My Big Fat Shiksa Holiday
A tale of mixed backgrounds, perserverance, and a four-year battle over a tree
Charlotte York, a much better Jewish bride than myself
It was my second Christmas Eve with Dave (the first one had been spent somewhere in Houston during a cross-country road trip, eating Vietnamese food and enjoying the novelty of our relationship). I was lying on our couch in Los Angeles, eight months pregnant, watching Californication and planning our future holidays.
“Do you think the baby will be too small to appreciate a Christmas tree next year?” I innocently asked my Jewish baby daddy.
Dave looked at me like I had just suggested giving up our daughter to a convent at age one. “A tree? We aren’t getting a tree. I’m Jewish and I never had a tree in my house, so I don’t know why I would start now.”
I felt, quite literally, like a kid who had just been informed that Santa wasn’t real. All my idyllic visions of cozy family evenings by a twinkling tree and an imaginary fireplace were instantly shattered, leaving me with nothing to look forward to other than lighting a menorah for eight nights straight. The fight that ensued lasted two hours and felt completely hopeless. Dave explained that, while he wasn’t very religious, he really cared about the cultural aspect of Judaism and had great respect for his parents, who had fled Kiev in the '70s because of widespread Jewish discrimination. Christmas was not his holiday, and therefore there was no need for us to have a tree. I told him that, while I completely understood, I also had a background—and mine involved having a yolka (tree) in our house for Noviy God (New Year), a Soviet tradition that had nothing to do with religion whatsoever. (In fact, our Santa was called Ded Moroz, and he came on December 31! And I had never celebrated Christmas until moving to America! And my own father was Jewish, and he had nothing against trees!) He informed me that I had been aware of his Jewish heritage from the get-go, and why was I stirring this up now? In a final act of diplomacy, I proposed we skip all the Christmas hoopla and just treat the tree as a holiday symbol, yet Dave didn’t budge. To him, a tree felt inappropriate to have as a Jew, and that was the end of it.
And so, after our Covid holiday spent with takeout and David Duchovny, I started a subtle “holiday tree” campaign that lasted a few winters in a row. The first two Decembers were the warm-up stage—we always visited family in Miami, and I wasn’t about to drag an infant choking hazard into our temporary apartment. Instead, I focused on making potato latkes for Hanukkah while consistently pointing out all the Jewish families I knew who had Christmas trees (quite a few!) I talked about mixing customs, about childhood memories, about how much my traditions meant to me, about being a poor immigrant ripped away from her beloved olivier and caviar. He would tell I could have the olivier and caviar but skip the tree. One time, I almost threw the Via Maris menorah I had gotten him at his head but resisted, knowing that there was power in slow and steady nagging (i.e. the male equivalent of Chinese water torture).
The watershed moment came on Thanksgiving of 2023, when Dave’s father casually disclosed a piece of information that had seemingly been kept under wraps for 47 years.
THEY HAD A TREE IN KIEV.
Apparently, just like every other caviar-and-olivier-loving family, they had greeted each Noviy God by cramming a yolka in their living room and placing New Years gifts underneath. When they moved to the US as new immigrants without a dollar to their name, they had retired the tradition and simply focused on making ends meet, therefore, there was never another tree in their home again. However, they had nothing against the concept and didn’t mind us having a tree, as long as there wasn’t anything overly religious involved.
Just like that, Dave had no more arguments or ammunition left. The tree was mine.
Granted, the thing with us women is that we often don’t even want something once we know we can have it. With travel and toddler plagues and fears of a pine tree mess, I postponed our 2023 tree purchase until I finally decided to nix the whole thing altogether. Then, Dave happened to get sick right before Christmas, which meant that we had to cancel all our plans. And so, on December 24th, I dragged a tiny Sasha to Crate & Barrel, where we purchased the skinniest, ugliest fake tree known to mankind. We then spent the bulk of the week at home, decorating our dilapidated tree, making Target-branded holiday cupcakes, and dancing around to Christmas music. Dave, a sucker for all things family, wore a Santa hat and caroled in his quarantine pajamas.
As much as I love to dine out on the story, Dave admitted that it wasn’t his father’s divulgence that had caused him to cave. He had already been warming up to the idea of a tree because of how much it meant to me, and his father’s revelation had given him the final stamp of approval. Relationships are built on compromise and mutual empathy, and we are slowly learning to flex this muscle, both for the sake of our child(ren) and each other. As a parent, the holidays have come to mean so much to me over the past few years—they are my daughter’s formative memories, the highlight reels from her childhood, the traditions she will battle it out for when she’s raising her own kids one day. They are also a singular time of celebration in a world that often doesn’t feel too joyful, a fleeting yet precious time of unity and connection. In that very spirit, I have always loved seeing families adopt the traditions of different backgrounds and religions, resulting in a multicultural mosaic of celebrations. Ironically, Dave embracing my childhood tradition has made me excited to learn more about the Jewish culture as well, with a tentative Shabbat dinner rollout planned for the near future. (Y’all are invited!)
This year, we headed to a tree farm on the first weekend of December and purchased a 6-foot-tall beauty that I’ve been trying to “tastefully” decorate, a challenge, given that my dad decided to buy Sasha a pack of Squishmallow ornaments that she’s obsessed with. And yet it stands proudly in our living room, lighting up our daughter’s face every day when she comes home from school. And, if that’s not worth it, I don’t know what is.
So many of us have these NYE yolka memories ❤️