.’

‘It wouldn’t feel like Christmas,’ she would reply.

It didn’t help to point out that many countries in continental Europe, including France where my wife Danielle comes from, have their main Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve.

‘Not in England,’ my mother would assure me.

So the 25th of December became indissolubly associated with driving a (relatively) long way to have a meal which it would be generous to describe as mediocre.

As often as not, that was in a Turkish restaurant which was, funnily enough, opposite the main synagogue. As we munched our way through our indifferent Mezes, the restaurant would gradually fill up with members of the city’s Jewish community, who would greet my mother warmly as they came in. Because this was the strange irony of this whole dismal ritual: my mother was Jewish. 

I’m glad to say that the Oxford community had welcomed her in with open arms, even though she didn’t practice the religion, and looked after her for the last decade or more of her life. But Jewish or not, she insisted on celebrating Christmas, and doggedly insisting on that happening on Christmas day. Nor, apparently, was she alone in being a Jew who went Turkish on Christmas Day, if the number of fellow Jews who turned up in that restaurant on that day was anything to go by.

I have to say that her mother, while far less fixated on a specific celebration on a specific date, had also been quite clear on the need to mark Christmas appropriately. She lived in the same house in suburban north London for the best part of six decades, and for much of that time she had a neighbour with whom each and every year she would exchange Christmas cards. The neighbour was at least nominally Christian but she and my rather lapsed Jewish grandmother stuck faithfully to a tradition of the society that surrounded them.

Leatrice, my mother, with Yetta, hers
Both Jews who celebrated Christmas

Danielle and I had a different striking illustration of this attitude when we lived in Luton, a town with a large Muslim population. Wondering through the neighbourhood of Bury Park, which some have called ‘Little Pakistan’, one 24th of December, we were surprised to see the queues outside the Halal butchers’ shops. Danielle, never backward in talking to people she doesn’t know, asked someone in one of the queues what they were waiting for.

‘Turkey, of course,’ she was told.

‘But you don’t celebrate Christmas, do you?’

The woman she was talking to shrugged.

‘Everyone around us is having a party. So why shouldn’t we?’

Bury Park in Luton

In the early days of Danielle’s life in England, she and I went to a conference in Colchester, in the eastern county of Essex, and gladly accepted a lift back to London from another attendee. He was Jewish, but he kindly offered – and we gratefully accepted to stop in three villages on the way so that we could visit their fine churches, an offer we gratefully accepted. I was delighted and impressed by how knowledgeable he was on all the fine details of Anglican practice, how the High Church differed from the Middle Church and it, in turn, was distinguished from the Low. In fact, it wasn’t just his knowledge that impressed me, but his ability to explain all those distinctions to a foreigner who’d recently moved to the country.

And then I got it. Anglicanism is the ‘Church of England’. And he and I were English. So that’s our church. Ours even if we belong to another faith or no faith at all. It’s like the England football team: it’s my team, though I don’t even like football. It’s the heritage of us as English, deeply rooted in our culture.

Christmas is just as much a part of that culture. Of course, to some it’s a religious festival, but they’re a small and diminishing minority. To most of us, like the Muslims in the queue for turkeys, it’s just a celebration. If you belong to the country that celebrates it, why shouldn’t you join in? You’re Jewish? You’re Muslim? You’re an atheist? What does that matter? You belong to a culture that celebrates Christmas, so join the party.

That’s why I keep wishing people ‘Merry Christmas’. It’s nothing to do with MAGA’s ugly assertion that the greeting has been brought back by the Trump coterie, to crush ‘season's greetings’, altogether too woke for them. If I still use the old expression, it’s simply because it reflects the traditions that moulded me.

Which was the same for my mother and grandmother.

So if I say ‘merry Christmas’ to you, please don’t take offence at my political incorrectness. That’s not what it’s about. Think of it instead as a tribute to two important people in my family history, and an acknowledgement of the culture that accommodated all three of us.

So, Merry Christmas to you all. And, of course, a happy New year.