Each and every winter, I find myself at a crossroads surely familiar to anyone of mixed Christian and Jewish heritage, wondering which holiday I should prioritize. You can, of course, celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah, but growing up in a household where pine trees and letters to Santa ruled the roost—with dreidel songs and plates of latkes feeling like a definitive afterthought—I still don’t trust myself to center Hanukkah in the way it deserves. (This could also be because I don’t have a fleet of charming children to shower with eight nights’ worth of presents, but there’s time yet for that, I suppose.)
So, what changes when both Christmas and the first night of Hannukah fall on the same day, as happens to be the case in 2024? While one would likely assume that compressing two faith-based winter holidays into a single day would only compound the season’s already considerable sense of stress, to be honest, the idea of Chrismukkah has me breathing a little easier this year.
Why? Well, if both holidays are indeed happening at once, then I can’t really fail at either.
Eggnog coffee with a candy cane in it, followed by matzo brei and some haphazard present-opening, then a movie and Chinese food? Bring it all on. And besides, no real time to luxuriate in the magic of Christmas, nor to get stuck in the doldrums of Hanukkah, also means no becoming depressed when the tree is thrown out and the ornaments are packed away and the sufganiyot has all been eaten and there’s just you, a bunch of dirty snow, and a whole other week of vacation to get through without the sanity-imbuing influence of your coworkers, who just want you to show up and do your job—something I’m much better at when I’m not also trying to be Queen of All Holidays.
All of this has me thinking: Maybe the secret to surviving and actually enjoying the winter break isn’t a spirit of expansion, but contraction. When Chrismukkah makes it virtually impossible to do all the things (let’s just say that this year, it seems decidedly unlikely that I will snag a table at Barney Greengrass on Christmas Day, and be treated to a plate of latkes with an impromptu magic show from my server, as I did last year), my fellow Jewish-but-also-Christian siblings can roll into 2025 harboring a bit less guilt about the stockings we didn’t stuff or the fancy menorah we didn’t buy. Sometimes, after a year like the one we all lived through, what little holiday cheer you can still manage to scrape together is exactly enough. So, with that: Merry Chrismukkah, and a happy New Year to us all!
