Let There Be Light This Holiday Season

December 23, 2024 by

Michelle Sider working with Kintsugi Master Showzi Tsukamoto

“In this upside-down world, I find solace in my art and faith, which provide me with a space to process and express my emotions.”
Artist Michelle Sider

(Editor’s Note: We asked many of our contributors to nominate stories about Christmas and Hanukkah this year, including our invitation to artist Michelle Sider to write a Hanukkah letter about her ongoing vocation to use the fine arts to help bring hope and meaning into our world. You can see some of the pictures she provided at the end of this letter. And to learn even more, please visit Michelle’s online home at MichelleSider.com.)

Greetings from my studio,

The concept of light has always been central to my glass mosaic work. Its physical qualities captivate me, but its symbolic power resonates even more deeply. Light, especially in times of darkness, speaks to resilience, healing, and hope. Recently, this symbolism has grown more poignant in my work, reflecting not only a fractured world but also its potential for renewal.

The global turmoil and alarming rise in antisemitism have left me searching for meaning. In this upside-down world, I find solace in my art and faith, which provide me with a space to process and express my emotions.

Recently, I have incorporated cracks filled with gold into my artwork; these fractures reflect the brokenness of our world. The golden seams are my interpretation of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending shattered pottery with radiant gold—a profound metaphor for transformation, where what is broken becomes more beautiful and resilient than before. This philosophy echoes my journey, a search for light—both physical and spiritual—casting hope and resilience into the shadows. I have found this symbolism rich and rewarding. This recent focus has inspired a new body of mixed-media works. in which I rework paintings from my past, destroying the original and rearranging pieces to express a new awareness.

By breaking and tearing apart previous works of art, I have given myself the freedom to create fresh, reimagined expressions of my past. This process of rearranging is both liberating and healing, offering an invigorating path toward newfound understanding and growth. My hope is that this series will document my journey as I move forward. And in so doing be a part of the healing process itself.

During a transformative visit to Japan, I had the privilege of studying Kintsugi with Master Showzi Tsukamoto. Beyond teaching the technique, he shared its philosophy and connection to the Japanese tea ceremony. These lessons have profoundly influenced my mosaics. By incorporating gold-filled cracks and fractures into my designs, I highlight life’s difficulties and darkness while celebrating the strength and beauty found in healing.

This dual symbolism feels especially powerful now.

It allows me to embrace and share hope, renewal, and restoration through my art—sentiments that resonate strongly during Hanukkah. In the Jewish faith, the menorah’s radiant light symbolizes resilience and the importance of spreading hope. In our family, each member lights their own menorah, and by the final night, our home glows with the warmth of many candles—a cherished reminder of connection and togetherness.

As the new year approaches, I’m eager to expand this sense of connection. My 2025 workshops begin with a trip to Israel in January, followed by sessions across the United States and Germany in the fall. In these workshops, I teach students how to create the illusion of light in their mosaics, empowering them to craft works that are both visually stunning and deeply expressive.

This holiday season, may we all seek and share light, finding beauty and strength even in life’s fractures.

Warm wishes,
Michelle Sider

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Media Expert Quentin Schultze draws 20 life lessons for the New Year from a movie that millions will watch (again) this week

December 23, 2024 by

“There’s a kind of timeless nostalgia that draws us into the movie, but Jean’s story is really about how difficult it is for us to find our way forward in this bewildering world, especially for children who find themselves in the middle of all of these problems.”
Media expert Quentin Schultze writing about A Christmas Story author Jean Shepherd

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

Click the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

The moment I first saw this book, I was astonished that veteran media expert Quentin Schultze managed to write an entire inspirational book about a single movie, the 1983 classic, A Christmas Story. He’s produced 208 pages of wise and wonderful material, based on a movie that’s only 94 minutes long.

The godfather of this publishing genre, Robert Short, established this concept back in 1965 with The Gospel According to Peanuts. But, Bob Short had a big advantage in writing his book. He was able to drawn on the vast world of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts to distill his handful of spiritual and moral lessons for readers. In the case of Schultze’s new book—You’ll Shoot Your Eyes Out! Life Lessons from the Movie A Christmas Story—Schultze draws 20 lessons from a single film!

As we approach the 60th anniversary of this popular Faith & Film genre in book publishing, Quentin Schultze has pulled off a tour de force demonstrating how powerful this type of book-length reflection on film can be. If you love movies—and you enjoy regular spiritual reflections—you should order a copy of this book.

It’s an instant classic!

That was not the case with this “Hollywood Christmas comedy” that was based on a pre-World War II story by author, humorist and media personality Jean Shepherd (1921-1999). The first big problem the movie faced was a lack of confidence among MGM executives, who dumped A Christmas Story into theaters for a short run before Thanksgiving that year. Film Critic Gene Siskel immediately realized that MGM honchos had no idea of the movie’s true value. Siskel wrote: “A Christmas Story is a delightful motion picture that is doomed to box office failure. It would appear to be a children’s film, but it really is a whimsical piece for adults about childhood.” And, because it is a movie about remembering experiences associated with Christmas, it was simply out of synch for moviegoers in November. “Whoever booked this film this early should be shot,” Siskel concluded.

