How Jewish Families Celebrate Christmas Dinner (Evan Fu)

General Information About Item:

Informant Data:

Jonah Kershen is a male Dartmouth student in the class of 2022. Jonah hails from a Jewish family and lives in Hartford, Connecticut. Jonah is an Economics/Computer Science double major at Dartmouth and plays for the Club Soccer team on campus. He plans to work as a trader upon graduation.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: Jonah’s family is traditionally Jewish – Jonah celebrates all Jewish holidays and consumes a fully kosher diet himself. While the family primarily celebrates Hannukah during late December, the family still observes the gift-giving and family-time-oriented nature of Christian Christmas. Like Chinese people, Jewish people tend not to celebrate Christmas in a traditional, Christian American sense.
Social Context: This description was mentioned when the interviewee was asked about their Christmas traditions. While Jonah was clear that his family chose not to practice many traditionally American Christmas rituals, he did emphasize that his family (and other Jewish families) tended to repeat certain activities on Christmas, including a Christmas dinner.

Item:

Jonah’s family’s Christmas dinner almost always features takeout Chinese food. Like Jewish people, Chinese people tend not to celebrate Christmas extravagantly, and most Chinese restaurants are open on Christmas Eve. Jonah’s family typically orders food from the vegan/vegetarian (kosher-certified) menu at a local Chinese restaurant called Black Bamboo. After finishing their Chinese food, they usually eat a homemade, Jewish dessert such as chocolate babka. Jonah emphasized that his family simply considers the Christmas holiday as a period of rest, and they appreciate that Chinese restaurants remain open on the holiday. He mentioned that most of his Jewish family and friends alike will order Chinese takeout on Christmas and have a quiet, filling meal with just their immediate family.

Transcript:

“In terms of dinner, we usually just order takeout from this Chinese restaurant called Black Bamboo which is open on Christmas Eve. They have a pretty awesome vegan/vegetarian menu that we order from, and my mom will usually make a chocolate babka or some other Jewish dessert to cap off the dinner. It’s hilarious – literally all my Jewish friends and their families order Chinese takeout on Christmas. I think Jewish people just consider the holiday as a day of rest where the parents can just get away from work and have a nice dinner with the family.”

Informant’s Comments:

“We owe a lot to the Chinese people, to be honest. Can’t imagine how many Jewish families they feed on Christmas.”

Collector’s Comments:

Like the Chinese food recipe that I collected from my mother, I wanted to interview members of other minority folk groups in America and investigate their Christmas food traditions. I thought that interviewing a Jewish person would be particularly informing due to the religious conflict of interest. Obviously, Jewish people would celebrate Hannukah a few days after Christmas and care less about the Christian holiday. I found Jonah’s responses to be very interesting – he mentioned that many Jewish families in his immediate network simply considered the Christmas holiday as a period of rest and would also order Chinese takeout for Christmas dinner. This tradition appears to be folkloric in nature among the Jewish-American folk group. Jewish families appreciate the day of rest and choose not to cook a large, effortful dinner for many mouths, opting instead for the convenience of Chinese takeout. This practice appears to be shared among many Jewish families and is an incredibly interesting discovery in my collection process.

Collected By:

Evan Fu, 21

Palo Alto, CA

Hanover, NH

Dartmouth College

RUSS013

Fall 2021

Dartmouth Folklore Archive