Early in their relationship, Danielle Rupright talked with her boyfriend, Shawn West, who was brought up Methodist, about how much she valued her Jewish faith and culture.
“I said, ‘It’s important to me that I raise my kids as Jews,’ ” she recalled. “And he responded, ‘It’s important to me that my kids grow up to explore things and ask questions.’ ”
One marriage and two kids later, the Wests now are raising their children, ages 12 and 16, in an interfaith household.
And on Wednesday — Christmas Day — a tree and menorah will share center stage in their Marshall home.
For the first time since 2005, Christians — at 2.4 billion worshippers, the world’s largest religion — will celebrate their savior’s birth as Jews mark the start of Hanukkah, an eight-night festival of lights commemorating the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Maccabees after they defeated the Syrians in the 2nd century B.C.
For Danielle West, 46, now a community engagement director for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, December is defined by Hanukkah. But her husband, who has secular leanings and mostly believes in science and history, still lays claim to Dec. 25.
“He supports us having a Jewish home 364 days a year — but Christmas is a gift to him,” she said. “And I love my Christmas tree.”
Blending traditions
Before 2005, the two holidays had last lined up in 1921 and 1959. It won’t happen again until 2035, then 2054.
The overlap between calendars presents some knotty situations for interfaith couples.
That group’s population is growing in the United States. Today, nearly one in every four American marriages is considered interfaith, according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
An official with the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh estimated one out of three Roman Catholic adults living in the Pittsburgh area is in an interfaith marriage.
The percentage is even higher among the roughly 50,000 Jews in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland counties.
In 2017, almost half of married Jews in the greater Pittsburgh area wed someone from a different faith, according to a Brandeis University study.
For some living in the Pittsburgh area, Dec. 25’s calendar conundrum presents fewer either/or decisions than it does opportunities to blend traditions and cultural backgrounds.
“Christmas is so much easier to do,” laughed Andrew Baton-Soffietti, 35, a union carpenter from Pittsburgh’s Highland Park neighborhood who self-identifies as “culturally Jewish” and married a biracial Mennonite woman in 2015.
“Since none of us are really religious, we pick and choose the details of the holidays without any guilt.”
Chrismukkah
Elan Mizrahi is used to weathering the push and pull between Christmas and Hanukkah.
But this week, for the first time in more than a decade, Mizrahi didn’t drive on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to celebrate Christmas at his in-laws’ New Jersey home.
Instead, the Pittsburgh-based photographer flew to Florida, where three generations of Jews — Mizrahi and his wife, Vanessa, who converted to Judaism; the couple’s 3-year-old daughter; and his parents — will light menorah candles on Christmas Day.
“If we went back to New Jersey, we wouldn’t have been able to celebrate with my parents,” said Mizrahi, 35, of Polish Hill. “Having my daughter be a part of Vanessa’s family’s celebration is something we want her to enjoy. It’s good family time … but we’re Jewish.”
Some don’t choose one over the other. They blend them.
The concept of “Chrismukkah,” a portmanteau merging the names of the two winter holidays, started in and around Germany in the 19th century. The idea was widely popularized, however, in 2003, when a character from the TV drama “The O.C.” celebrated the holiday to represent his interfaith upbringing.
By 2007, another mashup of holiday names — “Chrismahanukwanzakah” — appeared in a Virgin Mobile commercial.
A search last week for “Chrismukkuh” on Amazon yielded nearly 300 items. The online retail giant sold more than 500 “Chrismukkah-inspired yarmulkes,” a Jewish head covering in Santa Claus colors and trim, in the past month.
Though some celebrate “Chrismukkah” annually, it will be 11 more years before Dec. 25 on the Gregorian calendar and the first night of Hanukkah — 25 Kislev 5785 on the 354-day Hebrew calendar — again overlap.
Easier without kids
Abbey Farkas and Amanda Burns of Pittsburgh’s Observatory Hill neighborhood haven’t blended their traditions as brazenly.
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Farkas, who is Jewish and uses they/them pronouns, grew up celebrating Jewish holidays in Squirrel Hill at a dining room table that often included family friends, neighbors and acquaintances who were Christian. Burns was raised in a largely secular, “culturally Christian” household in Berks County.
