Hanukkah AND Christmas Books For Interfaith Children

Once upon a time, December holiday books for children focused on either Christmas, or Hanukkah. Now, many children grow up in Jewish families celebrating Christmas with Christian grandparents. Or, they grow up in Christian families celebrating Hanukkah with Jewish grandparents. Or, they grow up in interfaith families celebrating both. Here, I update my growing list of Hanukkah and Christmas books, in chronological order of publication. No two interfaith families have the same way of celebrating in December. So, rather than simply listing the books, I review how each book might or might not work for your family, in order to help you find the right book for your young interfaith children or grandchildren.

1. The first popular book on this topic was probably Light the Lights! A Story About Celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas (ages 3-5), from 1999. This sweet and simple story focuses on a girl participating in both holidays at home, but does not go into the underlying religious meaning of either one. This may be frustrating for parents who want to teach religious literacy, but for young children celebrating one or both of the holidays in a secular fashion, or as a starting point for deeper discussion, this book will work.

2. In contrast, I do not recommend My Two Holidays: A Hanukkah and Christmas Story (ages 3-5) from 2010. The boy in this book feels “ashamed and embarrassed” in school to admit that he celebrates both holidays. While emotionally dramatic, this plot twist does not ring true in my experience with contemporary interfaith children, and reading it could make children who feel just fine about celebrating both, feel a sense of shame. The author seems to have bought into the (increasingly mythical) “December Dilemma” conflict. Avoid this book.

3. Daddy Christmas and Hanukkah Mama (2012, ages 5-8) features jazzy modernist collage illustrations, and a recipe for Cranberry Kugel. The mixed media style echoes the hipster parents in this book, who mix the holidays together in a sort of Chrismukkah mash-up. They hook candy canes on their menorah, and leave latkes out for Santa. If your family does this kind of blending, this is your book. But for families trying to help kids to understand and respect the differences between the two religions, well, this is definitely not your book.

4. Eight Candles and a Tree (2014, ages 3-5), follows Sophie as she explains to friend and playmate Tommy that she celebrates Hanukkah and Christmas. Tommy only celebrates Christmas. I appreciated the very gentle tension as Sophie diplomatically answers questions about how and why she celebrates “both.” Sophie explains the miracle of the oil lasting eight nights in the Temple, but both children mention only the more secular aspects of Christmas (the tree, the feast), so this book works for interfaith Jewish families celebrating a secular Christmas at home, as well as families celebrating both religions. This would also be a good pick for young Christian kids curious about a cousin or friend who celebrates both, as they can identify with Tommy.

5.  Nonna’s Hanukkah Surprise (2015, ages 3-8) features the most dramatic and emotionally satisfying plot of any book for interfaith children I have yet seen. Rachel is flying with her family to spend Hanukkah and Christmas with her father’s Christian family. Rachel is upset when she leaves her menorah behind on the airplane, but her kind Nonna (Italian for grandmother) saves the day by creating a lovely new menorah for her, out of recycled perfume bottles. The Christian cousins gather affectionately around the menorah with Rachel to help her celebrate, modeling bridge-building across the religious divide. The author weaves in some of the meanings of Hanukkah, but the references to Christmas are oblique. This book (from a publisher of books on Judaism) was clearly written for interfaith children being raised Jewish, who celebrate Christmas only with extended family. In fact, it was a recent selection for PJ Library, the free Jewish book program for children. But I recommend it for any interfaith family.

6. December’s Gift (2015, ages 3-8) is perfect for those who celebrate both holidays, and want to begin to teach their children the underlying meaning of both Hanukkah and Christmas. Clara helps her Bubbe make latkes, and then helps her Grammy to make Christmas cookies. (The book includes recipes for both, and charming illustrations). Bubbe tells Clara the story of the destruction of the temple and the miracle of the Hanukkah oil. And Grammy teaches Clara how the star-shaped cookies and the star on the tree represent the star that led wise men to the birth of a king. There is no mention of Jesus by name. But for interfaith parents who want to give their interfaith children an interfaith education, this book is an excellent start.

7. New this season, Happy ALL-idays (2022, ages 1-5) is a very simple board book explaining that different families celebrate different holidays in December. It features illustrations and brief rhyming descriptions of families celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and a presumably interfaith family celebrating “Chrismukkah.” The families are notably diverse (including a boy in a wheelchair, and what appear to be single parents,  multigenerational families, LGBTQ parents, and interracial couples). The inclusion of an interfaith family alongside families who celebrate one December holiday is novel, and refreshing. If you like to keep Hanukkah and Christmas separate, and avoid using the term “Chrismukkah,” this, sadly, is not the right book for your family. I worry that it depicts hanging dreidels on the tree as the norm, when not all interfaith families mix the two holidays together. But if you’re Team Mashup (and many families are, when it comes to December decorations), this book could be perfect for you.

