Merry Jewish Christmas: How Chinese food and the movies became a time-honored tradition for American Jews

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Samira Mehta, University of Colorado Boulder

(THE CONVERSATION) There is a meme that circulates every holiday season, an image of a sign in a restaurant window. “The Chinese Restaurant Association of the United States would like to extend our thanks to the Jewish people,” it says. “We do not completely understand your dietary customs … but we are proud and grateful that your GOD insists you eat our food on Christmas.”

Is the sign real? Perhaps not; the fact-checking site Snopes found no evidence of the association even existing. But the joke’s popularity points to a tradition cherished by many American Jews – Chinese food on Christmas.

But why would Jews, who do not celebrate Christmas, have Christmas traditions?

Like many minority groups, Jews have always created ways of adapting to the societies in which they live, but whose culture they do not totally share. And one thing that means is a collection of Christmas traditions, varying by time and place. Many of them came up in interviews for my book “Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States.”

Old World festivities

Long before Jews came to the United States, some of them celebrated Christmas – participating in many of the...