Oy joy and holy kripe!

Chrismukkah is almost here which means the end of my fun run is done for at least another year. The book is charting #8 on Amazon's religious humor list and #1 for Jewish holiday books. There'll be coast to coast media tomorrow: from Martha Stewart Living and AM New York to Bozeman's local KBZK-TV news. Happy Chrismukkah to all

8 Days to Chrismukkah

To celebrate this bitterly cold Montana morning (it's been below zero the past few evenings), with just 8 days left before Chrismukkah, we've decided to go skiing at our local ski mountain. Minna wants me to be her personal ski instructor this year (rather than taking formal lessons from the professionals) and that makes me happy. We'll see how well we both do. For several weeks now, the paperback edition of my Chrismukkah book has been the #1 Jewish Holiday book on Amazon's list of best sellers. It's also been as hight as #10 on the religious humor list.... for whatever that's worth. http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/12561/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_1_4_last Like so many others this year, I've been toying with Facebook and Twitter as ways of getting the word out. I love FB as a way of staying in touch with friends, and Twitter is great for keeping tabs on late breaking news... but as "marketing" tools.... I don't get it.

The Book is screaming up the charts

Today, the paperback reissue of my book "Chrismukkah: Everything You Need to Know to Celebrate the Hybrid Holiday" hit #2 on Amazon's best selling Jewish holiday new releases. However, I was soon overtaken by the incendiary pager turner "Professional Digital Techniques for Photographing Bar and Bat Mitzvahs." It's now settled in at the #3 position.

Chrismukkah book now available in paperback

I'm happy to see the paperback edition of my book "Chrismukkah: Everything you need to celebrate the hybrid holiday" has finally arrived in bookstores and on amazon.com

Chrismukkah book now in paperback

Chrismukkah

Everything You Need to Know to Celebrate the Hybrid Holiday

On October 1st, 2009 my publisher (Harry N Abrams / Stewart Tabori and Chang) will ship the paperback version of my book to bookstores across America. Apparently, the hardcover version sold out so quickly, they want to spread the cheer further by re-releasing it at a bargain list of only $10.95. Mazeltov! For those who prefers their books with a harder cover, we still have a few copies of the original, now collectible, edition in the Chrismukkah.com store... while they last. Authors: By Ron Gompertz Imprint: Stewart, Tabori & Chang ISBN: 1-58479-770-3 EAN: 9781584797708 Availability: Prepublication Publishing Date: 10/1/2009 Trim Size: 7 x 7 Pages Count: 144 Cover: Paperback Illustrations: Color illustrations throughout About the book: Christmas meets Hanukkah for millions of mixed-faith families—who deck their trees with Stars of David and spin the dreidel under mistletoe. Here is a one-of-a-kind, amusingly illustrated and endlessly entertaining guide to the joys—and oys—of celebrating Chrismukkah, the hybrid holiday. Now published in paperback, this handy (and often hilarious) lifestyle guide walks us through all the Chrismukkah events, history , and lore. You’ll learn about hybrid holiday traditions in decorating (ornaments, wreaths, menorahs, dreidels); innovative tchotchkes (Chrismukkah cards, stockings, lights); and a plethora of menorah options (Godzilla or snowman, anyone?). Plus, the book includes rollicking games to play and songs to sing, along with easy-to-follow recipes for Latkes with Sugar Plum Fairy Sauce, General Saul’s Chicken, Mama Mia Matzah Pizza!, Blitzen’s Blintzes, and other Noel Noshes. Your yuletide happy hours will never be the same once you start mixing a Yule Plotz, Meshugga Nog, or Manishewitz Mulled Wine. It’s beginning to look a lot like Chrismukkah, and now we’ll all be ready to celebrate with style! About the author: RON GOMPERTZ is founder of www.chrismukkah.com and author of the Chrismukkah Cookbook. He and his wife are a mixed-faith couple, and they live with their daughter in Bozeman, Montana.

http://www.abramsbooks.com/Books/Chrismukkah-9781584797708.html

Chrismukkah '08 - Our 5th Anniversary

It's nearly Chrismukkah time again. We have our hybrid holiday, our hybrid car, our hybrid daughter, and even our new hybrid president. If only our economy would be more hybrid, everything would be alright. My publisher tells me that in June 2009 my book "Chrismukkah:Everything you need to know to celebrate the hybrid holiday", will be out in paperback. That's a good omen for a better year. In the meantime, Merry Mazeltov and Oy Joy to all.