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2013), and The Interfaith Family Journal (2019).

The Gift of Love in December

Today, I am honored to post an essay from guest blogger Shai Wise. –SKM

Wise family photo

I was tempted to have this be about how the month of December taught me more about love growing up than almost anything else. Not because of gifts – though they were nice to receive. It wasn’t even because of seeing family although we did that too. It was because my parents balanced December in a way that always made me wonder why people would ask how they “handled it” or what they did about the “December dilemma.”

And it is true that December taught me about love because my dad put up the Christmas tree. Each year my Jewish father would take the box up from the basement. He would lay it out and before he could get too far into his project my mother would take us out to a movie so we wouldn’t learn any “new words.” But that is not what stays in my memory – that isn’t what feels important. It isn’t even that my father refused to allow lights on the tree because he was afraid of fire – because he was convinced we would burn the house down if we put lights on our artificial tree – and as best I can tell we had the same tree my whole childhood.

And I have so many images of December – of my father putting up that tree and my mother scraping wax off the menorahs. She would melt the wax and dig it out and make sure we each had a menorah fresh and clean for lighting candles. She never claimed Judaism as her tradition, she was raised Catholic and would say that it never left her. But she also said it was our tradition and she was going to make sure each holiday was observed and held in the respect it deserved. She never claimed Chanukah as Christmas but she claimed it for what it was – a holiday of revolution, resistance and light. And in preparing the menorahs, making latkes, making sure we read part of the story each night, she claimed it for my father. She loved it because she loved him, She loved it because she loved us.

But December taught me about love because of something else. It taught me about love because the December after my mother died. The first December I was home from college. The first Christmas without my mother. The first Chanukah without my mother. I received two gifts. A reminder from my father over the phone of how to clean wax out of a menorah, directly from my mother’s notes and when I got home the menorahs in our home, the dreidels were still out because my father had done his best to be my mother (even though by the time I arrived home Chanukah was over).

But there was something else. My father got out the Christmas tree and put it up. He didn’t have to. He could have decided that because my mother was gone he no longer needed to do this for her. He could have made the choice to remove himself from the task that he had done out of love for her – he could have stepped away from this one tradition and no one would have questioned him.

But he did it.

He did it because had always done it out of love for my mother. He had carried her in his heart as he put up her tree, the family’s tree, the tree that meant so much to her.

He did it because he knew that in coming home from college, having lost my mother so recently, I would need it. I would need to know that in losing her I wasn’t losing her traditions, her story and her light as well.

My father taught me about love one December when he stepped outside of his own tradition and into my mother’s story one last time so we wouldn’t lose her and her tree all at once.

Shai Wise was raised in an interfaith family in NY and now lives in a multifaith, multiracial family in WI. He has served as congregational clergy and in chaplaincy. He is a Red Sox fan who will cheer for the Brewers in a pinch.

Where Do We Go? Interfaith Families, Fall Decisions

The Interfaith Family Journal

The kids are back in school. The Jewish High Holidays are fast approaching. Are you joining a synagogue? A church? A Unitarian-Universalist congregation? A Buddhist sangha? A Hindu temple? A secular humanist community? All of the above? None of the above?

Are you interested in finding or creating an interfaith families community in your geographic area? Or, are you confident that you can teach your children what you want them to know about their religious heritages, and the religions of the world, at home? Do the schools your children attend teach one religion, or teach about many world religions, or avoid religion entirely? Do you and your partner agree on where you want your children to develop religious literacy and interfaith self-esteem?

Have you visited the communities available in your geographic area that might be a good fit for your family? Are they welcoming to interfaith families? Do the clergy officiate at interfaith life cycle ceremonies? Would they fully accept your children as belonging? Or, are their restrictions on participation?

So many questions! Interfaith families can feel overwhelmed this time of year, or even paralyzed, and may end up putting off decisions for another year.

But this fall, for the first time, help is here. I wrote The Interfaith Family Journal  in part to help you through this process of figuring out which community or communities will be right for your family, at this moment. Whether you want to join one community, ,or two, or several, or none, the Journal will help. Whether you want to raise your children with one of your religions, or both of your religions, or a new religion, or many religions, or with purely secular and cultural education, the Journal will help.

