Thanksgivuchristmakah

Thanksgiving is never perfect. (This year, our dining room table snapped in two at the end of it.) But it usually comes pretty close.

I always cite the fourth Thursday in November as my favorite holiday. That’s saying a lot—drawing from two religious hats, I have a fair number to choose from. My Jewish father brings the apples and honey, menorahs and dreidels, and maror and charoset into our home, and my Episcopalian mother places nativity scenes on the mantle place and chocolate eggs in the corners and cupboards.

I did my time in Hebrew Sunday School. I learned my aleph, bet, gimels and my echad, sh’nayim, shaloshes, all the while jamming along to such rollicking classics as Shalom Rav and L’chah Dodi. I even memorized a few aliyot about Moses and company trekking through the desert. Then I had a (Venice-themed!) party, and I called it quits. All those years, however, I felt more Jew-ish than Jewish. And I never missed a Christmas.

Perhaps my schizophrenic religious upbringing is what draws me to a holiday as unabashedly secular as Thanksgiving. After all, I used to see the two sides of my devotional background as diametrically opposed. (“My dad’s a Jew,” my five-year-old self, fresh out of a temple sermon on the Hannukah story, told my friends, “and my mom’s a Syrian.”) I don’t have to contemplate where my allegiances lie when Turkey Day rolls around. In Cranberry Sauce I Trust, and it’s much easier that way.

Or so I thought—until Thanksgivukkah. Count me as one of the many to contribute to the hullaballoo surrounding this rare and sacred holiday convergence. The solar and lunisolar Gregorian and Hebrew calendars, for semi-scientific reasons a humanities girl like me could never quite understand, rarely match up this perfectly. Thanksgiving and Hannukah last fell on the same day in 1888, and they will not cross paths again till 79,811, when their observers may all have perished from this earth. That’s why, in this hallowed year of 2013, American Jews must carpe diem (or carpe noctem, since Hannukah does not begin till after sundown), and celebrate.

I’m not entirely sure why Thanksgivukkah matters in the grand scheme of things, but it turns out to matter in the much humbler blueprint of my own life. Because when, full of turkey and happiness, I lit the candles on my menorah for the first time this year, I realized for the first time what similar roles Thanksgiving and Hannukah play for me. And along with that, I realized where religion really fits in my life.

On Thanksgiving, I love having my family all in one place. I love waking up to the smell of sausage stuffing cooking away. I love the way the marshmallows bubble on top of the sweet potato soufflé, fresh out of the oven. I love the chocolate turkeys my grandma purchases for the “kids” every year. I love still being a kid for the day. I love forcing everyone to go around the table, sharing what we’re thankful for, and I love feeling like I could go on listing things I love till I hit my word limit.

These things exist for Hannukah and Christmas, too. I can fry up a mean latke, gorge myself on glittering gelt, and watch the last candle on the menorah slowly burn down one month and stick a star on top of an evergreen, pick the marzipan mushrooms off the bûche de Noël, and read out loud from A Christmas Carol the next without betraying anyone or anything. I’m definitely thankful for that.

Religion isn’t only prayers. It’s not only adherence to certain rituals. It’s not even only faith in the existence of a higher power. Just like Thanksgiving, it’s also family, fun, and—very importantly—food. It’s community, and it’s culture. I don’t need to reconcile any doctrine (or, more accurately, to decide whether or not to tack a New Testament onto the Old) to figure that much out. And when it does come to a deity, He—sorry, or She—can be whoever or whatever I want to believe in.

So Happy Thanksgiving, Hannukah, and soon enough, Christmas.

And God bless us, every one.

Molly L. Roberts ’16, a Crimson editorial writer, is an English concentrator in Cabot House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays. Follow her on Twitter @mollylroberts.