Siskel was right. A Christmas Story came, went and was forgotten—well, almost forgotten.

Flash forward four decades to 2024 and now we recognize A Christmas Story as arguably The No. 1 Christmas Movie of all time. Signs of that status are the annual “movie marathon” traditions on both the TNT and TBS networks. On TBS in 2024, that 24-hour, back-to-back series of re-broadcasts starts at 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve. On TNT, that day-and-night marathon begins at 9 p.m. Christmas Eve. And if you’re a true fan of this film—only on TNT, the marathon ends at 9 p.m. Christmas Day with a one-time showing of the 2022 sequel, A Christmas Story Christmas.

Recognizing a Phenomenal Storyteller in Our Midst

This remarkable transformation of an almost-forgotten “sleeper” into America’s defining movie about Christmas doesn’t surprise Quentin Schultze—partly because he knew and worked with Jean Shepherd and was one of the first media experts to recognize the shining facets within this gem that Shepherd crafted for us.

“In the 1970s, I was a new communication professor,” Schultze told me in an interview about his new book. “I was teaching but I was also continuing to learn myself about the nature of narrative storytelling—which I believe is the most potent form of human expression. I began looking around for people who were particularly good storytellers, especially in multiple forms of media. That’s why I started to follow the work of Jean Shepherd, who I could tell was a phenomenal storyteller in multiple media. I saw one of Jean’s first made-for-TV movies, Phantom of the Open Hearth, in 1976 and I was so impressed by his use of parallel plots, multiple stories tied together into one narrative. I knew this was someone I needed to watch and to work with, if I could make that happen someday.

“Then, in 1982, I moved from where I had been teaching in Iowa to join the faculty at Calvin in Michigan—and, with that move to Calvin, I decided to contact Jean. By the time we talked, even more of his work was appearing and I was determined to find a way to connect with him. I remember that very first time we talked, I said, ‘I’m a communication professor at a small college in Michigan and I am hoping to work with you on a course about your storytelling.’

“To my surprise, he responded: ‘Let’s do it.’ And that’s how he came to Calvin and co-taught a course with me. We spent time with the students picking apart his stories—exploring how he organized them, how he took us with him to various places, and how he would bring this all together as he concluded his stories.

“So, that already was unfolding when I first saw A Christmas Story in 1983. Because I knew so much about Jean’s storytelling, I could see his influence throughout the movie, which I thought was extremely well done. … I could see immediately that this movie was his home run. When I began to realize that it was bombing at the box office, I was stunned. How could this be? Maybe people just weren’t ready to understand what Jean was doing in this particular story.”

Schultze was determined to encourage for his new friend—and he was not alone. Film critics like Gene Siskel recognized and praised the little movie that all-too-quickly vanished. Through Calvin, Schultze and Shepherd continued to collaborate on conversations and courses over the years. Eventually, Schultze himself began writing books, nonfiction about faith and communication. But it took more than 40 years from their first phone contact for Schultze to dedicate this new book to his friend and the pinnacle of Shepherd’s career, A Christmas Story.

If this condensed version of the story is intriguing to you—about how a sleeper became a classic and how these two creative professionals formed a collaborative friendship—well, order a copy of Quentin’s book. If you’re a true Christmas Story fan, you also will learn in this book about some elements in that 1983 movie that Jean Shepherd did not like, once he saw how his script was reinterpreted by MGM. In other words, if you’re among the countless Americans who have collected Christmas Story memorabilia and watch the marathons each year, you’ll welcome the insider tidbits Quentin Schultze provides.

So, what about these 20 lessons?

The key to unlocking Schultze’s revelations about A Christmas Story is his central argument that the movie was primarily not intended to be “nostalgic,” which may come as a shock to many fans.

If you’re disagreeing with that argument, stop and think about this for a moment: Millions of Americans love the nostalgic feel of the movie even though very few of those viewers actually grew up in the 1930s. There is something about this movie—in fact, 20 “somethings,” Schultze argues—that seem to connect with our lives in bittersweet ways, sometimes funny and sometimes painfully thought-provoking.

Schultze said in our interview. “I remember Jean himself saying this to me: ‘The movie is really anti-nostalgic.’ The story is about looking back and saying: Things were always rotten, just like they’re rotten now. There were always problems.

“Sure, there’s a kind of timeless nostalgia that draws us into the movie, but Jean’s story is really about how difficult it is for us to find our way forward in this bewildering world, especially for children who find themselves in the middle of all of these problems. It is a hopeful film, because Jean survived a rotten childhood—and he knew that it was possible to survive such problems. That’s why Jean wanted to give us all these life lessons—these parables—along the way.”

