Dear Santa: What my 6-year-old Jewish daughter asked for Christmas

I have never had a Christmas tree.

I have never had my photo taken with Santa Claus.

I have never had mistletoe hanging in my house.

I have never had a Christmas fruit cake (although to be honest, I think that one is more about my palate than anything else).

Why? It’s simple, I am a Jew and it never occurred to me to do these things. My parents never did any of that and they taught us simply that Christmas was not something we celebrated.

Now, as a father, I am faced with Christmas traditions invading the “safe space” I had always lived in, especially when it comes to my young daughters. I was first challenged by my kids with a very reasonable question, “Why can’t we have a Christmas tree?” This was followed by “Why can’t we celebrate Christmas when all our friends do?”

Then, my daughters took a slight detour and deduced that presents for eight nights might be better — at least numbers-wise — than just one day of Christmas gifts. And the other day, my eldest starting quizzing me about who “Jesus Christ” was and I watched her head almost “explode” when I told her Jesus was Jewish!

As a parent, we live with the instinct to make our children happy and often slip into “spoiling” territory. As a proud Jew, I have always reveled, in a way, that I never celebrated Christmas.

Passing on this pride in being part of a unique tribe and having our own traditions to my children has, at times, been a challenge. But I have found a level of matter-of-factness and direct answers to any and all questions works best. That may sound obvious, but let’s be honest, most parenting is NOT truly obvious!

As we live in Thailand, a country of 70 million where maybe 1,000 Jews live, the Christmas traditions, often commercial in nature, abound.

Last week, my daughter’s teacher had the children writing letters to Santa Claus. Not that anyone informed me, but I would have liked to have spoken to my daughter about this in advance — to at least put things in context. I would have liked to explain that, while she is Jewish, it is good to learn what others believe in and, well, the idea of Santa Claus is actually fun.

Eventually, my wife saw the children’s letters to Santa displayed on the outer glass of the classroom. She took a photo of my daughter’s letter to Santa Claus and sent it to me. My daughter wrote the following:

“Dear Santa, I have been a very good girl. This year I want my tooth to come out and Hannukah to be good. Thank you. From Rebekah.”

My daughter had drawn the menorah, a dreidel, latkes, chocolate gelt and the all-important sufganiyot.

While reading the letter, I was shepping nachas and kvelling over what I felt was the perfect letter to Santa Claus from a 6-year-old Jewish girl.

Now, if only I could find out what Santa’s reaction was!

Happy Hanukkah!