The Interfaith Family Journal  takes you through an interactive process of figuring out what you want, what your partner wants, and what communities are available to you. It gives you a checklist of questions to ask any community you are considering joining, to make sure your interfaith family will be fully included. This is the moment to buy a copy for yourself, and one for your partner (or for your adult children, or grandchildren, or for your favorite therapist or clergy member).

In recent weeks, I have had deeply fulfilling experiences presenting my work on interfaith families in Spokane and Asheville, with groups of young interfaith couples and groups of rabbis, and to an international documentary film crew. Next up, I’m heading to Chicago to speak and to sign books. Let your Chicago friends know!

My intention for this fall is to support as many interfaith families as I possibly can, in every geographic region, whether or not I am able to personally coach them. The Interfaith Family Journal distills my decades of research, personal history, and coaching experience into a slim format to help you through these moments of transition. If it is helpful to you, please let me know, and post a review. Thank you!

Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and a workbook, The Interfaith Family Journal (2019).

The Interfaith Family Journal, for Everyone

A rabbi, a Baptist minister married to a Hindu, a Unitarian Universalist Muslim, and a Sikh and Muslim interfaith kid all…recommend a book. (Because not everyone walks into bars, and this book is all about inclusion). As you may have guessed by now, the book they recommend is The Interfaith Family Journal. And you can read their lovely endorsements on my author website here.

And new this week, for the growing number of people who do not identify as religious, interfaith and Secular Humanist speaker and activist Miranda Hovemeyer gave The Interfaith Family Journal its latest five-star review:

My husband and I are both non-religious. I am a Secular Humanist and he identifies as Atheist, but we both grew up in households where there was some kind of religious practice. The book contains so much material that we can use ourselves to talk about our family and non-religious identification now, as well as how we grew up, and what we want for any future children we may have.

In my last blog post, I explained why two family members (spouses, partners, a parent and teen child, a guardian and a family mentor, etc) need two copies of The Interfaith Family Journal to go through the five-week process together. But just a week later, I am actually rethinking that proclamation. My readers have convinced me to recant.

What has perhaps surprised me the most, since the publication of the book just a few weeks ago, is the number of people who say they are finding The Interfaith Family Journal useful, as individuals. From the start, I knew this book would help clergy and therapists in counseling congregants and clients. But I had not anticipated that a friend who leads community engagement and diversity trainings with parents and children would find the book inspiring, and plan to use it in her work in the community, even though religion is not the topic of her work. In another case, a reviewer noted that while the book is an “amazing tool” for interfaith families,“one can also use it as a personal workbook to dig deeper into one’s most cherished but unarticulated commitments.”

It honestly had not occurred to me, until I started getting this feedback from readers, that individuals, even individuals who may not see themselves as part of an interfaith family, would benefit from the Journal. Now I am realizing that for some couples, one partner may be more interested in working through the issues of their religious and spiritual and cultural history, and will find support in the writing prompts and activities in the Journal, even if the other partner has no interest in the topic. But more broadly, any person, regardless of their family connections, could find the Journal useful in discerning how their family background, present beliefs, and dreams for the future are interwoven.

Whether you consider yourself part of an interfaith family or not, come out and tell us about your religious, spiritual or secular journey, or just gather ideas and inspiration, next week in DC at the Northeast Neighborhood Library, on Wednesday June 5^th at 7pm. There will be copies of The Interfaith Family Journal for sale and signing. You might just need one for, well, anyone and everyone.

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of The Interfaith Family Journal (2019), and Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2013). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

It’s Here! The Interfaith Family Journal

This week, The Interfaith Family Journal arrived. It is a slim but powerfully inspirational workbook with a jewel-toned cover and pages just waiting to be filled in, packed with activities and resources. And this is a book for, well, everyone.

Whether you are an atheist, or spiritual but not religious, or Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Jain, or Pagan, whether you practice Vodun or Candomblé or Santería, or an indigenous religion, this book is for you. Whether you consider yourself part of an interfaith family, or an interreligious or intercultural or multifaith or spiritually fluid or “being neither” family, or you are part of a family with one religious label but many beliefs and practices and formative experiences, this book is for you. Whether you are gay or straight, whether you identify as a man or a woman or as non-binary or genderfluid, this book is for you. Whether you have a partner, or you’re a single parent with a teenage kid with an opinion on religion, or a grandparent guardian, or part of a group of parents and stepparents co-parenting, or empty nesters rethinking how you want to celebrate or affiliate, this book is for you.