Perhaps right there you recognize the depth of the connection between Schultze and Shepherd, especially if you are reading this article as one of Schultze’s thousands of students over the years. If so, you already know that Schultze’s own life started as “really rotten”—full of problems just like Jean Shepherd’s early life. Schultze makes no secret of this. In fact, it’s an essential part of his hopeful, pragmatic message to the world: Despite trauma, we can resiliently thrive and become part of healthy families and communities. On the front page of his website, Schultze tells visitors from the start: “I grew up in a kind of living hell.”

“I do think that’s one reason we connected all those years ago,” Schultze said. “Jean’s own father abandoned his family—and I learned a lot more about our connections as we taught together over the years. In the movie, this realization explains a lot about the distance between the kids and ‘The Old Man.’ ”

Childhood trauma is just one example of the themes Schultze explores in his book. One of the 20 “life lessons” Schultze describes in this book involves the kinds of “refuges” that kids learn to cherish. There’s a lot in the course of this book that is more light hearted, but that chapter on childhood refuges is serious stuff and I think it’s a good example of the kind of insight that readers will really appreciate.

I won’t spoil the experience of Schultze’s book by listing all the other life lessons, but I do hope I’ve made the case in this Cover Story sufficiently that you think about ordering your own copy to enjoy.

Back in the 1980s, when Schultze was first getting to know Shepherd—as a journalist I was getting to know Robert Short, the spiritual godfather of this spiritual-lessons-in-pop-culture genre. I interviewed Short multiple times over the years that I was serving as a religion editor for major newspapers. After all, it was quite an achievement to be “the first” in a new literary genre—and Short went on to sell more than 10 million copies of that original book. He remained a wise patriarch of the genre until he passed in 2009.

I know Schultze will be happy if he sells a few thousand copies of his book this winter. Over the decades, I’ve interviewed authors of all kinds of faith-and-pop-culture books from volumes on Superman to the Simpsons, from U2 to Disney. And I really do want to encourage this inspirational impulse.

Plus, I want to honor Schultze’s achievement with this new book. What Schultze accomplished here, along with some wise insights from his own friendship with Shepherd—is to unlock the connection between this particular movie and the wistful imaginations of a lot of Americans these days.

I also suspect that, like the movie itself, the audience for Schultze’s book may grow over the years as each year’s new wave of those movie marathons roll around.

So, we say: Happy New Year Quentin! May your book find a growing audience through 2025 and beyond.

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How our Jewish friend showed my wife and I the perfect gift to avert a Christmas tragedy

December 16, 2024 by

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

This is the story of an interfaith holiday miracle.

And, yes, I know! I know! Declaring something to be an “interfaith miracle” places me on thin ice this winter. I know that we need to avoid trying to mash the customs of our faiths together in a way that distorts the treasures we have inherited in our unique branches of religious heritage. For half a century as a journalist covering religious diversity, I have written annual stories explaining that Hanukkah is not “the Jewish Christmas.”

So, with that caveat, on with the story.

This year, I am astonished by the creative generosity of a dear Jewish friend—Rusty Rosman, the author of Two Envelopes—whose wisdom about the aging process has moved her to “adopt” my wife and I. Rusty has even met our family’s matriarch, the cofounder of a historic family dairy farm in mid Michigan. Each week when I talk with Rusty about her ongoing work as an author, Rusty takes a moment to ask me about our “Mom” and Mom’s ongoing challenges as a frail, 97-year-old, fiercely independent woman trying to continue living (alone now) in the original farm house.

These days, when “Mom” looks out her windows across the vast farm that’s still a part of our family, she often sees the next two generations of farmers laboring out there—driving tractors, perhaps, or seeing to the cattle. She loves living at the heart of her farm—and she can’t abide the idea of moving into a more comfortable assisted living center. However, the challenges of keeping her living like that are enormous, something that all of us in her extended family and circle of friends work to enable for her.

That brings us to Christmas, the biggest holiday of the year in our family, complete with the annual “homecoming” to the farm. Yup, you can summon images from your favorite Hallmark holiday movie and that’s what we all work to engineer each year.

A decade ago, my wife and I became Mom’s official “Santa’s elves,” working with her to think of a single universal gift that she can buy and that we can help her to wrap for each of the dozen or so folks (individuals or couples) on her Christmas list. In past years, we’ve come up with universal ideas like a gift box we curated of “Michigan products,” or a portable car re-charging device that was a big hit with the recipients, or (during COVID) a countertop sanitizing appliance. This year, my wife and I had a great idea of having a professional-quality photo of Mom as the family matriarch taken outdoors with the farm’s signature corn crop. We would have this iconic photo printed, matted and framed in a beautiful way to adorn the walls of each of the dozen recipients. Then, we hit a huge snag. This idea of a portrait of her—alone as the matriarch—awakened memories of Dad, the original farmer and now of blessed memory. For weeks, anxieties over this idea stalled the production until we blew the deadline to have such professional work finished in time.

Mom wept when we told her about the missed deadline.

