“My parents thought that not celebrating Christmas was unfair as a Jew, so we always had a Christmas tree with, like, 8,000 dreidels on it,” she said.
Her husband, John Nolan, said he was raised Catholic but no longer practices the religion. They’re raising their two kids in the Jewish faith and have them enrolled in Hebrew school, they said.
“It’s nice that they feel a part of both cultures,” Nolan said.
The Christmas-Hanukkah blend, often called “Chrismukkah,” was celebrated Saturday at Mamaleh’s Kibitz Corner in Cambridge, a Jewish restaurant, test kitchen, and event space owned by the group behind Mamaleh’s Delicatessens in Kendall Square, Brookline, and downtown Boston.
Co-owner and pastry chef Rachel Sundet welcomed visitors as they stepped in from the cold and shed their coats and scarves, revealing holiday sweaters beneath. Sundet wore a sweater adorned with snowflakes that read, “My latkes bring all the boys to the yard.”
Sundet said she is Jewish and her husband, Tyler Sundet, who is the company’s chef, was raised Lutheran, and they celebrate both holidays each year.
“Having an opportunity to do something that bridges both traditions is really fun and exciting,” she said. “Especially with the holidays really mashing up this year, it just felt like a nice opportunity to have a fun party that’s a little bit different and inclusive for everybody.”
Though the Sundet family celebrates both holidays, they probably won’t be opening presents on Christmas morning. Rachel Sundet said Mamaleh’s is open that day, so they’ll be at work, but they’ll be home to light their Menorah in the evening and enjoy some Hanukkah food.
For Nolan and Funkenstein, they’re planning to spend the day at home, opening presents in the morning before celebrating Hanukkah at night.
Hanukkah is a relatively minor Jewish holiday commemorating the recapture and rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in the second century BC. Christians consider Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Jesus, one of the two most important holidays on the calendar, along with Easter.
Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, said Hanukkah began to gain a presence in American culture as more Jews migrated to the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries.
“By the midpoint of the 20th century, you do begin to have the wider American culture noticing that Hanukkah exists and beginning to elevate it kind of in a popular consciousness alongside Christmas, even though it’s not as significant of a holiday in Judaism as [Christmas] is in Christianity,” he said in an interview Saturday.
Joslyn-Siemiatkoski said many observant Jews are wary of treating the two holidays as equal.
“The story of Hanukkah really is about Jewish survival and self–determination against a culture that tries to assimilate it,” he said. “That’s a real tension within ‘Chrismukkah’ itself, which can have a little bit of an assimilationist edge to it.”
Joslyn-Siemiatkosk said a “Chrismukkah” party, like the one hosted by Mamaleh’s, aims to be a “gesture towards pluralism and emphasizing that value in American culture.”
“Religious diversity is just a given in the United States, and especially in a place like the Northeast, where you have a high density of of Jewish communities sitting alongside the majority–Christian culture, you just tend to have families that are blended and close friendship networks that cross over between Christians and Jews,” he said. “So I think what a ‘Chrismukkah’ kind of party at best is trying to do is to recognize and validate each other, even if the claim isn’t being made that these are the same thing.”
Hanukkah begins on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev, a date that occurs between late November and late December on the Gregorian calendar. The Jewish calendar is based on lunar cycles, and is not in sync with the Gregorian calendar, which sets Christmas on Dec. 25.
The last time Hanukkah began on Christmas Eve was in 2016, and the last time the first night fell on Christmas Day, as it will this year, was in 2005. The term “Chrismukkah” gained wider popularity in 2003 when the character Seth Cohen on the 2003-2007 TV drama “The O.C.” embraced the fusion holiday as a tribute to his Jewish father and Protestant mother.
A 2021 report by Pew Research Center found that about 63 percent of the US population self-identifies as Christian. Jews, meanwhile, account for about 2.4 percent of the population, according to a 2020 study by Pew. The 2020 study also found that about 42 percent of married Jews said they have a non-Jewish spouse.
At Mamaleh’s Kibitz Corner, holiday music played overhead as more families stepped into the event space, surrounded by Christmas and Hanukkah decor. Tinsel in the traditional Christmas colors, red and green, wrapped around support beams, while others had blue and white tinsel, representing the colors of Hanukkah. A string of lights adorned with the Star of David hung from ceiling.
At a table in the back of the room, children decorated holiday cookies and made ornaments. While the kids were at work, their parents chatted nearby while snacking on latkes, mini sufganiyot, cows in a blanket, and rugelach.
Jack, the 5-year-old son of Nolan and Funkenstein, placed red stars and icing on a cookie shaped like a dreidel. He said he likes celebrating both holidays because his family comes together and they open presents.
“It’s basically an eight-day Christmas,” Jack said.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com.