After meeting more than a decade ago while attending Penn State, the queer couple married in 2018.
Burns admits it “took a while to grow into” Farkas’ Jewish traditions, especially going to religious services. But, December holidays, however they’re intermingled, don’t seem to provoke their family.
“There’s more friction over where we’re going to spend Thanksgiving than where we’re spending Christmas and Hanukkah,” said Farkas, 35, who has worked as a videographer since returning home from Washington, D.C., about six years ago.
“Amanda and I don’t have children and we do not intend to have children — and that has made the conversations infinitely easier,” Farkas said. “For me, it’s about sharing cultural experiences with nephews and nieces.”
“And with me!” Burns chimed in.
Latkes and mussels
Baton-Soffietti, the Highland Park carpenter, grew up in an interfaith household. His mother is Jewish; his father, raised Christian, is not religious.
“I don’t really celebrate the Jewish holidays but I do have a mezuzah guarding my house,” he said, referring to a piece of parchment inscribed with Torah verses inside a small box affixed to the doorposts of many Jewish households.
His wife, Nia — Swahili for “purpose” — was raised Mennonite by a Black mother and white father. She was named after the fifth day of Kwanzaa, an annual celebration of African-American culture from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1.
The family often shuttles their children, ages 4 and 6, between unwrapping Christmas gifts at Nia’s mother’s home in the city’s Park Place neighborhood and sitting with Andrew’s parents as they light the menorah in Highland Park.
Thanks to the 2024 calendar, this Christmas-Hanukkah season might yield an interesting meal plan.
Growing up, Nia’s family marked Christmas Eve with the Feast of Seven Fishes, a holiday meal popular with Italian-Americans.
They eat mussels Dec. 25.
“That has somehow become our most fervent Christmas tradition,” she said. “If you start the day with that much protein, I don’t care how much candy you have.”
So, on Wednesday, the family will celebrate Christmas morning with freshly cooked mussels, then head to Andrew’s parents’ house for a holiday dinner that could include lighting a menorah and eating fried potato latkes.
Traditionally, fried foods have a place at the Hanukkah table, reflecting what Jews believe was a miracle that allowed a small band of warriors thousands of years ago to light a menorah for eight days with only a one-day supply of oil.
While the Baton-Soffiettis will exchange gifts on Christmas morning, there won’t be any appearances from an Elf on the Shelf or Santa Claus.
“It’s more, ‘You need to be good because I’m in charge, not mythical creatures,’ ” Nia said.
Bringing people together
The Rev. Terry O’Connor grew up in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh’s center of Jewish life, in an interfaith family — his father, the late Bob O’Connor, Pittsburgh’s 58th mayor, was Catholic; his mother, Judy, was Jewish.
“I think, as a kid, we had the best of both worlds,” O’Connor, 55, the pastor at Mary, Mother of God parish, said of the mixture of faiths during his upbringing. “I just grew up with it. I wasn’t baptized ‘til I was 19, so this was natural to me. And I think it was a blessing, to bring my family together like that.”
O’Connor’s got a busy week ahead of him.
His parish, which boasts members from four Mon Valley churches, will hold seven Christmas Masses on Tuesday and Wednesday. Three priests, including O’Connor, will lead services.
On Tuesday night — Christmas Eve — O’Connor will embrace a less spiritually defined side of the holidays: a party at his parents’ home, which their children maintain, with guests from multiple faiths.
The annual gathering — “which I always characterized as the United Nations,” O’Connor said — was started years ago, before his father died of brain cancer in September 2006, just eight months after being inaugurated.
On Christmas Day, O’Connor, who prefers to be called “Father Terry,” will celebrate at the Point Breeze home of his brother Corey O’Connor — the Allegheny County controller and former Pittsburgh councilman, who recently announced a bid for the mayor’s office.
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“For me, the focus on the spiritual end of things is the birth of our Lord,” O’Connor told TribLive.
“But the intermingling is the beauty of it,” O’Connor added, “and I’m always happy to be able to bring Catholic and Jewish people together at the holidays.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the Pittsburgh neighborhoods in which the mothers of Andrew and Nia Baton-Soffietti live.