No not again

How could it be? Another year already? Oy for Joy and Holy Moses. Chrismukkah #4 is nearly here. And this one will be an early one. Hanukkah starts December 4th. Better get my hybrid act together. Maybe hire a few Chrismukkah helpers... ummm... Schmelves? Groan... can I really do this again? What's it going to take to get in the spirit of this merry mutation. Last year, at least I had the big book tour to look forward to. Lines of admiring fans. Radio interviews on NPR. Nights on the town with editors and publishers. Groupies galore. This year... what is it? Used copies of my book are selling on Amazon.com for .23 cents. Jeezus jewish mother of christ. How the mighty have fallen. We won our trademark battle, but will anyone care? With our patron saint / nemesis "The OC" having been cancelled and off the air, will anybody really care about Chrismukkah? We shall see.

Walmart Embraces Chrismukkah!

Only two short years ago, the fledgling Chrismukkah.com was at the center of the season's hottest holiday controversy after William Donahue's infamous New York Catholic League shot the opening salvo in the "War on Christmas" by denouncing Chrismukkah in a series of nationally distributed press releases:

“We are deeply concerned about the spiritual misrepresentation of a newly created ‘holiday’ called Chrismukkah... Chanukah and Christmas celebrated during the same period should not be fused into some cultural combination that does not recognize the spiritual identity of our respective faiths. Copying the tradition of another faith and calling it by another name is a form of shameful plagiarism we cannot condone. Frankly, those who seek to synthesize our spiritual traditions may be well intended, but they are insulting both of us simultaneously."

Catholic League Press Release

Well, a lot's changed in two years. This season, (under pressure from the Catholic League and other fundamentalist organizations), WALMART put the Christ back into shopping. Walmart axed the too secular "Happy Holidays" as it's official greeting and replaced it with (gasp!) "Merry Christmas."

Yet, in Cyberspace it's a whole 'nother Walmart. I was pleased to learn that Walmart is selling my new mish-mash holiday book on Walmart.com, but their enthusiasm for Chrismukkah didn't stop with there. If you Google "Chrismukkah" you'll see that Walmart is now evangelizing "Chrismukkah" through an aggressive ad campaign promoting themselves as the official Chrismukkah site! Here's a cut and paste of their Google ad:

Wal-Mart Official Site
Chrismukkah
97-cent Shipping. Get Ahead!
www.walmart.com

This year, Walmart's Chrismukkah celebration seems to be under the radar of the Catholic League, who posted a McCarthyesque request that true believers turn in those who would abuse Christmas. This from their website:

"Every December sees its fair share of "Grinches," those retailers, schools, websites, towns and municipalities who refuse to acknowledge Christmas as part of the "holiday season." These Christmas kill-joys are all around.

This Christmas, the Catholic League, Father Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. and the other Franciscan Friars of the Renewal have joined up to put the spotlight on these folks. Should you notice one of these Grinches, please let us know. You may submit the details either by faxing the Catholic League at 212-371-3394, writing to us at 450 Seventh Avenue, New York, New York 10123 or by e-mailing Catholic League

We encourage readers to let the Catholic League know of your outrage over Walmart's Chrismukkah blasphemy.

The first book review is in... and it's not so bad!

Review From the Jewish Forward

A Holly Jolly Hybrid Holiday

by Daniel Treiman | Fri. Dec 08, 2006
Chrismukkah: Everything You Need To Know To Celebrate the Hybrid Holiday
By Ron Gompertz*
Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 144 pages, $17.95*


Ron Gompertz has found the solution to the December Dilemma: He punts.

