Hanukkah Bush - Anecdotes

Anecdotes

In a 1959 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, actress Gertrude Berg described her father's substitution of a "Chanukah bush" in place of a Christmas tree.

Another family's dynamic is described by Edward Cohen, in a memoir about Jewish life in 1950s Mississippi:

I recalled the year I had asked my mother for a Christmas tree. It had seemed like a fun and harmless thing.... My mother refused, at first patiently.... We had Hanukkah, a minor military holiday transformed by the combined pressure of thousands of Jewish children over the years into a substitute for Christmas.... But I wanted a tree.

Exasperated finally, she said it would have to be in my room with the door shut because she wouldn't have any Christmas tree in her window. It was characteristic of her that she didn't take the easier approach of some Jewish parents who, without rabbinical sanction, were buying small, squat Christmas trees and renaming them Hanukkah bushes. They would put a Star of David at the top and hang little figures of the Maccabee warriors and a few incongruous Santas for variety. To my mother that was nothing but an agronomical ruse.

The phrase "Hanukkah bush" is not used seriously. It is generally understood to be a thin verbal pretense, a shorthand reminder that "we have a decorated tree for the holiday season but we do not celebrate Christmas. Peter W. Williams writes:

Some Jews eager to approximate Gentile customs... and with tongue firmly in cheek—add a "Hanukkah bush," or Christmas-tree substitute, and even have visits from "Hanukkah Harry" or "Uncle Max, the Hanukkah man" a clear counterpart to a well-known Christmas figure.

It often has the flavor of a joking apology or excuse, particularly to other Jews, for having been caught celebrating a custom that is agreeable but not quite proper. Thus, we read in a novel:

"Louis was so unorthodox I caught him buying a Christmas tree one night.... Louis tried to fob it off as a Hanukkah bush."

"Did you ream him out?"

"Of course. As we were carrying it home. I was merciless."

Susan Sussman's 1983 children's book, There's No Such Thing as a Chanukah Bush, Sandy Goldstein, explores the difficulties felt, not only by Jewish families in a predominantly Christian society, but the sometimes sharper tensions between Jewish families that do and do not have holiday trees. In the story, a wise grandfather resolves the situation by taking Robin, the have-not child, to a Christmas party given by his union chapter— a party he helped to organize. Thus, the book draws a distinction between sharing the Christmas holiday (which it approves) and observing it (which it questions). Robin's concluding thought is that maybe her friend "needed a Chanukah bush" because she lacked "friends who shared with you." A television adaptation of the book won an Emmy award in 1998.

A December, 1974 New York Times ad by Saks Fifth Avenue offers an array of holiday merchandise including a "happy bagel" ornament, "painted and preserved with shellac, ready to hang on a Christmas tree, Chanukah bush, or around your neck, 3.50."

In a 1981 contretemps over a Nativity scene in the South Dakota capitol, a side issue involved a Christmas tree which had been decorated with seventeen Stars of David. The stars had been made by students at the Pierre Indian school. Governor William J. Janklow said that the tree was not the "Hanukkah bush" he had jocularly talked of contributing. The stars were redistributed among other Christmas trees in the display, to avoid giving offense to some Jews by implying that the state endorsed Hanukkah bushes.

Obviously a Hanukkah bush would not bear decorations having explicit Christian associations (such as an ornament with a picture of the Magi). However, this is not a conspicuous omission because most U.S. traditional Christmas tree ornaments, such as colored balls and tinsel, have no such associations as even some online artificial Christmas tree retailers sell artificial Hanukkah bushes and star of David tree toppers.