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I didn't mean to find two letters on the same theme, but I guess I did and now here we are
1. Dear Care and Feeding,
My son passed away in a car accident eight months ago, leaving my daughter-in-law, who I’ll call Nancy, with my grandchildren, who are 3-year-old twins. They lived in a big city, and they always flew home for Christmas, even before they were married. I’m very worried about Nancy and my grandchildren. Nancy works a very busy job and seems overwhelmed. She refused to fly here for Christmas this year, even though it’s barely a 3-hour flight and she visited her family for her Jewish holidays in another state, and she only reluctantly offered for me to stay with them when I insisted I wanted to see my grandchildren for the holidays. When I arrived, the house was a mess, and she seemed frazzled and couldn’t socialize very much. The kids seemed miserable and were throwing tantrums, and she seemed too tired to adequately take care of them for the week I was there.
Things have been frosty ever since she refused to let my grandsons be baptized, so I didn’t want to criticize her and make things worse, but the situation seems untenable at this point. I gently suggested getting a housecleaner, and she said that she couldn’t afford it, even though I’m sure that my son’s life insurance must have left her with a hefty sum. I also suggested it might be good for her to get a less busy job that pays more. She’s an attorney for a non-profit, and it would be more lucrative and less stressful for her to get a more traditional lawyer job. She got angry when I suggested it, and I don’t understand why she won’t make these kinds of changes to make her life easier. I also suggested that she could move in with me, and I’d pay all the relocation expenses. I have lots of space, since your buck goes further in the Midwest, and there’s a church down the street that has free daycare for the boys. I could even watch them on my time off. She told me bluntly that she thought I should get a hotel, and I acquiesced since she seemed so upset. I just don’t understand what I’m supposed to do or how to help! She won’t answer my calls now, and it’s been over a week and a half since I’ve facetimed with my grandsons.
—I Just Want to Help
Dear Want to Help,
It’s not surprising that Nancy isn’t doing well less than a year after suddenly losing her husband. She’s parenting two young children alone, something she hadn’t planned to do; her kids are also grieving; her hands are full and her life is no doubt unrecognizable to her. Now, it may well be that she and/or the kids are struggling—it would be a shock to me if any of them were super happy or thriving right now (although I will add that everyone’s house gets messy sometimes, and every 3-year-old throws tantrums; these things don’t make Nancy an unfit parent!). I really hope that she has other people looking out for her and offering actual support. But even if she does need more help than she’s currently getting, your choices have made it all but impossible for her to want or accept your version of “help.” No one grieving the sudden loss of their husband has the energy or resources to deal with constant judgment.
I know you’re also grieving, so please know I’m not trying to be cruel by pointing this out. Your words and actions now will likely have an impact on how motivated your daughter-in-law is to continue this relationship. You say that it was strained even before your son’s death, because you didn’t respect their choice—and it was their choice, to make together—not to have their children baptized as Christian. It seems like you still haven’t gotten over this, by the way, given that you seem to resent her for visiting her family (who probably are a genuine and much needed source of support for her!) for “her Jewish holidays” (truly, yikes) and are pushing your local church-based daycare at her. Your relationship is only going to suffer if you keep pressuring her about visiting; pointing out everything you think she’s doing wrong; complaining that it’s been a week and a half since you FaceTimed (that’s not a long time!); telling her to change jobs and move and leave behind the home she shared with your son; and generally ignoring her boundaries. Nancy is an adult. She is responsible for her career, her household, deciding where to live, and the raising of her children. It’s not your place to tell her what to do. If the two of you had a closer relationship, perhaps you could be of mutual help and support to each other as you grieve, but it sounds like that’s not an option right now—largely because of how you’ve treated her.
You’ve suffered a terrible loss, and so has Nancy. She and your grandchildren are in for a really hard time, at least for a while—and it’s a time no one is advised to make major life changes if they can help it. A job change and relocation won’t bring their husband/father back, or allow them to escape their grief. I honestly can’t help but wonder if all this fixation on them is mainly about providing you with a distraction from your own pain. Instead of obsessing over what you see as Nancy’s faults, would it not make more sense to focus on your own needs and feelings as you mourn your son?
I understand that you believe you want to help, and I do think it’s worth trying to repair your relationship with Nancy, if you both find that you’re ready for that one day. You can begin, perhaps, by apologizing—with no excuses or qualifications, no turning the blame on her, and no more unsolicited advice. Refrain from calling and telling her what you think she’s doing wrong, or guilting her for visiting her own family (she needs and deserves their support right now). Give her the space she needs, and recognize that your future access to your grandchildren partially hinges on whether you can show their mother the basic respect she deserves.