This book is for people who are in couples or family counseling, or have just thought about it. It’s for people who want to find out more about a partner’s childhood and heritage and formative experiences, in deep and intimate conversation. It’s for people who like filling out questionnaires, and for people who like to write, and for people who would rather have a conversation while making art together.

This book is for people who have always meant to record a video of your parents or grandparents telling family stories, and for people who have not found time to put together a family cookbook, and for people who have thought about detailing instructions for your own funeral but never quite got around to it. This book is for people who are trying to figure out which religious community will work best for your family, and for people who have decided against joining a religious community.

So if this is you, you can get support and inspiration from The Interfaith Family Journal. Buy a copy for your sister-in-law, your daughter, your best friend. Buy a copy for every therapist you know, and every clergy member you know, because these folks are going to need this book in their toolkits.

For more on the origins of The Interfaith Family Journal , and how it relates to Being Both , and how it relates to decreasing religious violence in the world, check out this new Q&A with me, published by Beacon Press.

Finally, it’s spring! Let us celebrate, together! Post a photo of your interfaith family on facebook or instagram, with the hashtag #MyInterfaithFamily. And contact me now for a book talk at your congregation, library, bookstore, or university. Together, let us support all the love in the world.

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and The Interfaith Family Journal (2019). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

The Interfaith Family Journal: It Takes a Village

The Interfaith Family Journal

The publication date for The Interfaith Family Journal is less just a month away!

On March 31st, you can hold in your hands an interactive book designed to support interfaith families including Atheists, Buddhists, Christians, Daoists, Ethiopian Orthodox…the whole alphabet of religions and worldviews.

The Journal draws on decades of personal experience, surveys of hundreds of interfaith family members, years of facilitating workshops and coaching couples around the world, and conversations with all of you in person and online. Interfaith families helped to test drive the manuscript, spending hours working through the questions and exercises. Your feedback helped create a more perfect Journal. And your first reactions were humbling:

• caused me to think deeply about why I think something or why a certain tradition is important to me
• allowed self-reflection, helped us focus on issues in manageable segments, and encouraged us to really listen to each other’s viewpoint
• helped us understand how we envision expressing our faiths to both ourselves and each other
• invited us to have a conversation instead of leading us to choose a side.
• had the feel of an unbiased, safe, non-judgmental couples’ counseling workshop

The test drivers thought the questions and exercises in the Journal were…

• very helpful in determining what parts of our religious background are spiritually based vs culturally based, which was invaluable for us
• a good mix of practical and deep
• helpful because they covered so much ground and approached issues from a number of angles
• a great tool for periodically checking in on growth or development in the course of the interfaith relationship (and especially during times of change, such as welcoming a child)

Different test drivers found different parts of the Journal particularly valuable, whether it was the interactive questions at the start of each chapter, the framework for talking about celebrations of life and death, the exercises designed to engage with extended family, or the creative family activities at the end of each chapter.

• Something about answering a high number of questions in relatively quick succession felt very productive.
• The Journal led to us calling our parents and grandparents to talk about their religious lives growing up. It was quite fascinating
• We had never talked about death as it pertains to our religions. This section opened us up to that conversation for the first time.
• We loved the creative sections. We were huge fans of the religions ancestry tree exercise. That is one that we plan on doing again when our children are old enough to participate.

This is the moment to pre-order copies for yourself and your interfaith family members, and to let friends and family know about the book by sending them a link to this page. My goal with this book has always been to help as many interfaith families as I can, around the country and the world, and I need your help to reach them.

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and The Interfaith Family Journal (forthcoming in 2019). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

https://www.facebook.com/SusanKatzMiller/

Being Both, Being All

                                                                        By Susan Katz Miller

 

For Being Both, I interviewed Ivan Kruh about his Jewish and Christian and Buddhist family. Today, more than five years later, Ivan updates us on how his family goes beyond both, to being all, in the context of interspirituality. Not all interfaith families become interspiritual families, and not all interspiritual people come from interfaith families. But, there is an overlap. Ivan sees his family as part of a larger circle encompassing all three of the family religions represented in the Venn Diagram above. Here’s his guest post:  

It is funny how some things that feel so organic to one family can be so radical within the larger society. My wife and I found that people thought we were nuts when we both went half-time at work after our son was born. And they thought we were even crazier when we told them we planned to raise him as a Jewish-Buddhist-Christian. But my family has three traditions – I am Jewish and also a Buddhist (what some people call a “Jew-Bu”), and my wife is a Christian. The decision to raise him “all” – connected to all three of these traditions – feels so natural to us. As Susan’s book and blog attest, the number of interfaith families choosing to raise their child with connections to more than one religion is growing. But we are also raising him “all” in a deeper way. Because beyond being an interfaith family, we consider ourselves an interspiritual family.