“Well, there’s still time for you could get gift cards in holiday envelopes, this year,” we said. “But we don’t have another universal gift idea for something in a wrapped box that we could pull off by Christmas. Over the past decade, we’ve used up pretty much every great gift-in-a-box idea. We’re out of ideas. And out of time.”

For days, there was weeping across the telephone line in our daily phone calls.

Mom tried to explain why this was such a tragedy for her. “Wrapped packages under my tree for each one of my loved ones as they come home to the farm—that’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done. I’m 97

and this will be the first Christmas that I haven’t had wrapped gifts under the tree for everyone.”

“Well, by next year—” we began.

“Next year?!” she said in deep sigh that reminded us: She’s well aware of the treasure of each new day that she’s alive. She doesn’t think in terms of “next year.” That’s sad to say, but we all know it’s true.

Then a miracle happened.

OK! OK, I know, that’s a “line” I’m stealing from the Hanukkah story. When the Maccabees reclaimed the temple in Jerusalem, they found one little pot of oil that wouldn’t last to keep the temple light burning properly—but: “Then a miracle happened.” That oil burned for eight days. I hope that our Jewish readers will forgive me for co-opting that line.

Rusty embodied that miracle. This year, she decided to give a Christmas gift to my wife and I to celebrate our more-than-a-year of close friendship. She ordered a box from Amazon to be delivered—but made a mistake and had it shipped to her own home! So, Rusty packed that box into her car and drove half an hour to personally deliver that box to our door. Inside was a gift set of various varieties of popcorn from Amish Country Popcorn.

This all took place on the very day that a handful of our desperate family members got together in a conference call to discuss how to help lift Mom’s spirits—now that her “elves” had hit a brick wall. Her vision of a perfect Christmas on the farm was falling apart. There would be no wrapped presents under her tree. A handful of holiday envelopes, filled with gift cards, just didn’t fit her Norman Rockwell vision for Christmas Day.

As we brainstormed, our own adult “kids” had a few good ideas. One was a special Christmas ornament with a photograph of the family farm custom-printed on it—but, alas, there was no time to arrange that by December 25. Another was a wonderful gift to share with all of the family’s dogs (we all love dogs)—but, alas, we remembered that one person’s dog had just died and such a gift would be a heartbreaker for all of us on Christmas. On and on we went. Nothing seemed to click.

A universal gift for a dozen recipients is tough to find!

As we were talking, Amy and I were in the process of munching on a bowl of popcorn we had made from Rusty’s gift set. I lifted a handful of buttery kernels—and the light bulb finally flashed! We could follow Rusty’s example and get a dozen Amish Country Popcorn gift sets to wrap for Mom to arrange around her tree. Once wrapped in colorful paper with bows, these boxed gift sets truly would dress up her tree in a fashion worthy of Rockwell nostalgia.

We checked via Amazon and there was plenty of time to have them delivered, wrap them and tuck them under the farmhouse tree.

“This is a brilliant idea—in so many ways!” I said.

“Oh, yeah! One reason: It’s corn—what a perfect farming theme!” my daughter said.

“And it’s gluten free,” my wife said, thinking of one niece who can only eat gluten-free foods. “Everyone can enjoy this.”

“So, it certainly checks the ‘universal’ box,” I said. “And remember? Dad, when he was alive, loved popcorn—so we can truly say this gift is a reminder of our beloved patriarch, too,” I said.

“You know, because Dad loved popcorn and we always had that as a snack—that’s the first word I learned to spell as a pre-schooler—P-O-P-C-O-R-N. Yeah, Dad loved it,” my wife said.

So, as I publish this story, a dozen gift sets of Amish Country Popcorn are wending their way to the “elves” wrapping table and eventually to a display of colorful gifts arranged around the farmhouse tree—in the same corner of the same room where gifts have been piled each Christmas Day for more than 70 years.

And that Christmas miracle was all thanks to my Jewish friend and her tireless insistence on getting that box to our front door on the same day our family Christmas conference took place.

This truly is a gift that truly keeps on giving.

Because, now, I have just given to you, dear reader, the gift of this story.

And you can give this gift—or a generous idea like it—away this year to someone you love.

.

,

Care to learn more?

EDITOR’s AFTERWORD: If you’re a true Norman Rockwell aficionado, then you know that Rockwell preferred to paint illustrations of frustrated families preparing for Christmas. In one of his most famous Yuletide illustrations, he painted a Dad hopelessly tangled up in Christmas lights; in another, he showed a Mom and Dad trying to finish decorating the top of spindly tree using a ladder as a racing pair of family dogs comes perilously close to crashing everything to the floor. You get the idea. While we may think of Rockwell’s images as celebrating ideals, more often he pointed out our frustrations and foibles—like our family’s situation this year.

So, in the end, this story is a Rockwell Christmas tale.

Then, if you want to learn more about Rusty, get a copy of her book Two Envelopes: What You Want Your Loved Ones to Know When You Die.

You also can visit Rusty Rosman’s website to learn about her ongoing schedule as she continues to help groups of men and women across the country engage with these issues we all will encounter someday. And we can assure you: We know from our experiences over the past year that, if you “book” her to visit your group, Rusty will be a delightful visitor who you’ll never forget.

