Alex Edelman on being Jewish at Christmas

And getting into the spirit

Alex Edelman is a stand up comic, writer, actor, and television editor. Having been the story editor of the series Teenage Bounty Hunters, he has performed three shows, Millennial, Everything Handed to You, and Just for Us, which he performed on Broadway in 2023. The story comes from an article in the Jewish Review of Books by Noah Milman writing on Edelman's show “Just for Us.”

A friend of his mother’s, who was a member of the Boston aristocracy, suffered the unimaginable tragedy of losing essentially all of her family members in a single year. The prospect of Christmas alone was too awful to contemplate, and so Edelman’s mother decided that they would host her for Christmas.

The Edelman family couldn’t serve a traditional Christmas ham to their guest, but they put up a tree (in the garage), hung stockings, sang carols, and watched Christmas movies with her. They even left cookies for Santa Claus. Edelman and his brother were enthralled.

The whole enterprise was undertaken over Edelman’s father’s strenuous, and entirely understandable, religious objections. So, fittingly, it was he who had to deal with a call from the school principal after the Edelman boys started telling their classmates about the amazing Christmas they enjoyed over winter vacation.

Edelman senior defended his wife’s decision, arguing that she acted out of chesed in giving joy to her friend in a time of grief. The principal replied that they had also brought idolatry into their home and into their impressionable young children’s lives. Edelman’s father responded with one of the funniest punch lines of the evening: “Well, obviously you don’t understand the true meaning of Christmas.”

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