The term “interspirituality” was coined by the Catholic monk Brother Wayne Teasdale to reflect our human potential to see and be transformed by the shared spiritual truths that form the core of all great religious traditions. For example, my wife and I believe the following truths are at the core of the practices, rituals, songs and traditions of our three religions, and that they form the heart of what we want our son to understand:

• “See yourself clearly in order to forget your self;”
• “Love and serve all beings and your world;”
• “Live with simplicity;”
• “Walk humbly with your God.”

Interspirituality does not equate all religions, but sees each as a particular way of expressing these kinds of truths in much the same way different languages could be used to explain the same experience. Clarifying that religions are each merely fingers pointing to the proverbial moon, interspirituality allows individuals to live with strong, deep connection to one or more traditions, yet open from traditional boundaries to include, hold, respect, and benefit from the full family of human spiritual traditions.

My wife and I discovered we were interspiritual early in our dating relationship, though neither of us knew there was a term to describe what was unfolding. As we talked about our religious study, spiritual practices and the insights that came out of both, we found (once we each did a whole lot of explaining of vocabulary) that we believed many of the same things and had a very similar vision about what it takes to live a good life. We began to share our spiritual practices with one another and discuss our experiences. And through these practices and conversations we each developed a true appreciation for the other’s religion while deepening our relationships with our own religions. We each experienced great spiritual nourishment in this process. It became obvious that we could each be devoted to our own different spiritual paths and simultaneously devoted to one another. We were married by a Rabbi and a Minister in a ceremony that joyfully reflected all of this.

And now we have a four-year-old son. Raising him within our interspiritual relationship means that we seek to raise him to also see the universal truths that form the core of his Jewish, Christian and Buddhist heritages. We hope to raise him like a strong tree – firmly rooted in the sacred ground of our three traditions, but with branches that open to all religious and spiritual paths so that he can find his own way toward truth and sacredness.

We know that this is not the view or intention of most interfaith parents. But it works well for us. Take, for instance, the painful conflicts some interfaith parents experience during holiday seasons, like the approaching Easter/Passover season. Some couples worry about whether to host a seder and dye easter eggs in the same home, or how to talk to their children about the Israelite Exodus at the same time they are talking about the resurrection of Jesus. The interspiritual family does not see the confluence of Easter and Passover as a dilemma at all – but a fortuitous opportunity to explore two different expressions of a universal spiritual message – that moments of all-encompassing hardship and fear can give way to unfathomable transformation when one trusts the sacredness of reality. When we approach the holidays in this way, I feel no conflict greeting my wife and her Coptic Orthodox family, ““Ekhrestos Anesti, Alisos Anesti” (Christ is risen! Truly He is risen),” and my wife feels no conflict singing “Dayenu” around my Jewish family’s seder table. And my son just absorbs the joy and the power of these rituals and songs, growing into each holiday story with no need to rigidly adhere to either as true or false.

Yes, we have found that when a family begins to creatively explore the underlying teachings of multiple traditions, beauty emerges. One of the weekly rituals in our home, for example, is to re-enact the Maundy washing of the feet and then offer tzedakah (charity). When we wash one another’s feet, we talk about how Jesus taught the importance of caring for one another – and when we deposit quarters in the family tzedakah box which will later be used to buy food bank donations we extend that same care. In this way, when our son gets older and I teach him about the Buddhist bodhisattva vows or he discovers the Hindu seva (service) tradition or Islam’s pillar of zakat (charity), I trust that he will see these, too, as unique expressions of the universal truth of compassion. I trust that he won’t worry so much about which ways of understanding or practicing compassion are “right” or “best,” but rather he will be curious about the songs, stories, rituals and practices each religion uses to support awareness of the truths. My hope is that no matter what paths he chooses for his own spiritual journey, the universal teachings will rest in his bones and rush through his blood from his Jewish-Christian-Buddhist interspiritual childhood.

