Christmukah part 2 - How Christmukah came to be

The truth is in real life I don't need to justify Christmukah anymore, but this is a new blog with new readers, and maybe it's not justifying but explaining. I was debating with myself for a week now if it's necessary or not to explain here why and how we decided to celebrate Christmas (and basically every other non-Jewish holiday. But Christmas is by far the biggest of them all).
This will be our 4th Christmas since we left Israel. The first one was 3 days after we arrived to Gibraltar so we don't really count that one, but the year after (Christmas 2010) we decided to celebrate Christmas like everyone - tree, stocking, milk & cookies for Santa, and lots and lots of presents.
That year I felt I had to justify our decision. Not even explain but justify. We got a lot of negative feedback for our decision from almost everyone we know, and I am guessing that some of the people never understood our reasons and still don't. 3 Christmases later, we really don't care anymore. For us, our decision worked great, and we feel that we made the right choices for our family.
I really am not trying to say it's the only choice  or even that it is objectively the best. Just that with our way of life, it was the best choice for our family.
So to be able to write this post and explain the why and how, I had to go back 3 Christmases, to the time just before Christmas 2010, and see what I wrote then. It took me a while but I found it, and since I think this decisions belong to that time in our life, I decided to just copy-paste what I wrote then (well obviously I had to translate it to English, but I kept everything else).
So this is me, December 2010:

This is a complicated subject, because even though I can say that I want to try and explain the way we relate to holidays, in reality the holidays are just one point out of a whole of Jewish identity, family identity, and the gaps between children and parents.
First of all I would like to say I know it's hard to understand it from Israel. I know, and I am not taking offense or feeling other negative feelings for those who does not agree with our decision  We couldn't understand it when we were living in Israel, and in fact last year we landed in Gib 3 days before Christmas and we were fine with not celebrating it. In fact we couldn't even imagine celebrating it at all. But a year has gone by, and things change.
Living outside your birth country intensify, I think, the gaps between children and parents. Why? Because when you raise your children in the same place you grew up they learn the same stories and songs that you learnt, have the same holiday traditions, and when they go to school they learn the same things we did, in much the same way. When you live someplace else, the kids speak a different language, learn different material in school, read different stories and sing different songs, they celebrate other holidays. They grow up in a "different world", and the we have less and less matching points with them, until it reaches the point that, if we are not careful, we will have none. This is, to us, the toughest problem to tackle inside the family. Every family deals with it, and to each their own way. Some of the people deny the problem. You can do that as long as the kids are young and you have more control on what they see / hear / talk / experience and such (for me it's up to age 4 and the beginning of school). Others deny the fact that they in fact live outside of Israel. They forbid English in the house, go to Israel whenever there is a holiday here, do not interact with people outside the Israeli community, teach the kids all the Israeli history when they are 5 and basically isolate the kids. Others yet go the religious route and choose to get closer to the Religious Jews, send the kids to the Jewish school, celebrate only Jewish religious holidays, and basically live inside a closed Jewish community. And the last part has older kids, who go to a public school, has local friends  and they can no longer ignore the fact that they live here, and that here you celebrate Christmas. Or Easter. And when you are the only Jewish child in your year or in the school, and everyone goes caroling, is it fair to take your child out of the performance?
I can remind people that the Israeli community in Gib is quite small, that there are about 5 kids Ron's age or up, and that the only Jewish option is a strict religious one we are not about to participate in. 
I can also remind people that most (if not all) the holidays derive from Pagan traditions that came before Judaism or Christianity,and that most of them are agriculture related. And that Hannukah, like Christmas derive from the winter celebrations that symbolizes the days getting longer and the end of winter. 
In the end I can also say that although for Jewish people everyone has to have a religious affiliation, and so most of the world is Christian, the reality is that a lot of the people in Europe (don't know about the US) do not define themselves through religion. They are not "Christians" but "Gibralterians" or "British" or whatever. And they all celebrate Christmas with a tree and all the trimmings.
And every word is true. But irrelevant. We are not religious people. We've never been. We didn't even celebrate most holidays before Ron was three or four. Needless to say we didn't celebrate any of them "the correct way".
And although I don't like the way the holidays are taught in Israel I can still appreciate the significance of it in Israel. Here? Here I want Ron and Yon to learn about tolerance and patience, about the ability to believe in whatever you want, about being nice and polite to everyone (including non-Jewish people). And no, I dot want them to know they are "different" or "special". I have no idea how many of people living in Gib are Christians, Protestants, Hindu, Muslims or Jewish. And I want Ron and Yon to know that it doesn't matter (I know some thinks it makes my naive. So be it). 
So we decided to emphasize these things - that Hannukah is about freedom of belief, and that is why we are not putting a Hannukah Bush in the house. It's a beautiful holiday that does not need to be "Christmatize", which is exactly what a Hannukah Bush is - a way to do Christmas without admitting that is what you are doing. Hannukah and a bush have nothing in common. And that Christmas is, for some the birth og Jesus, and for us - lights, tree, and presents :)
And all of this doesn't change what I wrote at the beginning - the holiday are just one tiny thing we have to deal with. It continues with questions regarding language - what do we speak at home, and outside, do we explain school things in Hebrew or English? How we preserve the Hebrew and let the English grow? Do we read to them in English or Hebrew? Do we watch DVDs in Hebrew or English? Does it matter if it's Ron or Yon? etc. And we see more and more of those questions with every day...
The kids won't be Israelis. There is nothing we could do about it even if we wanted. Their Hebrew isn't perfect. They don't have Israeli history. They grew up someplace else. Even if we do go back it won't erase all the years outside of Israel. It won't make them Israelis, anymore than leaving Israel makes us Gibralterians. 
And that brings us back to the original problem - we have to find a way to bridge the gaps. To create traditions that will keep them connected to us and vice-versa. So we celebrate Christmukah. We put up a tree, decorate it with the kids, bake cookies with them, open presents from under the tree with the kids. Light the candles with the kids, sing the songs with them, and eat some doughnuts. Because after all, all holidays are really about one thing - family.

Getting back to December 2012, for us, it was the right decision. It was and still is the right way of doing things. We have our small traditions that we love and that gives us the feel of a family. And by now we take them for granted. We have to find our way in so many areas everyday that in this we prefer to embrace where we live and our choices and not fight with it.
Truth is, everyone here assumes that you celebrate Christmas, most people don't know we are Jewish (and even after they know, they still assume that), Ron wanted to be in the choir and do some caroling, and we embrace the whole Christmukah things wholeheartedly.
And if Robert Zimmerman (you know - Bob Dylan) can release a Christmas album, the least we can do is enjoy it!