If you’re converting to Judaism and Christmas is coming up, you’re probably wondering what you’re supposed to do – and you may not feel comfortable asking out loud.
Christmas is one of the most emotionally complicated days of the year for Jewish conversion candidates in Europe and North America. It’s a religious holiday, a family event, a cultural season, and a deeply loaded emotional experience, all at once. That combination makes it uniquely hard to navigate when you’re in the middle of redefining your religious life.
Most advice about Christmas during conversion is either overly rigid or frustratingly vague. You’re told to “just don’t celebrate,” or you’re left to figure it out alone, quietly worrying that whatever choice you make will be judged or misunderstood.
This post is here to slow that panic down.
We’re going to talk about Christmas honestly – without shame, without pretending it’s simple, and without asking you to erase your past in order to build a Jewish future. Instead, we’ll look at how conversion actually works in real life: in stages, in families, and in a world where Christmas is everywhere.
If you’re feeling conflicted, uncertain, or tired of carrying this question alone, you’re in the right place.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
If you’re converting to Judaism and Christmas is coming up, you’re probably wondering, what are you supposed to do?
Christmas is one of the most emotionally complicated days of the year for conversion candidates in Europe and America.
So let’s talk about it. Without shame, panic, or pretending it’s simple.
Hi, I’m Kochava.
I’m a Jewish convert and I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, Building a Jewish Life.com.
If you’re struggling with this question, this channel is probably right up your alley, so make sure to subscribe.
If you go down into the description below, you can grab the free Hanukkah and Christmas Conversation Survival Guide.
It gives you ready to use responses, scripts, so that you don’t have to struggle while explaining your Jewish choices to friends, family members, coworkers, or bosses.
And it helps you set boundaries without being awkward, defensive, or rude.
And it’s gonna come in real handy with the questions we’re gonna explore in this video.
And if you want deeper support, my membership Bayit Builders is opening to new members January 11th through 15th, 2026.
So let’s get to the heart of the matter. This is one of the most common questions that conversion candidates have, but also the least likely one for them to ask.
Because you don’t wanna look like you’re going back to being a Christian or something, and you’re afraid that someone’s going to question your motives if you say, “well, maybe I would like to do X, Y, or Z. Will that undermine all the work you’ve been doing? So instead you just suffer alone and try to figure it out for yourself. It sucks, and you’re never happy with the outcome either.
We act like the Christmas question is really simple and straightforward, but it’s not. Yes, it’s a religious holiday.
It’s also a cultural event, a family event, and all of those things are extremely emotionally loaded.
Different rabbis, movements, and families handle these questions differently. But if you ask most people, the only way to handle it is their way.
But newsflash, every situation is different and needs to be handled on a case by case basis.
And that is fundamentally how Jewish law, Halakha, is supposed to work.
But also I don’t want you to undervalue the objections that Jews have to celebrating Christmas.
For Jews, Christmas is not a neutral holiday, it’s very much a religious holiday. After all, it’s celebrating the birth of another religion’s god.
We can dress it up in Santa and elves and reindeer all we want, but fundamentally, it’s still about celebrating the birth of a god.
And you can’t ignore the history here. Christmas, much like Easter, was a high time of persecution and violence against Jews.
There’s a lot of generational trauma there, and a lot of Jews have a very visceral reaction to the idea of celebrating Christmas.
I’ve made a simple framework to help you think through how you can process and make decisions here.
First, what does my rabbi or community expect? What are the community standards here? Has your rabbi given you explicit instructions in any way?
But it’s also a deeper question, how far are you in the conversion process? A rabbi is going to expect you to have a different experience of Christmas with your family when you are in the first months of conversion versus when you’ve been in the process for a year or more.
And I think that idea of stages of your conversion process is a really important one for this question.
Number two, what level of engagement feels appropriate and true to myself?
For most people, this is gonna hinge around the emotions that you have at this time of year. See, for me, I’m a Grinch. I hated Christmas.
It was not a positive experience for me growing up.
I grew up in an atheist family in the middle of the Bible Belt, I understood from a very young age that this was not my holiday and I didn’t like the commercialization and the cheapening of it, even though I didn’t have words for that when I was, you know, seven.
So for me, getting rid of Christmas was relatively easy. I won’t say it was painless. I did have to deal with a lot of these questions with my family.