Link
***
2. Dear Care and Feeding,
Last month, my husband and I had the exact same fight we’ve been having for 10 years. How much Christmas can we celebrate? My husband was raised reform Jewish. Before we were married, he asked if I would convert. I did. We went to conversion classes together and there was even one class dedicated to whether or not you should still celebrate Christmas, and the rabbi said it was fine. Most of the other students in the class were going to do just that. This was the one class my husband missed!
I’d like to put an end to this decade-long fight. I wasn’t raised religious, but we did celebrate Christmas, which was always one of my favorite times of year. Now we have two children who we are raising Jewish for the most part, though neither one of us would consider ourselves religious. We go to the temple on the high holidays, light the candles on Hanukkah, and do a half-assed seder on Passover. That’s the extent of our Jewishness, which seems fine with my husband. He actually complains every time we go to temple. However, when Christmas comes around, he won’t let us have a tree. (He’ll allow a fake eucalyptus tree that lights up and that we decorate with a dreidel and Star of David ornaments.) We are not allowed to have stockings over the fireplace or pretend there is a Santa Claus.
Every year, we get together with my family on Christmas Eve, and then my father comes to spend the night, and we open Christmas presents in the morning with the kids. My husband doesn’t love this, but he relented years ago, and I was happy he did so. This year, my father suggested he bring a ham over to make on Christmas Day. I said sure, not really thinking anything of it. My husband is in no way observant and eats his fair share of pig without thinking twice. But when I mentioned the Christmas ham, he said it made him “very uncomfortable.” This just beyond pissed me off. I’m not sure he even realizes how he sounds, but could you imagine if the tables were turned and we were going to my father’s for Hanukkah and said we were bringing over latkes and my father said that made him “very uncomfortable”? I don’t understand his hatred for Christmas and I’m pretty much fed up with tiptoeing around him every December. I’m sure this has a lot to do with his parents, who probably weren’t happy that he married a shiksa. He doesn’t have a great relationship with them to begin with and has always been made to feel second best to his brother, who is the golden child (and married a Jewish woman). My feeling on the subject is that we should celebrate and lean into these holidays equally. I go all out for Hanukkah and would like to do the same for Christmas as well. I have many friends who do that and it always makes me jealous and resentful. Wondering if you have any advice to solve this issue.
—Jew for Christmas
Dear Christmas,
But he didn’t marry a shiksa. He married a Jew. If you didn’t want to convert to Judaism, you shouldn’t have. Reform Judaism has a considerably more liberal approach to conversion than Conservative Judaism does (Orthodox Judaism does not allow it), but even so, the expectation is that one is sincere in their convictions. It is certainly true that many Jews in interfaith marriages, in which neither spouse is particularly (or at all) religious, find a way to celebrate Christmas. In my house, we indeed celebrated all holidays—Hanukkah (with a menorah my daughter and I lit each of the eight nights), Christmas (with a tree, a festive meal, and presents), Passover (with a non-half-assed seder), Easter (with my husband and daughter dyeing eggs, our hiding them in the backyard, and her searching for them—plus a basketful of goodies); my Southern Baptist husband even built a sukkot every autumn of our daughter’s childhood. I recently read a charming essay by the novelist Leigh McMullan Abramson about navigating the holidays when one parent is Jewish and the other isn’t, published right around the time you and your husband started fighting over Christmas.
Your situation is different. And I’m puzzled by what you report your rabbi said, because I’ve never heard of a rabbi saying that it was “fine” for a Jewish family to celebrate Christmas. I have to assume that you’re misremembering—or that you misheard or misunderstood—what was said. Some reform rabbis, it’s true, have given their blessings to interfaith families celebrating Christmas. Perhaps this was what the rabbi teaching your conversion classes was talking about.
But more to the point: This is something you and your husband should have talked about before you married and had children. Since you didn’t, I’ll take a moment to educate you now:
We Jews, who grew up surrounded—bombarded—with a holiday that wasn’t, isn’t, our own, can be very sensitive to having Christmas (to having Christianity itself) forced on us. That some of us who are not religious, who think of ourselves as cultural and ethnic Jews, marry non-Jews and come to embrace multiple cultures and traditions doesn’t mean that all of us do. The fact that your husband asked you to convert (something it never occurred to me to ask my husband to do—nor did it cross his mind to ask me to renounce Judaism and convert to Christianity) should have told you how he felt. My guess is that you’re still fighting over Christmas trees and Santa because you weren’t straightforward and clear with each other from the start. You might as well have it out now. You’ll have to come clean: You converted without understanding what it meant, and he assumed you fully understood what he meant when he asked you to, and didn’t take the time to tell you. Perhaps he didn’t even know, before children entered the picture. Perhaps you didn’t know, until you had kids, how much you’d miss Christmas. Now he feels betrayed and you feel he’s depriving you and your kids of something important.
I’m not sure you can resolve this on your own, or if it can be resolved at all. But I recommend counseling. This is a problem that is bigger than a Christmas Day ham.
