I need to write about being a Jew on Christmas. It is hard. It was hard for me as a kid and now it is hard for my children. I don't know if it is less hard for Indian Hindus or Chinese Taoists, but I know that one of the reasons it is hard for me is because of the specific history of antisemitism, both globally and in the United States. And when I say history, I mean historically open, but not gone.

I teach first year writing in college and we mostly focus on cultural studies type topics to introduce the students to the basics of argumentation, so we often touch on the triange of race, class, and gender. So often I get papers that say, "when there was racism" or "when there was a women's movement" and I'm like, wait, is it over, did I miss the bulletin? All of this hatred seething under the surface, and we are so unwilling to acknowledge it openly. I feel it when I walk past the cigar store on my corner, the old boys hangin' out, putting women in their place, wolf calling and discussing titties over their continuous poker game. I hear it when my liberal friends talk about sending their kids to a "good" urban school, which they might characterize as having enough kids with educated parents to tip the scales, but which I hear as "enough white kids." And let me fess up now, I send my kids to one of those schools. So, it didn't take Ferguson to spill the beans on some big secret, though it sure broke the seal on this pretense that we're somehow living in a post-racist society. The conversation on sexism will be harder to explode, since cops aren't actively attacking women, but enough of us have gained all different kinds of power that at least we are slowly, steadily taking back the "f" word (feminism).

But what of anti-semitism? I mean, is anyone talking about it? It seems like Jews my age, who should be the prime movers and shakers on the issue as we move into positions of power and prestige in the workplace and in our communities and into the role of parents at home, have given up to make indie films and run organic farms on former urban dump sites. Do we truly feel so comfortable? This isn't France, of course. Not only will no one spit on you for wearing a yarmulke, but I actually saw a man walking through my South Philly neighborhood wearing one the other day - I swear! I had to look twice to make sure I wasn't losing my mind that I think I made him uncomfortable. I must have looked I swallowed fish. And it's not like I could announce - hey, it's okay, I'm Jewish, too. I'm the token Hannukah mom at all my kids's schools.

But that discomfort, I feel it, too. Jews aren't like people of color. We don't walk around with a flashing sign on our heads that says, "I'm different from you. I am of a reviled people." Except, I guess, if you're wearing a yarmulke in South Philly. And the hatred agains Jews is so different than the hatred agains blacks. We are stereotyped as rich and stingy, rather than poor and out buying beer with our welfare checks. If we have a lot of children, people assume we're very religious, not ignorant of birth control. If we ascend to positions of prominence, it is assumed we got their because of our daddies or the secret Jewish media/banking/doctor/lawyer network, not because we worked hard or used our keppes.

Planet Money, one of my favorite podcasts, did a story about the history of Iceland, focusing on the poverty and cold that kept Icelanders indoors for a thousand years of winters during which time the only thing they had to do was read and write Sagas. This, the reporter felt, this culture of reading and writing, has made Iceland very successful in an age when education, intellect, and written communication has become valuable. Icelanders publish more books each year than many other, much larger countries. And I thought about how no one has ever researched Jewish culture to come up with such a reasonable, anthropological explanation about how "the people of the book" might generation after generation keep landing in journalism, film, and English faculty meetings. Or at least I've never heard it put so plainly, or even positively where Jews are concerned. It is a truism that Judaism is both a culture and a religion. And guess what, intellectualism, critical thinking, textuality, logic and argumentation are prized in both. I mean, is it really a surprise? And does it have to be negative? Here's the big conspiracy everyone: it's nurture, not nature.