But someone who has a lot of positive feelings around Christmas is going to have a much harder time disengaging.
That’s to be expected. And honestly, most Jews and rabbis are going to assume that is the case for you. I was able to jettison Christmas a lot faster than anyone expected.
We know Christmas can be amazing, and so we know that it’s hard to separate yourself from that.
Now the third question, we’re gonna branch out into other people’s feelings.
What will protect both my relationships and my integrity?
What are the expectations your family has around the holiday? What are the regularly scheduled events? Which practices are you assumed to be participating in, like gift exchanges, vacations, having the holiday at so-and-so’s house, going to midnight Mass, Christmas dinner.
What are they expecting and what are they wanting, and how does that mesh with what you want?
Most people are able to put in clear religious boundaries without ruining their family relationships, especially given enough time. I’ll link up here and down below in the description to my video about having these Hanukkah and Christmas conversations. It includes ready to use scripts that you can break out on your great aunt Midge.
It covers questions like, “are you coming for Christmas dinner?” “Why don’t you celebrate both?” ” Why did the Jews reject Jesus?”
Oh yeah. I don’t pull any punches.
If you’re new to Hanukkah, check up here and down below for a link to my video about Hanukkah 101.
Question number four is basically a vibe check. What would Future You want you to choose? What is the decision that you’re gonna be proud of when you look back?
But I don’t want you to use this process to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
You’re not gonna get the balance right the first time you do this. You’re probably not gonna get the balance right the fifth time you do this.
But are you moving in the direction you wanna go?
Changing family traditions takes time, and it is not painless to change them.
It can be really hard to change family traditions. It can be done and it’s done all the time. People die.
People marry in and bring their traditions.
And there’s a lot of friction around those things too.
So I don’t want you to think that you are demanding something that you don’t have a right to. You have every right to celebrate what you wanna celebrate and have your own holiday rhythms.
You’re probably gonna have mixed feelings. That’s totally normal. I’ll link up here and down below to one of my very earliest videos on YouTube about holiday season grief for Jewish converts.
But fundamentally, grief and relief can coexist. You can be glad to get rid of Christmas in some ways, and sad to get rid of it in others.
Yes, you gain from finding this religious path that works for you. But you also have losses along the way, and I think it does us a disservice to pretend that those losses aren’t real and they don’t hurt. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to miss things.
None of that means you’re failing. None of that means you’re a bad Jew. You are just a human having a deeply human experience.
So there are three ways you could approach these questions. One, full non-participation. You don’t touch anything that even smells of Christmas.
Actually, now that I think about it, I guess there is four, because two, you could go all in on Christmas if you wanted to. I’m not sure whether that would fly even in a reform conversion, but it’s it’s certainly a possibility on the table.
Three, which is what most people do eventually, is a limited engagement, focusing on relationships.
Maybe you attend a family meal, even if that means bringing your own kosher food.
Maybe that means still doing a gift exchange, except they’re giving you Hanukkah presents and you’re giving them Christmas presents.
The key is you’re showing up as a family member, not someone who’s celebrating the holiday. The analogy a lot of people like to give is going to someone else’s birthday party. Sure, you put on the hat, you eat the cake, but no one thinks that you’re the birthday boy.
You are able to be present without celebrating religiously.
And that Hanukkah and Christmas conversations video is going to give you a lot of tactics and workarounds for that.
Most rabbis will understand this is navigating relationships, not as backsliding.
Now the fourth approach, which is probably where you are right now.
I’m gonna call this transitional compromises.
Maybe it’s doing Christmas with your family and saying, “this is the last time, guys. This is our last Christmas together.”
Maybe you start modifying traditions and removing some of them.
But fundamentally, this is not a forever plan. This is a transition plan, a bridge. And it’s a great time to check in with your rabbi and talk through it with them.
These are thorny questions and most rabbis do have some experience in navigating relationships with non-Jewish family. Maybe you’ll get some good ideas.
And if you’re in the conversion process, it can be really key to understand your rabbi’s thought process around this and, and what they’re saying you should do.
But now. Let’s talk about the dirty little secret of Jews and Christmas: there are a lot of Jews who love Christmas.