Link
My son passed away in a car accident eight months ago, leaving my daughter-in-law, who I’ll call Nancy, with my grandchildren, who are 3-year-old twins. They lived in a big city, and they always flew home for Christmas, even before they were married. I’m very worried about Nancy and my grandchildren. Nancy works a very busy job and seems overwhelmed. She refused to fly here for Christmas this year, even though it’s barely a 3-hour flight and she visited her family for her Jewish holidays in another state, and she only reluctantly offered for me to stay with them when I insisted I wanted to see my grandchildren for the holidays. When I arrived, the house was a mess, and she seemed frazzled and couldn’t socialize very much. The kids seemed miserable and were throwing tantrums, and she seemed too tired to adequately take care of them for the week I was there.
Things have been frosty ever since she refused to let my grandsons be baptized, so I didn’t want to criticize her and make things worse, but the situation seems untenable at this point. I gently suggested getting a housecleaner, and she said that she couldn’t afford it, even though I’m sure that my son’s life insurance must have left her with a hefty sum. I also suggested it might be good for her to get a less busy job that pays more. She’s an attorney for a non-profit, and it would be more lucrative and less stressful for her to get a more traditional lawyer job. She got angry when I suggested it, and I don’t understand why she won’t make these kinds of changes to make her life easier. I also suggested that she could move in with me, and I’d pay all the relocation expenses. I have lots of space, since your buck goes further in the Midwest, and there’s a church down the street that has free daycare for the boys. I could even watch them on my time off. She told me bluntly that she thought I should get a hotel, and I acquiesced since she seemed so upset. I just don’t understand what I’m supposed to do or how to help! She won’t answer my calls now, and it’s been over a week and a half since I’ve facetimed with my grandsons.
—I Just Want to Help
Dear Want to Help,
It’s not surprising that Nancy isn’t doing well less than a year after suddenly losing her husband. She’s parenting two young children alone, something she hadn’t planned to do; her kids are also grieving; her hands are full and her life is no doubt unrecognizable to her. Now, it may well be that she and/or the kids are struggling—it would be a shock to me if any of them were super happy or thriving right now (although I will add that everyone’s house gets messy sometimes, and every 3-year-old throws tantrums; these things don’t make Nancy an unfit parent!). I really hope that she has other people looking out for her and offering actual support. But even if she does need more help than she’s currently getting, your choices have made it all but impossible for her to want or accept your version of “help.” No one grieving the sudden loss of their husband has the energy or resources to deal with constant judgment.
I know you’re also grieving, so please know I’m not trying to be cruel by pointing this out. Your words and actions now will likely have an impact on how motivated your daughter-in-law is to continue this relationship. You say that it was strained even before your son’s death, because you didn’t respect their choice—and it was their choice, to make together—not to have their children baptized as Christian. It seems like you still haven’t gotten over this, by the way, given that you seem to resent her for visiting her family (who probably are a genuine and much needed source of support for her!) for “her Jewish holidays” (truly, yikes) and are pushing your local church-based daycare at her. Your relationship is only going to suffer if you keep pressuring her about visiting; pointing out everything you think she’s doing wrong; complaining that it’s been a week and a half since you FaceTimed (that’s not a long time!); telling her to change jobs and move and leave behind the home she shared with your son; and generally ignoring her boundaries. Nancy is an adult. She is responsible for her career, her household, deciding where to live, and the raising of her children. It’s not your place to tell her what to do. If the two of you had a closer relationship, perhaps you could be of mutual help and support to each other as you grieve, but it sounds like that’s not an option right now—largely because of how you’ve treated her.
You’ve suffered a terrible loss, and so has Nancy. She and your grandchildren are in for a really hard time, at least for a while—and it’s a time no one is advised to make major life changes if they can help it. A job change and relocation won’t bring their husband/father back, or allow them to escape their grief. I honestly can’t help but wonder if all this fixation on them is mainly about providing you with a distraction from your own pain. Instead of obsessing over what you see as Nancy’s faults, would it not make more sense to focus on your own needs and feelings as you mourn your son?
I understand that you believe you want to help, and I do think it’s worth trying to repair your relationship with Nancy, if you both find that you’re ready for that one day. You can begin, perhaps, by apologizing—with no excuses or qualifications, no turning the blame on her, and no more unsolicited advice. Refrain from calling and telling her what you think she’s doing wrong, or guilting her for visiting her own family (she needs and deserves their support right now). Give her the space she needs, and recognize that your future access to your grandchildren partially hinges on whether you can show their mother the basic respect she deserves.
