Our Last Christmas Tree

  The troubling news that Wal-Mart, Walgreen’s and several other big box stores had caved into the pressure of religious Christian right and will bring the theme “Merry Christmas” back into their stores, replacing the more palatable, “Happy Holidays” sent my mind spinning back to the early 1930’s and the year of our last Christmas tree.  I suspect that we were not the only secular or Reform Jewish family in Cleveland to erect a Christmas tree in the living room during those blustery final weeks of December during the Depression.

  Our tree, of course, in my impressionable young mind, was special.  It was enormous, majestic. And the center of a lot of excitement and anticipation, that had absolutely nothing to do with the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.
    For me Christmas was sneaking downstairs in the early a.m. of that “holiday” to get a look at what “Santa” had brought. It brought joy to our house. At age five I thought nothing more of it than that. In fact, Christmas, the tree, the gifts, the songs was the major topic of conversation among classmates and in the classroom at Coventry School in Cleveland Heights.

   It was simply that time of the year.  An American holiday, Jesus and all. The death of my father in my fifth year changed all that in the Weidenthal household. My father’s mother, a secular Jew, who lived with us, had allowed, even encouraged, our annual Christmas celebration.

  When my father died, Grandma Weidenthal moved out, and my mother’s mother, Grandma Kolinsky, who was observant, moved in.  The next holiday season in our house, where sadness was already pervasive, we were told that there would be no Christmas tree, no gifts, and no celebration.  I do not remember the explanation, if indeed there was one.

   But I do remember that event being part of the whole essence of the death of my father and the loss of the things that I held dear and associated with that magnificent man.
   Somehow, we made the transition. Frankly, I felt very much out of it at Coventry the next year, with all the talk of gifts, the singing of Silent Night.  The very mention of “Christ our Savior is Born” sent chills down my spine, and I wanted to hide my face in my hands.  There was this feeling that I shouldn’t sing those words or even think them.  That I was an outsider.
  Through the years, with the aid of “Sunday School” at Silver’s Temple, as it was known in those years, and the immigrations of Jewish students at Coventry, I began to learn about my heritage, who I was, something of the ancient language (I won the Hebrew prize in the second grade) and our proud culture.   But the feeling about Christmas remained.  Everywhere, including the Jewish owned department stores troubled me; it was “Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas and Silent Night, Holy Night.  A psychologist might point to the death of my father, not the birth of Jesus as the core of the problem. A religious Jew, or a Rabbi would fault my family for doing the Christmas thing in the first place, which makes some sense. My granddaughters have no problem at all with their Jewishness or the sounds of Christmas.  One day when they were little and riding with their mom downtown on the Rapid, the girls behind them asked if they were going downtown to see Santa Claus. “No”, they said in unison and without hesitation, “We’re Jewish and we don’t celebrate Christmas.” 

  Whatever it was and is for me, the fairly recent evolution of “Happy Holidays” made that gray and often dismal season more palatable. It was something we all could share in greetings, cards and spirit. But with the announcement that “Merry Christmas” is back I am once again uneasy about the coming season. Apparently I am not alone. 
  The Rev. Barry Lynn, head the Americans for the Separation of Church and State told the LA Times recently: “When Wal-Mart executives cave into the demands of the conservative right, they are really making a statement that non-Christians should probably go elsewhere this holiday season.” 
  I’ll buy that.