So Boris says we are going to have Christmas, and we all know what that means. The gentiles indulge and the Jews volunteer.
My earliest Christmas experience, coming from a yeshiva background, was sitting alone in a large newsroom, covering for colleagues on December 25. Joy to the world, it was. An occasional flicker of a tickertape machine, a phone call from a reporter in darkest nowhere, that was the sum of my working day. People had left me sweet treats all round the office and I’m still ruing the resultant dentistry, but I welcomed the muting of news for one day in the year and wish it had persisted.
Every now and then a machine would chatter to life with news of a coup in west Africa, a plane crash in Peru or a hijack alert at Heathrow. But try finding a camera crew that’s sober after Christmas lunch, let alone a reporter who can do stand-up. “Shurrup and watch the Queen,” they’d growl, and quite right, too. Until the internet spoiled that blessed silence, I kept on volunteering for Christmas so long as I was needed. It was the least a Jew could do.
Tell it not to the Beth Din, but I acquired a taste for vegetarian-certified mince pies. Good riddance to the turkey, a wan substitute for chicken soup, but the trimmings smelled good. By teatime, with a couple of miniatures inside me, I’d be belting out Once in Royal David’s City with windows wide open to west London. Let’s face it: Christmas would not be Christmas without primal Jewish input and I was loving every minute of it.
Like many a Jewish parent, I had to suspend these pleasures while the kids were growing up and, once the grandkids came along, I got told off for watching Carols from King’s. I had almost given up hope of ever celebrating Christmas again when, five years ago, the tinsel dropped back into my life.
The circumstances were sad, indeed traumatic. I was on my way to a November shiva when Lena rang from New York, grim-voiced. Gil needed to ask me something, she said. He’d had a bad diagnosis and wanted to work with me on a memoir. Time was short. I jumped on the Saturday-night Virgin and we had our first session with Sunday bagels at a picture-window overlooking Central Park.
Every day that week, so much as his strength allowed, we sifted documents and discussed ideas. We had been the best of friends for 30 years, talking two or three times a week about Mahler and media, supportive in each other’s high and lows. We covered a lot of ground that week until Thursday, when I had to fly home as Christmas was coming and the flights were full. I kissed Gil goodbye, both of us emotionally wrecked, knowing it was the last time.
Early Friday morning at Heathrow, my phone rang with news that my gentle cousin Barbara had died. One blow after another. I suggested we went to the Charedi-land shiva on Christmas Day when the roads were quiet. That morning at dawn, a son-in-law rang to say our daughter had gone into labour and their three boys were moving in with us. The rest of that week was, well, boisterous. Barely had the kids gone home than an email dropped to say Gil had died, two hours into the New Year.
On my way to the brit, grief mingled with joy, I suddenly realised there was hidden bonus. Guess what? I had a grandson born on December 25 and every year ahead so long as I lived I’d be able to celebrate Christmas under the guise of his Jewish birthday. No more bleak midwinter.
A year later, I was walking home from shul with the boys on Friday night when they asked what all the bright lights were about in my district. They’re from Hendon, you see, and don’t know their holly from their ivy. Thinking fast, I said, “Oh, erm, they must be decorations for Ben’s first birthday.”
“Really?”
When we got home they asked, “Can we have fairy lights for Ben’s birthday?”
“Don’t see why not,” said their mother.
“Can we have a cake shaped like a log?”
“Yes, I can make one.”
“Can we have a Ben’s birthday tree?”
She shot me a look, my loving daughter, and I was in the doghouse for a bit. But we’ve got together, the whole family, ever since, on December 25 and if it wasn’t for the occasional clash of Chanukah lights and the strict lack of mistletoe in the living room, a passing Father Christmas might easily mistake us for a bunch of authentic jingle bells in knitted kipot and kosher wine. L’chaim, Santa!