Gompertz is the self-appointed pied piper of Chrismukkah, a hybrid holiday popularized three years ago by the Fox television series “The O.C.” A New York Jew transplanted to Montana (of all places) and married to the daughter of a United Church of Christ pastor, Gompertz jumped on the Chrismukkah bandwagon (to the apparent chagrin of the creator of “The O.C.”), launching the Web site Chrismukkah.com, where he sells greeting cards and various holiday-related tchotchkes.

Now he’s written a book, “Chrismukkah: Everything You Need To Know To Celebrate the Hybrid Holiday.” In 144 colorful pages, Gompertz serves up a syncretistic smorgasbord of do-it-yourself recipes (“Fa La La Latkes”), drinks (“Yule Plotz Egg Nog”) and decorations (What’s a Chrismukkah tree without “menorahments”?). Gompertz, whose sense of humor is decidedly more ham than wry, also tosses in hybridized holiday song lyrics, a list of Hollywood “half-Hebrews” and some silly stories, including one in which Mrs. Claus divorces her cheating, sleigh-riding husband and is swept off her feet by “Hanukkah Harry.”

“Chrismukkah is a celebration of diversity, a global gumbo of cherished secular traditions,” Gompertz writes. “It’s the good stuff we all enjoy, no matter what our religion: sleigh bells, eggnog, snowmen, twinkling lights, flickering candles, exchanging gifts with family and friends.”

To those who may think that Chrismukkah is nothing more than newfangled nonsense, Gompertz has a ready retort: Tradition! As it turns out, the holiday has a long history in Gompertz’s family. His mother was born in Germany, her father a Lutheran and her mother Jewish. Before Hitler’s rise to power, the family, like many other assimilated German Jews, celebrated both December holidays, a combination that was dubbed “Weihnukkah,” from Weihnachten, the German word for Christmas — in other words, Chrismukkah.

Indeed, as Gompertz notes, the winter holidays have histories of hybridity. Many traditions associated with Christmas — including the fact that it’s even celebrated in the winter — have pagan roots. Santa Claus is himself a mélange of some dozen different folkloric figures. And let’s be honest, what is Hanukkah, as celebrated today, with its eight nights of gifts, if not an effort to one-up (or seven-up, as the case may be) Christmas?

Chrismukkah is certainly fun for the kids. (Really, what kid wouldn’t like a pine tree decked with bagels?) But is it good for the Jews? And is it good for Christmas? Some clearly don’t think so. In 2004, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and the New York Board of Rabbis issued a joint statement blasting the made-up holiday for “spiritual misrepresentation.”

True, Jesus plays little more than a bit part in “Chrismukkah,” and the Maccabees aren’t much in evidence, either. But Gompertz has no hidden agenda. “As a brand-new, twenty-first-century pseudoholiday, Chrismukkah is more connected to postmodern pop-culture traditions than the ancient ones,” he writes. Those up in arms over Chrismukkah are railing at the symptom of a much larger problem: Christmas and Hanukkah are so commercialized that they already have been stripped of much of their deeper religious meaning.

Personally, having grown up in a family in which not having a Christmas tree was as central to our Jewishness as lighting the menorah, I was prepared to hate “Chrismukkah.” But it’s hard to hate a book that features pictures of dogs wearing yarmulkes, snowmen made out of matzo balls and delightfully schmaltzy jokes on almost every page — even for a grinch like me. I may not like the hybrid holiday, but I have to give credit where it’s due: Ron Gompertz has written a very merry Chrismukkah book. Ho, ho, ho — and oy, oy, oy.

Daniel Treiman is the founding editor of The Brooklynite magazine and a former associate editor at the Forward.

Happy Chrismukkah to all the Evas in the World

This post is in response to Eva, who doesn't like the idea of Chrismukkah and wrote a series of comments to my last blog entry. Let this serve as a more general response to the similar critical emails we receive each year from both Christians and Jews:

Eva, thanks for your thoughtful reply.

First of all, I'd like to clear up a few things you've accused me/us of. Not that it really matters all that much, but I feel obligated to correct your incorrect assumptions. It's because of people who lack tolerance and holiday cheer that we created Chrismukkah.com in the first place. You don't know us, but you go out of your way to post to the Chrismukkah blog...apparently just to put us down. It saddens me to feel the condescension, anger and resentment in your words, and I can only wonder how your brand of Judaism brought you there.