Link
2. Dear Care and Feeding,
Last month, my husband and I had the exact same fight we’ve been having for 10 years. How much Christmas can we celebrate? My husband was raised reform Jewish. Before we were married, he asked if I would convert. I did. We went to conversion classes together and there was even one class dedicated to whether or not you should still celebrate Christmas, and the rabbi said it was fine. Most of the other students in the class were going to do just that. This was the one class my husband missed!
I’d like to put an end to this decade-long fight. I wasn’t raised religious, but we did celebrate Christmas, which was always one of my favorite times of year. Now we have two children who we are raising Jewish for the most part, though neither one of us would consider ourselves religious. We go to the temple on the high holidays, light the candles on Hanukkah, and do a half-assed seder on Passover. That’s the extent of our Jewishness, which seems fine with my husband. He actually complains every time we go to temple. However, when Christmas comes around, he won’t let us have a tree. (He’ll allow a fake eucalyptus tree that lights up and that we decorate with a dreidel and Star of David ornaments.) We are not allowed to have stockings over the fireplace or pretend there is a Santa Claus.
Every year, we get together with my family on Christmas Eve, and then my father comes to spend the night, and we open Christmas presents in the morning with the kids. My husband doesn’t love this, but he relented years ago, and I was happy he did so. This year, my father suggested he bring a ham over to make on Christmas Day. I said sure, not really thinking anything of it. My husband is in no way observant and eats his fair share of pig without thinking twice. But when I mentioned the Christmas ham, he said it made him “very uncomfortable.” This just beyond pissed me off. I’m not sure he even realizes how he sounds, but could you imagine if the tables were turned and we were going to my father’s for Hanukkah and said we were bringing over latkes and my father said that made him “very uncomfortable”? I don’t understand his hatred for Christmas and I’m pretty much fed up with tiptoeing around him every December. I’m sure this has a lot to do with his parents, who probably weren’t happy that he married a shiksa. He doesn’t have a great relationship with them to begin with and has always been made to feel second best to his brother, who is the golden child (and married a Jewish woman). My feeling on the subject is that we should celebrate and lean into these holidays equally. I go all out for Hanukkah and would like to do the same for Christmas as well. I have many friends who do that and it always makes me jealous and resentful. Wondering if you have any advice to solve this issue.
—Jew for Christmas
Dear Christmas,
But he didn’t marry a shiksa. He married a Jew. If you didn’t want to convert to Judaism, you shouldn’t have. Reform Judaism has a considerably more liberal approach to conversion than Conservative Judaism does (Orthodox Judaism does not allow it), but even so, the expectation is that one is sincere in their convictions. It is certainly true that many Jews in interfaith marriages, in which neither spouse is particularly (or at all) religious, find a way to celebrate Christmas. In my house, we indeed celebrated all holidays—Hanukkah (with a menorah my daughter and I lit each of the eight nights), Christmas (with a tree, a festive meal, and presents), Passover (with a non-half-assed seder), Easter (with my husband and daughter dyeing eggs, our hiding them in the backyard, and her searching for them—plus a basketful of goodies); my Southern Baptist husband even built a sukkot every autumn of our daughter’s childhood. I recently read a charming essay by the novelist Leigh McMullan Abramson about navigating the holidays when one parent is Jewish and the other isn’t, published right around the time you and your husband started fighting over Christmas.
Your situation is different. And I’m puzzled by what you report your rabbi said, because I’ve never heard of a rabbi saying that it was “fine” for a Jewish family to celebrate Christmas. I have to assume that you’re misremembering—or that you misheard or misunderstood—what was said. Some reform rabbis, it’s true, have given their blessings to interfaith families celebrating Christmas. Perhaps this was what the rabbi teaching your conversion classes was talking about.
But more to the point: This is something you and your husband should have talked about before you married and had children. Since you didn’t, I’ll take a moment to educate you now:
We Jews, who grew up surrounded—bombarded—with a holiday that wasn’t, isn’t, our own, can be very sensitive to having Christmas (to having Christianity itself) forced on us. That some of us who are not religious, who think of ourselves as cultural and ethnic Jews, marry non-Jews and come to embrace multiple cultures and traditions doesn’t mean that all of us do. The fact that your husband asked you to convert (something it never occurred to me to ask my husband to do—nor did it cross his mind to ask me to renounce Judaism and convert to Christianity) should have told you how he felt. My guess is that you’re still fighting over Christmas trees and Santa because you weren’t straightforward and clear with each other from the start. You might as well have it out now. You’ll have to come clean: You converted without understanding what it meant, and he assumed you fully understood what he meant when he asked you to, and didn’t take the time to tell you. Perhaps he didn’t even know, before children entered the picture. Perhaps you didn’t know, until you had kids, how much you’d miss Christmas. Now he feels betrayed and you feel he’s depriving you and your kids of something important.
I’m not sure you can resolve this on your own, or if it can be resolved at all. But I recommend counseling. This is a problem that is bigger than a Christmas Day ham.
Link
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