I want my son to be gifted an interspiritual lens because I believe it is a true lens. But I also hope he will cultivate this lens because it is what the world needs. These are challenging times. Distrust between people of different religions is running very high. I firmly believe that children who have grown up in a situation that supports them seeing how religious differences point to spiritual commonalities will be in a unique position to help our world toward healing. One foot-washing and tzedakah ritual at a time, one Easter/Passover season at a time, one child at a time, this world can be healed.

 

Ivan Kruh is a juvenile forensic psychologist in the Berkshires of Massachusetts.

Susan Katz Miller’s book, Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family is available now in paperback, hardcover and eBook from Beacon Press.

 

 

 

The Dance of Hanukkah and Christmas: 8 Tips for Interfaith Families

Photo, Susan Katz Miller

The Woolf Institute in Cambridge, England, works on Jewish, Muslim, and Christian relations. They asked me to write on how interfaith families will choreograph Hanukkah and Christmas celebrations this year. In general, organizations in the UK are more open to discussing interfaith families as a part of interfaith relations than their US counterparts are. I am grateful whenever anyone acknowledges the role that interfaith families can play in interfaith peacemaking. Visit the Woolf Institute blog to see my new post there, or read it below…SKM

The solar Gregorian calendar determines the timing of Christian holidays, while both the sun and moon guide the Jewish calendar. As a result, each year interfaith families must choreograph the dance of Hanukkah and Christmas in a new way. In 2016, this dance will require some expert steps, since the first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Eve.

This convergence increases the complexity of preparation, and coordination, in order to give each holiday its own time and space and integrity. But after more than 50 years of celebrating both holidays, I know that it can be done, without actually mixing or blending or fusing the two together. Here are my eight strategies for mastering the Hanukkah and Christmas dance this year:

1. Don’t forget Hanukkah on Christmas Eve. If you are traveling, remember to pack the Hanukkah menorah. In the excitement of Christmas Eve, don’t forget to set aside a few minutes to gather everyone and actually light the first candle. Enjoy the synergy of a glowing Hanukkah menorah and a sparkling tree, and talk about the common theme of light at the darkest time of year. Safety tip: If you are going off to a mass or church service, be sure to light candles when they will have time to safely burn down.

2. Postpone Hanukkah gifts. On Christmas day, lean into Christmas. After a full day of Christmas and stacks of presents, do remember to light candles for the second night. But consider putting off Hanukkah gifts until later in the week. In fact, resist the false competition between the holidays that has given rise to the whole idea of Hanukkah gifts.

3. Tell the Hanukkah story. Emphasizing the religious freedom angle in the Hanukkah story is a perfect activity this year. We are lucky to live in a time and place with the freedom to celebrate either, or both, or any religion. Singing the Hanukkah song Rock of Ages (different from the Christian hymn of the same name) in English rather than Hebrew on the nights you celebrate with extended Christian family members will make the story more accessible.

4. Give to others. Once Christmas has ended, lean into Hanukkah. The middle nights of Hanukkah would be perfect for giving back, in lieu of more family gifts. Stress that both holidays encourage us to care for those in need. Engage children in deciding what causes they want to support with charitable donations this year.

5. Organise acts of service. Christmas encourages empathy for those who, like Mary and Joseph, must travel and seek shelter. Hanukkah provides an opportunity to talk about how Jewish history compels us to work to promote social justice. Celebrating these intertwined themes by engaging in acts of service together to support refugees and religious minorities.

6. Give Hanukkah gifts at the end. If your family does give Hanukkah gifts, wait until the end of the week when the novelty of Christmas gifts has worn off. Some families like to emphasize books and clothes as Hanukkah gifts for children, rather than toys, to further differentiate the two holidays.

7. Time the parties. Hanukkah spans two weekends this year, and Christmas sits squarely on the first weekend. So the second weekend could be a good time for a Hanukkah party. Try a party on Friday night with the festive lighting of both Shabbat and Hanukkah candles. Or, plan a family New Year’s Eve party with the lighting of havdalah candles for the close of Shabbat, followed by Hanukkah candles. Or, arrange an elegant adult New Year’s Eve party with caviar on latkes, champagne, and gambling with dreidels.

8. Try not to stress. As you move through the dance of Hanukkah and Christmas this year, don’t fret over a misstep or two. Everyone forgets to light candles on occasion. Everyone has a relative who makes some awkward comment about interfaith families. Everyone has a different comfort level with where to place the Hanukkah menorah in relation to the tree. Through it all, do your best to stay in touch with a sense of holiday joy.