.

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Crossing boundaries to decorate a Christmas tree sparked a lifetime appreciation for neighbors of different faiths

December 16, 2024 by

By ELAINE GREENBERG
From Friendship and Faith

When I was a young girl, Hanukkah was not a big holiday, and gift-giving was not what it is today, so our family—my uncles, aunts, grandmother—put our names in a container, and everyone picked out one name and that was the person they were to buy a gift for. My Uncle Hy had my name one year and bought the complete score (on 78 records) of Walt Disney’s Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs. I still have that album.

When my children were small, my family still wasn’t making a big deal about Hanukah, but one year we decided to give the children eight gifts—one for each night of the holiday. I tried to be very clever, and on the last night, each one of our children—ages 4 to 10 (well, maybe not the 4-year-old)—got a key to the house. They thought that was fabulous!

How times have changed!

But my favorite story of all is from the earlier years of my life. This goes all the way back to 1944, when I was just about to turn 9 years old and my mother and father finally saved enough money to buy us our very own home. Such excitement! The house was everything my parents could have asked for, with the exception of the outer color of the house, which was dark red, almost brown, and the ceiling in the kitchen, which was a blinding, bright red.

We had a fireplace, although it wasn’t lit too terribly often. To my father’s delight, we even had a screened-in porch that ran the entire width of the house. My father spent many a hot summer night sleeping on that porch and, since there was no such thing as air conditioning, we all spent many summer days and nights on that front porch.

In the corner of the kitchen, there was a small shelf about chest-high that served as a telephone shelf. On the white walls surrounding that telephone shelf were a ton of telephone numbers. You see, my father would call Information (no charge in those days) and didn’t have paper readily available, so he wrote the numbers on the kitchen walls. I do believe, when we sold that house, the numbers were still on the walls.

On one side of this house, we had what was called a four-flat where four separate families lived. But on the other side of our house, there was a single-family dwelling that was somewhat smaller than ours. The husband and wife who lived there were Frank and Marie Honel.

Unfortunately, our first encounter with the Honels was not a pleasant one. It involved a lamp that had come with our new home—one of those things the previous owners had left behind. When Mrs. Honel paid us her very first visit, we found out that she and her husband had come from Germany in 1938. When we moved into our home in 1944, the war was still going on in Europe, so here we had a Jewish family and a German family living next door to each other. In itself, this could have caused problems.

But the lamp touched off the conflict. Mrs. Honel came to visit us because she insisted that the previous owners were aware of her affection for this particular lamp—and had promised that
it would be given to her in the transition. When the lamp never made it to Mrs. Honel’s house, she apparently decided she would come over and claim it from the home’s new occupants. My
mother knew nothing about this supposed arrangement. In fact, she rather liked that lamp.

You can imagine the altercation that followed! It ended with our neighbor walking out of our house in a huff, mumbling something about “Jews.” We didn’t speak to them for quite a
while. I don’t know how long.

But, eventually, a kind of peace settled in between the two families.

When our neighbors emigrated from Germany, they brought with them a household full of furniture. Their house was cozy and comfortable with antiques and all kinds of other interesting stuff they brought with them from their homeland. Among their belongings were beautiful Christmas decorations, including heirloom tree ornaments that they used every year.

Mr. and Mrs. Honel had no children. As I recall it, Mrs. Honel seemed almost reluctant one winter when she surprised me by asking if I would like to trim their Christmas tree with them. The ornaments were beautiful, and I wanted to help.

I had to ask for my parents’ permission, of course. They were Orthodox Jews, but my mother still gave her permission. And we hit it off! From then on, the Honel tree wasn’t trimmed until “their girl”—and that was me—was there to help them.

How well I remember those figures under their tree that depicted the birth of Jesus. Of course, I didn’t know that one day I would visit Israel and, as part of my trip, I would visit Bethlehem and see where Jesus was born.

We even exchanged gifts. The Honels got Christmas gifts from us. We got Hanukah gifts from them.

I treasure those memories of sitting in their home, a young girl sharing with this elderly couple. In their wonderful kitchen, I would talk with Mrs. Honel as I helped her bake goodies in an old-fashioned wood-burning stove.

Why do I cherish this memory?

Because of the love I felt in that connection with the Honels—and the forgiveness that allowed us finally to cross over all that had separated us and finally share that love.

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Elaine Greenberg is a musician, a cancer survivor and a long-time member of her Jewish community—and southeast Michigan’s larger interfaith community. For many years, she led choirs, taught music and later worked in various ways to help cancer patients and their caregivers.

If you enjoyed this column, you almost certainly will enjoy the entire collection of true stories, written by women who dared to cross boundaries to find friendship on the other side. Friendship and Faith is available from Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.

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As we gather with loved ones, how do we talk about the hardest stuff we’re facing?