1 - You oddly assume we are raising our daughter as a Christian, and to celebrate Christmas. Where did you get that from? It's actually the opposite. Michelle and I together decided a few years ago to raise our daughter as a Jew. Our daughter was named in honor of my maternal grandmother, the German-Jewish daughter of pre-Israel Zionists, a woman who married the handsome Lutheran boy next door, only a few years before the Holocaust began. I am on the board of directors of our community temple. I am a proud Jew. I went to Hebrew school, was Bar Mitzvah'd and am very involved in our small Jewish community here in Bozeman. Our rabbi instructed us that Reform Judaism considers one who is raised as a Jew, with Jewish traditions, is indeed a Jew, even if the mother isn't. I know that may not go down well with Conservative Jewish beliefs, but that is what we chose to do.

2 - Yes, I could use a spell checker. Clearly, spelling is not my forte... but I just type, without worrying too much about spelling, typos and grammar. It's just a blog. One I can't imagine many people are interested in reading. It doesn't help that I code in raw HTML, without benefit of a spell checker. And, obviously, I don't have an editor on staff here at Chrismukkah.com.

3- Believe it or not, we have not profited from Chrismukkah. The niche appeal of the site pretty much guarantees we never will. Chrismukkah is a labor of love, a project of the heart. Over the past 3 years, it's been a sort of "mitzvah", as my rabbi calls it. I don't mean to bitch, but you brought it up. Since founding the site 3 years ago, it's cost considerably more to operate the Chrismukkah venture than we receive in sales and royalties combined. While I certainly wouldn't oppose being compensated for the thousands of hours it's taken to build and maintain the website, write and photograph content for the two books, and answer the dozens of emails we receive each day, making a profit from Chrismukkah.com has never been a priority. This is a volunteer project... we receive no compensation.

Why do we do this then? It's a form of social activism, I suppose. Ego motivates me too, no doubt. It's nice to get fan mail, and for every negative comment like yours, there are 10 positive comments. Frankly, it's fun to challenge the status quo and question tradition. Chrismukkah has gotten people talking, allowing expression of diverse opinion, and it's helped bring Jewish intermarriage issues to mainstream cultural awareness. Michelle and I launched the site to express the views of our "real" interfaith family, rather than allowing a fabricated Fox TV family to represent us. While we are typical, in the sense that (until Chrismukkah) we never had a political or theological agenda, we certainly don't believe we represent the beliefs of all interfaith couples. That said, it has been a nice surprise to find how many others share our beliefs and values. We've found that celebrating both December holidays... not literally merging them... but celebrating both, rather than excluding one or the other, we manage to keep peace and harmony within our family. Our family celebrates Hanukkah as most American Jews do - with menorah lighting, latke frying, dreidel spinning, and gift exchanges on each of the 8 nights. We also have a Christmas tree in our living room, in the opposite corner of course, and my wife cherishes the ritual of decorating the tree. I've heard from many Jews who say they refuse to allow their spouse to bring a Christmas tree into the house... that having a tree disrespects their Judaism. I don't believe that's a very good way to make a marriage work.

4 - Agreed. Hanukkah is not an important Jewish holiday... at least it's not relative to the more religious Jewish holidays. Hanukkah commemorates Jewish oppression and the ongoing struggle for religious freedom. But it's not a particularly religious holiday, making it more acceptable to make light of.

5- My family celebrates Hanukkah and Christmas independently. Then we also have our pretend shared family holiday of Chrismukkah. Chrismukkah allows us to enjoy what we have in common, instead of accentuating what makes us different.

6- Not all Jews live in Jewish safe havens like New York. Try living or traveling elsewhere to learn how a broader cross-section of Jews think and feel.

7 - Christmas is not just about Christ. It may well be for religious Christians, but for the rest of us, who, despite not believing in Christ, still can enjoy going to the Nutcracker Suite ballet, holiday music, holiday movies, the lights and decorations downtown, the store windows, and the other festive secular rituals of the season. Not to mention that long ago, our government decided to make Christmas a Federal holiday... just like Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, and MLK Day.