 

Susan Katz Miller is the author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family, from Beacon Press. She works as an interfaith families consultant, speaker, and coach. Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

Seven Big Interfaith Family Stories of 2015

Plexus A1, Gabriel Dawe

 

In 2015, it was a privilege to take part in a conversation with all of you on interfaith families and interfaith identities. Looking back over the past year, I chose what I see as seven of the most important themes from this conversation. I welcome your comments, or suggestions for stories I may have missed.

1. Rabbis in Interfaith Relationships. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the seminary of the fourth-largest Jewish movement, changed their policies this year in order to allow the admission and ordination of students in interfaith marriages or partnerships. While the smaller Jewish Humanist and Jewish Renewal movements have long accepted such students, this shift marks a significant moment in the history of accepting interfaith families in Jewish leadership.

2. Progressive Protestants and Interfaith Identities. Historically, the topic of interfaith families (at least in the US) has been viewed mainly through Jewish, and to a lesser degree Catholic, lenses. So it was exciting when I was invited this year to speak at both a chapel service and an evening panel at Union Theological Seminary in New York. And it was also exciting that the World Council of Churches and United Church of Christ convened a series of consultations on Religious Hybridity, bringing together mostly Mainline Protestant clergy and theologians to discuss how to engage with people with multiple religious bonds. I was honored to be asked by Reverend Karen Georgia Thompson to present my research on identity formation in interfaith children raised with both family religions. I look forward to reviewing a new book (publication date tomorrow!) filled with related essays, Many Yet One: Multiple Religious Belonging.

3. Unitarian Universalists and Interfaith Families. While Unitarian Universalists (UUs) have long welcomed interfaith families and people of complex religious identities, this year they took that support to the next level, with new resources on interfaith families in the UU world on their website and in a new pamphlet. I spoke about interfaith families at two UU communities this year, and on a UU podcast. And UU religious educators invited me to give the keynote Sophia Lyon Fahs lecture at the UU General Assembly, highlighting the important history of interfaith families in UU communities. The lecture was recently published in an eBook by Skinner House press.

4. Interfaith Families and the Rise of the Unaffiliated. This year, Pew Research highlighted the steep rise in the religiously unaffiliated, from 16% in 2007 to 23% in 2014. Clearly, interfaith families are a part of this complex story, with some of us who are doubly-affiliated lumped in with others who are alienated from all religious institutions. Robert P. Jones of Public Religion Research Institute recently told a White House gathering on religious pluralism that 25% of people in the US said they had a spouse from a different religious background, and 16% said they follow the teachings or practices of more than one religion. This year also saw the publication of The Nones Are Alright: A New Generation of Believers, Seekers, and Those in Between, in which Kaya Oakes writes that future children are “increasingly likely to grow up ‘both/and’,” rather than either/or.

5. Jewish Communities Engaged with Interfaith Families Doing Both. A slow thaw continues between Jewish institutions, and the 25% of Jewish parents in interfaith families educating children in both religions. For me, signs of this gradual warming trend (which I first noted last year) this year included invitations to speak at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, on The Jewish Channel, in synagogues and JCCs, at Hillel-sponsored talks, and at The Jewish Museum (coming up in February). I also enjoyed a year (sadly, over now) of being a columnist for the Jewish Daily Forward.

6. Interfaith Families as a Global Rights Issue. While interfaith families in the US enjoy the freedom to marry across lines of faith, not all couples have this right. Many countries still register the religious identity of citizens, and allow religious institutions to control marriage and the religious identity of children. But the global connectivity is helping to highlight the importance of civil marriage as a universal human right. On twitter this year (follow me @beingboth) I came across an interfaith romance novel banned from schools in Israel, a court case over the religion of interfaith children in Malaysia, legislation to restrict interfaith marriage and conversion in Myanmar, the battle to recognize interfaith marriages in Indonesia, and interfaith couples violently attacked by religious extremists in various countries.

7. Launch of the Network of Interfaith Family Groups (NIFG). In Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family, I chronicle the rise of communities formed by and for interfaith families to deliver interfaith education to their children, principally in NY, DC and Chicago. Since the publication of Being Both in 2013, I have been contacted by couples around the country and the globe, seeking to find or create interfaith family communities. In response, I launched the NIFG facebook page this year, to help couples who want to celebrate both family religions to find like-minded couples nearby. Already, we launched a new Atlanta facebook group filled with interfaith families who found each other through NIFG. At NIFG, you can find contacts listed from throughout the US, from California to Florida, and Wisconsin to Richmond. If you plan to raise children with both family religions (that’s any two religions), join us!