You know, not the religious parts, but the fun cultural parts. The songs about reindeer, the corny Christmas movies on Hallmark Channel. All the sparkly lights. Even me, a Grinch, I love the lights.
Even many Orthodox people will enjoy these things when they come up. Do they seek them out? Probably not.
The one exception to that I would say is, is showing your kids Christmas lights. I’ve noticed a lot of people are willing to drive out for really cool Christmas lights for little kids.
And yes, there is a house that I do that with with my kids, which also has a Hanukkah section.
Is it corny and cheesy? Yes. Do I still like it? Yes. I probably like it because it’s corny and cheesy.
And yes, watching Christmas movies is quite common ‘ cause a lot of them are good movies.
I would also watch a movie about people celebrating Ramadan. There’s nothing wrong with watching a movie that features a different religious group than yourself. And you watching a Christmas romance between the Christmas tree lumberjack and the high powered executive from the city is not celebrating Christmas. That’s just having bad taste in movies.
But you need to use discernment in this.
Where it more comes into play is the music. A lot of Jews love Christmas carols, and in fact, most Christmas carols you know were written by Jews.
It’s one of those fun holiday facts that people will trot out every single year. So if you haven’t heard it already, you’re going to hear it 50 more times over the course of your life.
But if you are a practicing Jew, I don’t think you want to be singing songs that have lyrics that are theological and saying things about a relationship with Jesus that you don’t have. I for one, would find that disrespectful to Christianity, to just mouth these words without meaning it.
Fundamentally, there is a difference between appreciating the aesthetics of a celebration and participating in the religious aspects of that celebration. Enjoyment does not equal endorsement.
So here’s what not to do.
Do not make sweeping declarations that you’ll resent or regret later.
Remember that every year is likely going to be completely different as you find a normal that works for you.
Don’t punish yourself emotionally for having feelings about this.
Don’t shame yourself for enjoying familiar things that you have good associations with.
And definitely don’t let social media dictate your choices.
Don’t lie to your rabbi or yourself. Own your choices.
The key point here is don’t assume that one Christmas defines your Jewish future.
One day does not undo months or even years of sincere work.
Judaism doesn’t require you to pretend that the rest of the world exists,
and Judaism also doesn’t demand that you get rid of everything you used to be. Converting to Judaism should make you more fully yourself, not a new person.
You’re working to integrate your new self into the old self. You will always have these memories and experiences, likes and dislikes. And there’s nothing wrong with that, despite what some people will try to tell you.
So don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Don’t burn bridges that you are already wanting to burn anyway.
And as best as you can anticipate, decide in advance what you’ll say yes or no to.
Make the decisions when you’re not on the spot.
So if you don’t celebrate Christmas, what do you do on Christmas Day?
Well, there’s the Jewish stereotype of Chinese food and going to the movies. It’s a stereotype because it’s true. It is extremely common, and quite frankly, it’s a lot of fun. I highly recommend it.
The irony is that when I was a child, we used to go to the movies on Christmas Day because we didn’t like our Christmases either.
If you’re sad on Christmas day, be sad. That’s okay. Do things you love, and spend time with people you like. Consider getting a support buddy to get through the day. Someone you can spend time with or text with throughout the day, especially if thorny conversations are gonna come up with family or friends.
For families with kids who might be feeling that left outness at Christmas time, it’s a good time to plan something special but neutral so that the day doesn’t feel quite so empty.
Connect with Jewish content, learning, or community. We’re all in this together by definition.
So I hope what you understand from this video is that you’re not alone.
Thousands of other people are wrestling with these same questions you are, and very few of us are finding good answers.
That’s just life.
Do the best you can and always be moving forward towards your goals.
Nuance is allowed.
Our society may be moving farther and farther away from nuance, but you don’t have to. Nuance is important because this is your life we’re talking about, not an exercise on paper.
If you like this video, I hope you’ll subscribe for more practical, nuanced Jewish takes.
And remember to download the Christmas and Hanukkah Conversation Survival Guide that I linked down in the description below.
That’ll help you navigate those conversations and questions with dignity, clarity, and less emotional exhaustion.
Don’t forget that my membership Bayit Builders will be opening to new members January 11th through 15th, 2026.
We only open three times a year, so make sure to mark your calendar.
So good luck? Chag sameach!
