Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree

This post has a noticeably different flavor than most of the others.  Kate recently told me that she thought I should share more of my feelings about impending parenthood. 
I know that a lot of you who know me read that last sentence and are wondering why Kate doesn't know me as well as you do.
I assure you, she does. 
Anyhow, this post is discussing one of the things that I'm feeling about impending parenthood.  It's not as funny as most of the earlier posts... 

This is our last round of the traditional big holidays by ourselves. 
Kate was on call through Christmas, so we didn't have much of a Christmas in the traditional sense. 
The traditional sense for us is that we go to Milwaukee and spend Christmas with her family.  One of the advantages of being in a mixed marriage is that there's in the way of negotiation necessary for where to spend [some of] the holidays. 
Christmas for me is just December 25th.
Okay, that's not entirely true.  Christmas is more than December 25th, but not much more, and mostly not good.
Before going further I need to as strenuously as possible point out that Kate's family has always been incredibly welcoming of me (is that grammatically correct?  Or is it welcoming to me?) and pretty seamlessly folded me into their family Christmas celebrations since she and I got serious enough that it was appropriate for me to be there.  And they've never had any issues with the fact that I'm a Jew.  We have other friends that are in mixed marriages of different varieties that have not had it nearly so easy in that regard.  Mostly it makes the couple unite against the common enemy, which isn't necessarily a bad thing I suppose, but who needs that kind of crap in their lives?
Anyhow...
Kate's family has included me in their Christmas celebration from the beginning, and that's something (amongst lots of other things) that I'm very grateful for.  My experience of Christmas with them has been nothing but positive.
Having said that...
I really don't like Christmas very much.
First off, I have pretty strong feelings about the proper role of religion in a secular democracy.  It shouldn't have one.  Maybe I'd feel differently if my religion was the dominant one, but I don't think so.
Second off, if you're a Jew that grew up in a predominantly non-Jewish area, you spent your entire childhood surrounded things that you can't participate in, which in my case generates a degree of resentment.  I don't begrudge the Christians their holiday, have your holiday.  I just don't think it needs to be so aggressively foisted upon those of us for whom it's just December 25th.
And I've heard all the arguments about the secular nature of Christmas, and that it's a holiday for all of us, ect...

It's not.
By the way, I also know that there are Jews who celebrate Christmas, have trees and wreaths, and stuff like that, not to mention write popular Christmas songs.
The fact that some of us participate in the secularized version of Christmas doesn't make it a holiday for all of us.  I don't get that at all, by the way.  I know all about the pagan roots of the celebration, and how most of the traditional symbols of Christmas were stolen from pre-Christian religious practice.  It's still the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ their lord and savior.  That makes it pretty non-secular.
Also, I've never met an even remotely observant Jew that does any of that stuff.  And while I might be only remotely observant, I'm at least remotely observant.
Have your Christmas tree in your home and in your church. 
Mazel Tov.
Please keep it out of my tax-funded municipal and public spaces (including the White House lawn), and my State of Wisconsin work space (that's a whole other story).
And, not in my house.
I can't tell you why christmas trees have become the focal point of whatever feelings of resentment and isolation I got from growing up as a Jew in a Christian nation (and it is a Christian nation, just ask any non-Christian), but they have.
We have lights that Kate puts up every year, and this year she put a wreath on the front door.  I'm okay with the lights, I'm not thrilled about the wreath.  We also have stockings that we put up for ourselves and the critters.  That's about as much Christmas as I can tolerate in my house. 
Why does any of this matter?
Because we're having a kid.  The kid will be half Jewish.  He'll also be half not-Jewish.
We have no idea whatsoever right now how we're going to manage that.
I don't go to synagogue, there's not one in Madison that I can tolerate.  I observe the holidays as best I can.  I don't keep kosher (if I kept kosher I couldn't eat bacon, and lets face it, that's just a silly thing to not do.  If god didn't want us to eat pigs he wouldn't have made them so damn yummy).
Kate doesn't go to church.  She has referred to herself as a recovering Catholic in the past, and I think she's an Atheist, but I'm not certain.
I'm an Apathetic Agnostic (don't know, don't care).
But, I'm a Jew.  How practicing a Jew I am has nothing to do with it.  The kid is half a Jew.
Actually, by Jewish law he's not a Jew because Kate's not Jewish, but that's silly and obsolete.
Back in the middle of the last century six million people were slaughtered in Europe because they had at least 1/16 Jewish blood.  I'm quite positive that not every single one of those people were Jewish by Jewish law.  Thing is, the Nazis didn't give a shit.
And there are still people around that feel like they did.  There were swastikas painted on a synagogue in Appleton Wisconsin this week.
Also, it's orthodox Judaism's adherence to the exclusionary rules about who's a Jew, and orthodox Christianity's views that the only ticket to heaven is acceptance of god on their terms, that makes me an Apathetic Agnostic.  If god is the persnickety rigid rule bound nebbish of the orthodox Jews or the egotistical vindictive bastard of the orthodox Christians, why would I want anything to do with him?  I don't hang out with people like that, why would I hang out with a god like that?
What was my point?
Oh yeah.
We're going to have to go around about the christmas tree thing.  If the kid wants one we'll have to discuss it, I guess, but it's going to take a lot of discussion to get a christmas tree into my house.  There will be one at Grandma and Grandpa's in Milwaukee, and that's where we'll be for Christmas most years.

We don't know about what we're going to do about the kid's religion.
Also, just to be clear, we're not taking input on this one. 
At least I'm not.
I know there's books and research and what-all out there discussing the right and wrong ways to approach this question.
I don't care.  Don't tell me about it, I'm not interested.  Kate and I, and eventually EM will figure it out.
The kid will  know that he's half-Jewish, and what that means.  I have to do that, because there's always the real risk that some other kid will try to beat him up because of it, or call him something, or whatever.  He needs to know what that's about from me, not the schoolyard.  And then kick the shit out of that kid so definitively that anyone else that's inclined to behave that way towards him is appropriately deterred.
Everything else we'll figure out.
Including the christmas tree.