 

Susan Katz Miller’s book, Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family is available now in hardcover, paperback and eBook from Beacon Press.

Hanukkah AND Christmas: 7 Books For Interfaith Children

 

 

Once upon a time, December holiday books for children focused on either Christmas, or Hanukkah. Now, many children grow up in Jewish families celebrating Christmas with Christian grandparents. Or, they grow up in Christian families celebrating Hanukkah with Jewish grandparents. Or, they grow up in interfaith families celebrating both. Here, I review seven Hanukkah and Christmas books, in order to help you find the right book for your young interfaith children or grandchildren.

1. The first popular book on this topic was probably Light the Lights! A Story About Celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas (ages 3-5), from 1999. This sweet and simple story focuses on a girl participating in both holidays at home, but does not go into the underlying religious meaning of either one. This may be frustrating for parents who want to teach religious literacy, but for young children celebrating one or both of the holidays in a secular fashion, this book is a safe choice.

2. In contrast, I do not recommend My Two Holidays: A Hanukkah and Christmas Story (ages 3-5) from 2010. The boy in this book feels embarrassed in school to admit that he celebrates both holidays. While emotionally dramatic, this plot twist does not ring true in my experience with contemporary interfaith children, and reading it could make children who feel just fine about celebrating both, feel a sense of shame. The author seems to have bought into the (increasingly mythical) “December Dilemma” conflict. Avoid this book.

3. Daddy Christmas and Hanukkah Mama (ages 5-8) from 2012, features jazzy modernist collage illustrations, and a recipe for Cranberry Kugel. The mixed media style echoes the hipster parents in this book, who mix the holidays together in a sort of Chrismukkah mash-up. They hook candy canes on their menorah, and leave latkes out for Santa. If your family does this kind of blending, this is your book. But for families trying to help kids to understand and respect the differences between the two religions, well, this is definitely not your book.

4. Published last year, Eight Candles and a Tree (ages 3-5), follows Sophie as she explains to friend and playmate Tommy that she celebrates Hanukkah and Christmas. Tommy only celebrates Christmas. I appreciated the very gentle tension as Sophie diplomatically answers questions about how and why she celebrates “both.” Sophie explains the miracle of the oil lasting eight nights in the Temple, but both children mention only the more secular aspects of Christmas (the tree, the feast), so this book works for interfaith Jewish families celebrating a secular Christmas at home, as well as families celebrating both religions. This would also be a good pick for young Christian kids curious about a cousin or friend who celebrates both, as they can identify with Tommy.

5. New this season, Nonna’s Hanukkah Surprise (ages 3-8) features the most dramatic and emotionally satisfying plot of any book for interfaith children I have seen. Rachel is flying with her family to spend Hanukkah and Christmas with her father’s Christian family. Rachel is upset when she leaves behind her menorah on the airplane, but her kind Nonna (Italian for grandmother) saves the day by creating a lovely new menorah for her, out of recycled perfume bottles. The Christian cousins gather affectionately around the menorah with Rachel to help her celebrate, modeling bridge-building across the religious divide. The author weaves in some of the meanings of Hanukkah, but the references to Christmas are oblique. This book (from a publisher of books on Judaism) was clearly written for interfaith children being raised Jewish, who celebrate Christmas only with extended family. In fact, it was a recent selection for PJ Library, the free Jewish book program for children. But I recommend it for any interfaith family.

6. The other new book this season is perfect for those who celebrate both holidays, and want to begin to teach their children the underlying meaning of both Hanukkah and Christmas. December’s Gift (ages 3-8) follows Clara as she helps her Bubbe to make latkes, and then helps her Grammy to make Christmas cookies. (The book includes recipes for both, and charming illustrations). Bubbe tells Clara the story of the destruction of the temple and the miracle of the Hanukkah oil. And Grammy teaches Clara how the star-shaped cookies and the star on the tree represent the star that led wise men to the birth of a king. There is no mention of Jesus by name. But for interfaith parents who want to give their interfaith children an interfaith education, this book is an excellent start.

7. Finally, I cannot resist writing about a book I have long imagined—a book that does not exist, yet. One of my very favorite authors, Patricia Polacco, is from an interfaith family, but has yet to write a book about that experience. She has written many Christmas books, and perhaps the two very best children’s books about loving friendships between Jews and Christians (Mrs. Katz and Tush, and The Trees of the Dancing Goats). A book about an interfaith family from Patricia Polacco is at the top of my holiday fantasy wish list.

 

 

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and The Interfaith Family Journal (forthcoming in 2019).