I’m a Jew\u2014born and raised\u2014but I come from a “mixed” family (they say “interfaith” now).\u00a0 My dad is a Jew, but my mom was raised Christian.\u00a0\u00a0Both\u00a0my maternal grandparents\u2014with whom I spent a lot of time\u00a0growing up\u2014were practicing Christians. Far from shockingly, my own marriage is mixed (my wife was raised Catholic, our kids are Jews who end up participating in a lot of Xtian traditions).\u00a0 Interfaith families are really common now, but were much less so when I was young.<\/p>\n
As you’re likely aware, back when I was a kid there weren’t\u00a0a lot of Xanukah songs<\/a>\u00a0for us Jewish kids. There weren’t many<\/em> songs for Jewish kids, but there were some; there were absolutely zero<\/em>\u00a0songs for mixed half-a-Jews with an Xmas tree and a Xanukiah<\/a> and a cat that managed to catch fire in the Xanukah candles every year and Xtian grandparents who\u00a0came to\u00a0town\u00a0on Xmas Eve specifically to partake in the Jewish tradition of Xmas Chinese food.<\/p>\n Not to put too fine a point on it, but we’re sort of a nation that always wants everyone to be one thing or another thing\u2014black or white, nerd or jock, Jew or Gentile, girl or boy\u2014and doesn’t have much patience for things that are mixed and ambiguous and a lil-o’-both.\u00a0 I was in my 20s, and in a Women’s Studies class, before I learned what the hell “intersectionality” was, and my identity began to make any sense to me.<\/p>\n This year\u2014for the third year running\u2014my local Jewish Community Center is collecting donations of Christmas presents, to be given to the Syrian refugees relocated here.<\/p>\n On the one hand, that sounds almost too perfectly absurd: Jews giving Muslims Christmas presents<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 On the other, it feels like basically the most perfect possible introduction to America.🕎🎄\u262a🇺🇸<\/p>\n Anyway, there weren’t many mixed kids like me when I was growing up\u2014and\u00a0there weren’t\u00a0any songs or holiday specials or children’s books that reflected what I saw and felt and loved about wintertime.<\/p>\n So these are my songs, for all the little intersectional mixed kids out there, who don’t have any holiday songs to sing.<\/p>\n Enjoy!<\/em><\/p>\n