Chrismukkah

About Chrismukkah

Chrismukkah is a pop-culture neologism referring to the merging of the holidays of Christianity's Christmas and Judaism's Hanukkah as celebrated in interfaith households where one parent may be of Christian heritage and another parent of Jewish heritage. Or from two Jewish parents, where one may not be religious at all (having a desire to put up a Christmas tree) while the other is very religious causing Christmas and Hanukkah to cancel each other out into one blur of a gift giving holiday. The word itself is a portmanteau arisen through the blending of the words "Christmas" and "Hanukkah". Chrismukkah is also celebrated as an ironic, alternative holiday, much like the Seinfeld-derived "Festivus." USA Today has described it as "[t]he newest faux holiday that companies are using to make a buck this season".

"A Christmas celebration with a tree, songs, and gifts became a symbol of being a part of German culture for many middle-class Jewish families in the 19th century. Some Jews celebrated Christmas as a secular "festival of the world around us" without religious meaning, or they transferred Christmas customs to the Hanukkah festival. There was an episode of the television program thirtysomething, which featured a fight over whether to celebrate Christmas or Hannukah for a baby's first holiday season in an interfaith home, but there was no mention of "Chrismukkah."

Chrismukkah was popularized by FOX television program The O.C.. On the show, the character Seth Cohen has a Jewish father and a Protestant mother. As a way to merge the two faiths, Seth claims to have "created Chrismukkah" when he was six years old. The series included annual Chrismukkah episodes for every season of its run. Particulars of when exactly the holiday was celebrated were not given; Seth simply said in the first season's Chrismukkah episode that it was "eight days of presents, followed by one day of many presents," with a stress on the word "many"(this was repeated in the second season's Chrismukkah episode by Seth's new brother Ryan, with an added "many"). The only references to how it was celebrated, other than the family displaying both a Christmas tree and a Hanukkah menorah, was that the Cohens spent Christmas day itself--rather than going out for Chinese food and a movie as many American Jews have taken up in recent years--watching Chrismukkah-season-themed movies they had rented, like It's a Wonderful Life and Fiddler on the Roof at home while eating Chinese takeout. Chrismukkah later received mention in the television series, Grey's Anatomy.