No, I don’t want a Christmas tree

Among the litany of Jewish sins — and what are we if not the People of the Guilt-Inducing Transgression? — that of keeping a Christmas tree in the house seems if not negligible, then such a commonplace one as to require no absolution. In 2012 one-third of American Jews adorned their homes with some form of yuletide shrubbery, according to a survey released in October by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. (The survey also found that 51 percent of “Jews of no religion” had a tree, a confusing statistic offered without definition for what merits inclusion in that demographic category.)

This being the current state of Judaic affairs, one might think it no cause for concern, then, to learn that my wife — a Japanese-American who, if surveyed, would likely be deemed “Buddhist of no religion” — insisted that we buy a tree for our three young children this year. But it is.

I am Jewish, but with a complicated religious backstory: When I was 9 years old, my mother, a recent divorcee, moved our family from its cozily secular Jewish environs in New York City to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Once there, she decided, for reasons that included both fear of discrimination and a fair dose of Jewish self-loathing, to have us pretend to be Christian. I was sent to an Episcopal school, where I attended church each Wednesday and said the Lord’s Prayer every morning before lessons. At home my mother decorated a towering Christmas tree, tinsel swathed and brilliantly lit, with enough crystal finery and gingerbread wildlife to make a man of the cloth go misty eyed. I got all my gifts in one big burst on Dec. 25.

As an adult, I returned to Judaism. I wrote a book chronicling my exploration of the religion called "Am I a Jew?" On its final page, I wrote, “I am a Jew. I believe that. I am entitled to believe that. I could not make it otherwise even if I wished.” My reconnection was not a spiritual one. I observe the high holidays and vote Democratic, but I intone no prayers and speak no Hebrew. Judaism is, for me, a matter of identity and pride as well as an affirmative act of repudiation of my past. The choice to casually participate in the Christian holidays isn’t one I can make.

So, no, I don’t want a Christmas tree, thank you very much.

But I am a married man and am wise enough to accept that when your wife wants a Christmas tree, a Christmas tree is what you will get. All it took was an evening stroll to the vendor camping out near our apartment in Brooklyn. The cheerful lights combine with the aroma of fresh-cut Douglas fir to provoke a sort of mania in children, and in short order I was trundling home with my contribution to climate change balanced on one shoulder.

I must admit it hasn’t been altogether horrible having the thing around. It’s even been amusing, in a hapless kind of way. Jews, as a general rule, tend not to have many Christmas ornaments lying about. Thus, in contrast the statuesque arboreal specimens of my youth, ours is a forlorn-looking seasonal hedge, jammed into a corner of the kids’ playroom and decorated with but two threadbare strings of lights, neither of which blinks.

I’ve found a begrudging level of acceptance for the tree because I don't think it conflicts with my religious principles, such as they are. Remember, Christmas isn’t much of a Christian holiday. Nothing in the Bible indicates that Jesus was born on the day that we mark with eggnog and rampant commercialism. In fact, the earliest precursor of the holiday is believed to be the Roman pagan week of merriment, lawlessness and gift giving known as Saturnalia, which, history tells us, was held around this time every December. As for Santa Claus, that jolly figure of legend who breaks into your home, steals your cookies and leaves you with electronic gaming devices — his presence derives from a Greek Christian bishop originally from Turkey, cross-pollinated with a bit of German paganism and Scandinavian folklore and topped off, round bellied and red cheeked, with the famous 19th century drawings of Thomas Nast. Under such circumstances, I feel entitled to enjoy my Christmas cake.

Then there is the small matter of Hanukkah. Why, one might ask, would I adopt someone else’s festivity when my forebears have provided me a perfectly suitable one of my own? I enjoy Hanukkah, truly, and I lit the candles this year, fried latkes and showed my son how to spin the dreidel. But in truth, I’m hard pressed to see the conflict between Christmas and the commemoration of my scrappy ancestors’ victory over the Seleucid Empire. And lest we forget, that lantern, the one with oil only for one night that miraculously burned for eight? It appears nowhere in the first or second Book of the Maccabees, the written source from which the holiday originates. My kids got presents nonetheless.

In short, I know that I’m on solid ground with the tree. Yet the guilt, which I consider evidence of my Jewish nature, persists. It’s there every time I stare into the glow of the red and white lights hung from the tree’s branches. Regret mixes with the pleasure I gain from the obvious joy my children take from it. The essential illogic of both Christmas and Hanukkah do not free me from something that feels like abandonment. I struggled to come back to Judaism. I have to guard against letting it go, even in trivial ways. So I will keep my menorah, and I will have to talk to my wife and explain things to the kids. Next year there will be no tree.