December 16, 2024 by

‘Climbing the Mountain’

An Audio Holiday Gift from Emily and Howard Brown to Inspire Difficult Family Conversations

By HOWARD BROWN
Author of Shining Brightly

As families gather for year-end holidays, there’s a universal truth: In addition to our joyous celebrations, our gatherings surface hard stuff—from misunderstandings to feuds, from new disabilities to losses of those who once were part of our circles.

In our family, we try to see each other for Hanukkah and the secular New Year holiday. Of course, we’ve also got our own Rosh Hashanah, our Jewish New Year, coming in the autumn of 2025, but we like to celebrate the arrival of the secular January 1 New Year like everyone else. Our year-end holidays are full of vivid family memories, including the scent of hot Wesson oil in Bubby Bertha’s kitchen at Hanukkah. If you read my memoir Shining Brightly, you may remember that my Bubby Bertha’s Hanukkah latkes, which she wrapped in paper and tied with string in “old school” style, were so popular that she sometimes made them to fulfill special requests that reached her even out of season.

As this year ends, our family certainly wishes for a revival of fond memories for all of you, as well.

But along with the scents and tastes and other joys of the holidays is almost always—well, I’m going to call it “hard stuff”. You know, all the baggage or trauma or grief that raises our anxiety when holidays are looming.

At times, we’ve all wondered: How can we talk about our hard stuff?

So, this year, as I am about to take a medical leave from my weekly Shining Brightly podcasts, I decided to invite my daughter Emily, a TV journalist in Montana, to record a special episode. As followers of ReadTheSpirit.com magazine know already, I’m fighting the good fight each day to recover from the devastating effects of some of he toughest Rock ’em Sock ’em chemo I’ve ever experienced! I’m in tightly controlled isolation, now, because my immune system is so compromised. The goal is to knock out enough of this advanced form of leukemia that’s surging through my body—so that I can receive a bone marrow transplant and finally knock out this latest cancer.

Yup, that is truly tough stuff for anyone to talk about!

But, honestly, I don’t think this podcast is a downer. That wasn’t our goal. I hope you’ll start listening and judge for yourself. Early listeners have kindly told me that they’ve found this inspiring.

We start by talking about—quite literally—Emily’s mountain climbing.

I hope you heard us loud and clear:

Keep the focus on ways we all can help others

Since I was diagnosed, weeks ago, I’ve repeated on a daily basis a list of things that everyone can do:

  • Please send prayers and hugs—for me, and for those who you know need your prayers.
  • Don’t get cancer! Cancer sucks. Cancer is terrible. So, go get yourself screened for cancer—whatever screening makes sense for you and your doctor.
  • Donate blood and/or platelets where you live. I need transfusions—and so do many others in hospitals everywhere. We all depend on people like you to keep donating that life-giving blood.
  • Get your cheek swabbed for bone-marrow donations. So many people around the world need bone-marrow transplants—yet it’s hard to find a match. If you send your swab into the database, perhaps someone who is desperately hoping for a match will discover that you are their miracle match.
  • Be kind to others—try for at least one new act of kindness every day.
  • Some things you can do are simple: Just hug your family and friends and tell them—today—how thankful you are for them.
  • And, keep shining brightly always!

 

Howard is wearing a warm knitted hat Emily sent him, because the chemo has left him bald in the midst of winter. Emily accompanied that gift with a card featuring a woodblock print of a winter scene by Montana artist Claire Emery, titled “All Is Calm: Tucked in for the Winter.”

 

 

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Chanukah (Hanukkah) and Christmas are two different holidays united by love of family

December 9, 2024 by

By RUSTY ROSMAN
Author of Two Envelopes

Chanukah or Hanukkah, which can be spelled numerous ways, and Christmas, which is only spelled this way, are two different holidays belonging to different religions. Even if they occur on top of one another does not mean they are the same.

Please, let me explain.

Christmas focuses on the 25th of December and commemorates the birth of Christ, the founder of Christianity.

Chanukah starts on the 25th of Kislev, not commemorating any one person, and lasts for eight days. Kislev is the 9th month in the traditional, Jewish lunar calendar. That’s why the date that Chanukah begins seems to be different each year, compared with the secular calendar. Our lunar months are shorter than in the secular system—and we occasionally add an extra month to “catch up” with the movement of the moon. We make that occasional adjustment because many of our festivals relate to cycles in the natural world, so they need to remain in the right seasons, over time.

Christmas is celebrated for varying lengths of time in different Christian traditions. There are entire books on how customs related to Christmas, sometimes called “The Nativity,” are celebrated around the world. Some Christians fast in preparation; most don’t. Some start earlier than others preparing for Christmas; some make “Christmas” last for many days after the official holiday. Some Christians still follow centuries-old traditional calendars that “move” their Christmas to entirely different dates on the secular calendar.

