2.22 Christmas in the Holy Land

Christmas used to be one of my guilty pleasures. I would gaze out my bedroom window and glare at the buzz and movement of Christmas celebrations amongst my neighbors. White Christmas would play on the radio, the adverts would be filled with bells and jingles and I would participate in the office party, like a spectator getting drunk at a stranger’s wedding. Truly, I indulged in this festivity in secrecy, one of those Jewish guilt trips.

Coming to Israel, I had to say goodbye to that voyeurs delight. I could no longer participate in the Christmas joy, as little as I did, as here there would be no Christmas. The Israeli December is all Hanukah and no Santa. And of course, my loyalties lie with the doughnuts and candles. But deep down, along with the rest of my Jewish guilt trips, which I won’t divulge into here, I also wanted the festive songs blaring out people’s cars, department stores filled with tinsel, Santa’s grotto and Spice Girls switching the lights on Oxford Street.

Israel of course feels like the twilight zone. I spent my whole life living in a framework of the Xmas/New Years and Easter period as a background to my serious practices of Hanukah and Passover. This background washed away and I would never know what the rest of the world was doing. Except yesterday. I strolled into the supermarket to stock up on all the ingredients for a health-healing chicken soup. All that was on my mind was the celery, chicken bones, parsnips and carrots when, low and behold, I was faced with a selection, yes a selection, of Santa chocolate boxes and Christmas sweets galore. You may think this would have delighted me and settled my Christmas-sickness. But, instead I felt a little distressed. A little insulted and disgusted. It was as if I had been handed my chicken and it was garnished with a rasher of bacon. Someone had mixed up the ‘meat and milk’ in the supermarket and it just wasn’t right. I just guess I can’t have the traifer in Israel. This would yet another English memory.