When we moved into our first South Philly home, it was just a few days before Rosh HaShana. As we met our neighbors, who are very nice, very warm people who we grew to like very much, we explained to them that we would move our things into the house and then go to my parents for a few days to celebrate the holiday, and return to start putting the house in order after that. The continuous answer we got was, Oh you're Jewish. Oh, that's okay, that's okay," almost always delivered with their hands up in a kind of "do not kill my baby to use his blood in your Matzoh" kind of way as they backed slowly away. We joked that we knew it was okay and that we were fine with it, but it stung. After all, when we bought the house, the man selling it to us told us how releived he was we weren't black since his mother and aunt still lived on the block. Other neighbors told us it was a "good block" because they didn't have any black residents and "not even any Chinese!" So, despite the fact that I do believe they are good people, this was not the most enlightened crowd. Or maybe they were just more up front about things that the more PC crowd we usually run with. And I think our living there - being good neighbors, being down to earth, bringing food when someone died, bringing our kids to play on the stoop with their kids- I think that made a difference. Although I think the biggest revelation was when our wonderful neighbors Ray and Ricardo bought a house next door to us and presented the neighbors with the first openly gay couple. Ricardo, as his name might suggest, is from a wealthy family in Venezuala, has an MBA and impeccable taste. When swine flu was wreaking havoc in Mexico, he got a big kick out of all the neighbors being concerned for his family, especially when he had to explain that Venezuala was actually an entirely different country than Mexico.

At no time is our neighborhood more alive than during Christmas season. The lights on 13th Street are amazing and Christmas Eve is full of our Italian neighbors cooking up the traditional Italian feast of seven fishes - which I have always longed to be invited to. I actually love Christmas time, or many things about it. I take my kids to see the light show at Macy's and visit the Dickens Village upstairs. The Morris Arboretum has an adorable holiday railroad and I really enjoy some of the more traditional music and hymns. And, of course, I love going to my husband's family's parties as well as friends' parties. I am happy for them to celebrate. The best part is that when we go to one of Larry's sister's houses to enjoy the holiday with them, I feel none of the stress that so many of my friends feel and none of the stress I usually feel during Jewish holidays. Although, I think the stress for people celebrating Christmas must be so much more intense because there is an entire world of media building up your expectations whereas you never really get car commercials pressuring you to have an amazing Yom Kippur!

And somewhere in that overwhelm is the point I'm trying to make - Christmas is the time at which I feel most alienated from American culture and from non-Jewish friends. It is also the time when antisemetism is at its most obvious and most present. People who are able to keep it in check usually, are simply so appalled that anyone might not celebrate Christmas. It seems a slap in the face to them, I guess, a rejection of this value. That's almost what it is. It's as if as Christ has fallen out of Christmas, to be replaced by Tickle Me Elmos and ugly jewelry, Christmas has taken on it's own value. Friends who are lapsed Catholics (you rarely meet a lapsed Lutheran) or "nothing" will talk at length about the "values" of Christmas, which seem from the outside to be roughly about appreciating your family and togetherness, as well as something about enjoying the magic of childhood. All of which is very nice, but it certainly doesn't mean that you can't value those things without celebrating Christmas. I also get comments from friends who ask me to make sure my kids don't tell their kids that Santa isn't real, as if I've gone around trying to get my kids to ruin Christmas for them. Yes, some of this comes from inside - my own feeling of being left out - but some of it is about the ways in which the dominant society is so blind to difference and to their own dominance as to make all other groups invisible. Just as we are invisible when we walk down the street without yarmulkes, so are we invisible at Christmas. And because Christmas itself is overwhelming, I think we are invisible-er. And dare we announce ourselves, via yarmulke or suggesting somehow that we don't celebrate Christmas and I'd actually rather you didn't send my kid home from public school with an ornament that reads "Santa's Little Helper", when we make ourselves visible, this becomes offensive, and the latent antisemitism emerges. People are offended when you don't want to take their ornaments.

James Carroll just wrote a very interesting book about the antisemitism on which Christian culture is based. He reminds us that it is only a decade since the Vatican announced its reversal on the deeply held belief that Jews are Christ killers. I don't feel like I walk around in a world in which people reflexively think "Christ killer" when they learn of my heritage. We are many degrees removed from France. But it's there, as Carroll points out in his book. It's underlying our society and it's there. I don't think we will get a Ferguson - I certainly hope it wouldn't come to such violence. I think perhaps, though, we get an annual way into the conversation through Christmas.