Not Everyone Celebrates Christmas
Written for my Fall 2020 class “Writing Cultural Criticism for Web”
(Received “A” Grade)
Every piece of entertainment I enjoyed as a child spent December celebrating Christmas. Disney Channel holiday episodes were about Christmas. They had the child stars sing Christmas songs during commercial breaks. My only Hanukkah entertainment at that age was watching the Rugrats Hanukkah Special on VCR. As I got older, I watched Jewish celebrities record Christmas albums and star in Christmas specials. So when I first started watching Friends, I was excited to be introduced to Jewish characters like Monica, Ross, and Rachel. Authentic New York Jews created by Jewish showrunners. But once again, every holiday episode was about Christmas. Their Jewish upbringing was nowhere to be seen. There was the occasional Yiddish slang, such as when Rachel called her grandmother her “bubbe” in Season 9, and the subtle mention of Jewish culture when Monica discussed her Bat Mitzvah in Season 8. But that was pretty much it. So naturally, my favorite episode of the show was the most Jewish episode of the whole series: Season 7’s “The One With The Holiday Armadillo.”
In the episode, Ross is ecstatic because he gets to have his son Ben for the holidays that year. Normally, his ex-wife Karen dresses as Santa to visit Ben. But this year, Ross wants to take the opportunity to teach his son about the miracle of Hanukkah. Ben doesn’t understand why Santa isn’t coming and resists at first. Hearing his son think he has been bad that year because Santa isn’t visiting, Ross gives in and rushes to get a Santa costume in time for Christmas. When that doesn’t pan out, Ross dresses up as the Holiday Armadillo, “Santa’s half-Jewish friend!” Ben remembers that he is half-Jewish and becomes willing to sit and learn the miracle of Hanukkah told by the Holiday Armadillo, only to give up when Chandler barges into the apartment dressed as Santa. But with Chandler/Santa’s encouragement, they all sit on the couch and listen to the Holiday Armadillo tell the story of Hanukkah and then light the chanukiah, with ‘Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof playing as incidental music under the scene.
Just like when Chandler bursts in the door dressed as Santa to save Ross’s evening with his son, every miniscule mention of Hanukkah in daily conversation and everyday life is always overshone by a big Christmas spectacle. Union Square in San Francisco has a giant chanukiah on display, but an even larger Christmas tree topples over it. New York City holiday markets are full of green and red gifts meanwhile blue and white gifts are scattered in doses throughout the stands. I can’t wait for the day we have a Radio City Rockettes Hanukkah Spectacular, but for now, I will have to live with the Fiddler On The Roof cast’s interpretation.
This episode of Friends is no different. When Ross tries to ask Ben if he knows what holiday is coming up, all Ben can think about is Christmas. Most likely, he was never educated about religions other than Christianity and was never exposed to Hanukkah at school. If it weren’t for parents like my mom who came into my elementary school classes to teach my classmates about Hanukkah, I’m sure they would react the same way Ben did: with ignorance and confusion. Elementary schools throw “Christmas parties” and do “Secret Santa” and fail to include Jewish students in their celebrations. Just as Ben probably did, I spent every holiday season at school coloring in pictures of Santa, making Christmas trees out of candy (a vivid memory of mine from 5th grade), and watching the 1964 Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer stop motion TV special. Education has tried to become more inclusive, now calling their December class parties “holiday parties” and having students participate in “Secret Snowflake” but no matter how hard they try, Christmas will always be ingrained in every young child’s mind, just as it is for Ben Geller.
Growing up, Hanukkah was always my favorite holiday because it meant meticulously decorating sugar cookies cut outs with sprinkles and M&Ms, hanging up window clings in the shape of magen david (Star of David) and a chanukkiah (the correct term for the menorah) on our big sliding glass doors, and listening to The LeeVees’ Hanukkah Rocks album on the CD player in the kitchen. It meant attending my synagogue’s annual “Flametacular” celebration where our congregation lit as many chanukkiot as we could on the patio and ate latkes and sufganiyot (jelly donuts). But when entering the outside world, the holiday was practically nonexistent. Hanukkah only got one aisle end cap at Target and Michaels while Christmas got multiple full aisles. Customers at work always greeted me with “Merry Christmas” and I had to respond back with “Same to you!” unfazed. When I worked at Toys-R-Us in high school, every locker in the employee break room was decorated with Christmas wrapping paper. I brought in my own Hanukkah wrapping paper to replace what was covering my locker. Despite that, my uniform still required wearing a Christmas shirt. American Christian society has never allowed me to be completely Jewish no matter how hard I tried.
That’s how it felt watching “The One With The Holiday Armadillo.” When I first watched the episode, I was so thrilled to watch Jewish religion and culture be represented in mainstream popular culture. I was blinded by the excitement of this miniscule representation that it was only when I got older that I realized it wasn’t as representative as I thought. Despite the episode’s main narrative involving Hanukkah, the episode is not actually about Hanukkah. It is about Ross giving up and conforming to society’s Christmas-focused holiday season, similar to what is often expected of me by American Christian society. A helper of Santa Claus is the one to teach Ben about Hanukkah, not Ross in a macabee or dreidel costume. There is a giant Christmas tree in the background of Chandler and Monica’s apartment the entire time Ross is trying to tell the Hanukkah story to Ben, much more noticeable than the small chanukiah on a table next to it. Even Monica is seemingly aroused by Chandler in the Santa costume. Hanukkah is present in the episode’s plot, but Christmas is at the center of the story line.
Mainstream entertainment has normalized the belief that everyone who is Christian or simply doesn’t associate with a religion celebrates Christmas. The television I watched as a child depicted characters celebrating Christmas who were never religious at any point in the show. Meanwhile, Friends portrays three characters who use language common among those who are practicing Jews and have discussed their religious Jewish upbringing, yet don’t allow them to be Jewish. “The One With The Holiday Armadillo” is the only holiday episode where the characters celebrate Hanukkah. (Phoebe associates Hanukkah with Monica and Rachel in “The One With The Girl From Poughkeepsie” in Season 4, but that is the only other memorable mention of the holiday.) When the creators of the show are Jewish and the show airs on the heels of a very Jewish sitcom (Seinfeld), it’s disappointing to watch Friends fail to create a space for these Jewish characters to be Jewish with no conflict. With Christmas assimilated in American society and culture, Friends had the opportunity to break the mold and not only represent authentic Jewish characters, but also an interfaith marriage between Monica and Chandler. Yet instead they took the easy route and conformed to American Christian expectations.
Do I blame Friends for largely ignoring the Jewish roots of Monica, Ross, and Rachel and the large communities of Jews in New York City? Not really. Goyim (non-Jews) often don’t pay attention to how Christmas is etched into American society as “the” December holiday. So, it’s obvious that the show and creators would want to appeal to that lack of awareness, thus focusing on the Christmas spectacle of New York City and allowing the characters to comfortably participate in it. But Hanukkah is about miracles and standing up for our right to practice our Judaism. All I can do is hope that if the current trend in entertainment is true, the eventual 2030 spin-off of Friends following all of the children of the characters will be more Jewish than ever.