Compared with that diversity, Chanukah traditions are universal. The festival is celebrated for eight days and recalls a wonderful story. More than 2,000 years ago, a foreign ruler had tried his best to destroy our faith and to desecrate the Temple in Jerusalem—but a rebel group led by the Maccabees led a successful struggle for religious freedom. When they went to clean and and reconsecrate the Temple, they were amazed to find one tiny jar of holy oil left to rekindle the eternal light that had always burned in the Temple. It looked like enough to burn for only one day. Then, a miracle happened! That jar of oil lasted for eight days.

Today, we use an eight-branch candleholder, a Menorah. There is a ninth candle called the Shamas, which is used to kindle the candles each day. We begin the holiday by lighting just one candle and add a candle the next night so there are two and so on until eight candles are lit on the last night of the holiday. We celebrate by singing songs and eating foods cooked in oil like potato pancakes. In Israel and elsewhere around the world, donuts (sufganiyot in Hebrew) are a popular Chanukah treat.

So where do the presents come in? This was not an original Chanukah tradition, but began in Europe as Christmas became a holiday signified by decorations and gifts for the children in the house. Gift giving became even more popular in the 20th Century, usually so Jewish children wouldn’t feel left out while their Christian friends received gifts.

So, there is a concern many parents and grandparents share: Sometimes, gift giving seems to have overtaken the religious significance of these holidays.

Holidays like these should focus on family—and family means food. Lots of food!

Think about Norman Rockwell and his paintings of the Four Freedoms. The fabulous “Freedom from Want” painting of the family around the table as the grandmother serves a turkey invokes what all of us wish was true for our families—generations celebrating together.

This can be one of the greatest pleasures of celebrating our holidays: Being with loved ones, remembering holidays-past celebrated with those no longer with us—love and caring.

Gathering with people you care about at this time of year strengthens you in ways that aren’t always easy to express. Christmas and Chanukah are religious holidays that can include gifts but most of all, they are holidays of family, friends, happy remembrances, sometimes tears but most of all, love.

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Care to learn more?

Visit Rusty Rosman’s website to learn about her ongoing schedule as she continues, like Missy, to help groups of men and women across the country engage with these issues we all will encounter someday.

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A Hanukkah tale of lights, trees—and ‘Mrs. Steinberg’s Christmas Tree’

December 9, 2024 by

RABBI BOB ALPER is a standup comedian who you might have heard on satellite radio, where his standup routines are part of the clean comedy channel, called “Pure Comedy” on Sirius XM. Most importantly, Bob’s work is unique because he also is an ordained and active clergyman. His humor is warmed with a deep commitment to faith. This story appears in Bob’s book, “Thanks. I Need That.“

Mrs. Steinberg’s Christmas Tree

By Rabbi Bob Alper

Question: Which Jewish holiday most closely parallels Christmas?
Answer: Not Hanukkah.

Sure, Hanukkah and Christmas have a few elements in common: both are winter solstice events, successors to the pagan rites of lighting bonfires in an effort to rekindle the increasingly absent sun (it works, by the way; on December 22, the days start to lengthen). Both make use of plenty of candles, or candle-shaped lightbulbs. Both involve gift exchanges, though Hanukkah is a latecomer to this tradition.

But it’s Passover, not Hanukkah that offers the most similarities to Christmas. Passover: a holiday of special food, of remarkable smells, of family centered traditions, of memories heaped upon memories. Passover is the Jewish homecoming, the ingathering, based on an historical and theological event upon which the religion was constructed.

Like Christmas.

Always an adaptable, creative people, Jews of the last two generations have invigorated little, rather unimportant Hanukkah (it’s not even mentioned in the Hebrew Bible) until it’s become nearly competitive with cousin Christmas. What has always been a minor Jewish holiday has been injected with steroids.

And in the myth department, Jews have gone even one step further: while Christian children realize by age six or so (earlier, if they have a cynical older sibling) that Santa is a fable, many Jews actually go through their entire lives thinking that the so-called “miracle” of the oil lamp was an historical and theological event. (It wasn’t. The story was simply a cute legend, added hundreds of years after the Maccabbean revolt. Sorry if your fantasy has been crushed.)

For Jewish kids, especially Jewish kids like me in the early 1950s, December was a tough month, our feeble little holiday contrasting flimsily against our Christian friends’ major joyfest. I even have a vague memory of making a modified advent wreath of paper rings in one public school classroom. Every day for several weeks, each of us pulled off one paper ring, watching the object grow smaller and smaller, until, at the very end, it would be CHRISTMAS! Hooray!! (Oh, except for you, Bobby.)

Back then our family rented a second floor flat on Luzon Avenue in Providence, RI, just across the street from the John Howland Elementary School. I was in the first grade, my sister in the third. The flat below was occupied by the landlord and landlady, Mr. and Mrs. Steinberg.

My mother was what we now call a “stay-at-home mom,” only in the early fifties, she and her ilk were called housewives. Friendly and gregarious, she always had a full social life and a huge number of friends. Except for Mrs. Steinberg. Mom and the landlady didn’t hit it off very well, possibly because, from the day we moved in, the woman downstairs repeatedly slammed a broomstick into her ceiling every time my sister or I dared walk down our uncarpeted hallway wearing anything more than socks.

