Where are all the Jewish home crafts?

RH Card

Holidays – especially Christmas – bring out the craft ideas. This young woman wrote looking for a craft connection to Jewish holidays.

Dear Dawn: I have always loved Christmas, especially the crafts that I make for the holiday. I create home decorations from candles to toys to table centerpieces, and I also love to make my own Christmas cards. My Jewish fiance is OK with me decorating for Thanksgiving but is uncomfortable with my ideas for Christmas. I’m willing to try to invest some time in Hanukkah crafts, but I just don’t see many that appeal to me. Can you help me figure out how to be able to practice my hobbies without upsetting my relationship? — Crafty Gal

Dear Crafty: Let me assure you that you are not alone. Crafting is one of the most popular hobbies in America, and in fact crafting is actually good for you! Christmas is the No. 1 money-making holiday in America, so don’t expect its omnipresence to diminish. Christmas season arrives in late September and lasts through January. During this time dogs become Christmas dogs, trains become Christmas trains, etc.

Many people love the holiday simply because it is imbued with stimuli to our senses. Christmas smells good, tastes good, sounds good, looks good and feels good. Then layer those senses over years of memories and you have the Superman of holidays. For the vast majority of Americans, Christmas is a time of familiar memories. Everyone has rituals that are meaningful, whether it’s going to church or leaving cookies for Santa. In your case, it’s crafting. The holiday gives you reasons to sew, embroider, bake, make cards and so on.

In trying to be sensitive to your partner, you are facing the problem of unfortunate timing. The excitement of multiple fall Jewish holidays ends in October, and there’s a dry spell until Hanukkah. The rabbis sometimes refer to this period of time, the month of Cheshvan, the bitter month. Just as Judaism is getting quiet, Christianity and American culture are charging up. Starting with Halloween and continuing through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, America is in full holiday mode. There is a visible effort made to build up Hanukkah so that this little David can match Goliath, but it’s no contest.

You and your fiancé will need to seek a compromise. But first you must articulate what you desire. I want you to find concrete ways of expressing your crafting joy so that your fiancé can better understand what motivates and excites you. Otherwise he will probably keep saying no to Christmas because he doesn’t feel comfortable with it.

Crafty, we’re going to take a two-pronged approach. First, let’s look at crafty options that could appeal to him.

Hanukkah crafts are out there. Take a look at Pinterest. I’m not as organized as I should be, so I have both a Crafty Ideas board and a Hanukkah board. There are home decorations galore; see if any appeal to you. These are ideas that should absolutely work for your Jewish sweetheart.

Second, look at what you already have and see if it could be modified to be “wintery” instead of specifically Christmasy. If you love to twist a garland on your banister because it smells good and evokes the holiday, how about decorating it with some shiny dreidel crafts? A woman I know has a beautiful winter scene with trees and deer all made of wood that she puts on her mantle. She’s Jewish and does this for her Catholic husband who grew up with a crèche. I know another woman who repurposes all of her animal-shaped cookie cutters from tree decorations to either Sukkah decorations or uses the animal cookies for a special treat on the Shabbat of Parashat Noah.

Finally, Hanukkah doesn’t have the cachet of Christmas, so it may not be enough for your crafting needs. So branch out. Look into craft options for Purim, Passover, Sukkot and Shabbat all year-round.

Published in the J-weekly.