Some neighbor.

Within a few months, we moved to another home, but before we could depart, Mrs. Steinberg launched one more missile at our family.

Friday, December 22, 1950. Hanukkah had ended, and Christmas was now right around the corner. School vacation began mid-day, soon after the traditional morning Christmas assembly. Hundreds of excited children bearing holiday artwork streamed through John Howland’s doors, followed shortly afterward by their grateful teachers.

My mother had a weekly appointment at the beauty parlor every Friday afternoon. Hair and nails had to be just right, in preparation for the approaching Sabbath. Our teenage babysitter, also beginning vacation, was enlisted to watch us for the two hours. A typical gloomy New England winter day, we played indoors.

The boredom was broken when, shortly after my mother departed, an unexpected peal of the door chimes summoned the three of us down the stairs and into the front hallway. Through the glass, we could see our neighbor, Mrs. Steinberg, patiently awaiting. A benign half smile across her lips, she juggled a small box and…my heart began to beat faster…a three foot tall, green…Christmas tree!

“A special treat for Margie and Bobby,” she explained. Mrs. Steinberg worked as a teacher at an elementary school across town, and the small tree had decorated her room. Her own children were adults, no longer living at home, and, well, she knew how much the Alper children must want a Christmas tree. “And since this perfectly good tree would only have been thrown away, I thought you’d like to have it.”

If MasterCards had been around then, they could have produced this ad: A desk-size Douglas fir Christmas tree: $5.50. A small box of ornaments: $2.75. The chance to wreak havoc with the religious identity of the children of your despised neighbor: Priceless.

We accepted the items with thanks and raced up the stairs. But rather than let us set up the tree and begin decorating it, the babysitter, a smart teen, insisted that we first receive parental permission. We dialed the beauty salon and caught my mother with wet hair and wet nails. “Guess what! We got a Christmas tree! We got a Christmas tree! Mrs. Steinberg gave it to us! We can keep it, right mommy? Just this year, OK? This once?”

Mom was non-committal on the phone while she furiously rummaged through her pocketbook in a frantic search for Chooz, the antacid gum she favored.

“Don’t do anything yet. We’ll talk about it when I get home.” Mom had bought an hour’s reprieve.

We waited impatiently, staring longingly at the naked tree and imagining how enchanting it would look, set on the coffee table in the center of our living room, adorned with decorations. It didn’t even occur to us that there were no electric lights. We just wanted a Christmas tree.

During those same moments, as she sat under the sacred privacy of the salon’s hair dryer, my mother began to picture what would occur later that evening at our synagogue when she, president of the Sisterhood, and my father, past-president of the Brotherhood, entered services with their children excitedly blabbing the news about their lovely little Christmas tree.

She devised a plan.

A major commotion erupted when Mom returned, with the word “Pleeeeeze” repeated with urgent frequency. Kids’ body language appears similar when they want something really badly or when they require an immediate trip to the bathroom: a kind of low jumping, up and down, in place. And my sister and I were jumping. “Please? Can we keep it? Just this once?”

My mother seemed to be considering our request, then launched her counter-offensive. No question about it: she blindsided us with an absolutely perfect, even delicious, solution.

“It is a lovely little tree,” she began, “and it was so nice of Mrs. Steinberg to bring it to us.” (I now realize that, had my mother been of an earlier, more superstitious background, after saying that sentence she would have automatically spit three times and recited a Yiddish curse. But, third generation American that she was, all she could muster was a veiled, ironic tone, which my sister and I, in our excitement, missed.)

“But you know,” she continued, “Christmas isn’t our holiday. We have Hanukkah and Passover and Purim. And I read in yesterday’s Providence Journal that there are some children, Christian children here in Providence, who are so poor that they won’t even have a Christmas tree for their holiday.

“So, why don’t we do this: let’s decorate this tree, make it look especially nice, and then, let’s phone the police department and ask if they’ll give it to some poor children who don’t have a tree of their own?”

Touchdown. Bullseye. And grand slam. Mom scored a big one. With her clever proposition, she not only distracted us from begging to keep the tree, but diverted our focus to the point where we simply couldn’t wait to get it out of our house and on its way to other children.

Mom placed a call, while my sister and I went to work hanging Mrs. Steinberg’s ornaments on the tree, adding some of our own small objects, and gathering toys and books and games to accompany the donation. About an hour later, two very large Providence policemen, wearing their black leather jackets, with guns and nightsticks and handcuffs hanging from their belts, lumbered up the stairs. They spoke briefly with my mother and her wide-eyed children, offered some kind words of gratitude, and then departed, carrying one large bag of stuffed toys, some boxes of other gifts. And a three-foot tall, artfully decorated Douglas fir Christmas tree.

That scene remains one of the happiest memories of my childhood.

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If you’re already hooked on Rabbi Bob Alper’s work … Visit his website and find out about booking one of his comedy shows in your part of the country. And be sure to check out his Amazon author’s page where his two books of heart-warming stories are available in various formats.

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