Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas

For a sheer mind-boggling scenario it’s hard to beat the movie “Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas.”

How about serenading a roomful of predominantly Jewish customers by a group of Chinese waiters singing “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” — in Yiddish, yet —at a Canadian restaurant on Christmas Eve?

Or that “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is an allegory of the Jewish immigrants — with prominent noses— who swarmed into New York and were derided as “Orientals” by the “real” Americans.

The launching pad for the film’s shenanigans and weighty analyses is the simple fact that almost all popular Christmas songs were the works of Jewish composers and writers, many of whom — like the pioneer moguls of Hollywood — were emigrants from Russia.

almost all popular Christmas songs were the works of Jewish composers and writers.

The most prominent exemplar is, of course, Irving Berlin, whose “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” is considered the biggest song hit of all time (even if Wold War II GIs, stationed in remote parts of he world, adjusted the title to “I’m Dreaming of a White Mistress.”)

Other famed composers and writers of Christmas songs — many with Anglicized names — are Mel Torme, Jay Livingston, Sammy Cahn, Joan Javits, Phillip Springer, Johnny Marks, Felix Bernhardt, Gloria Shayne Baker and Mitchell Parish.

Torme wrote “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” supposedly in 45 minutes while trying to keep warm during a cold Boston winter.

Analyzing the Jewish Christmas phenomenon of the film, directed by Canadian Larry Weinstein, are such heavyweights as Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, comedian Jackie Mason and musicologist Rob Bowman.

Some of the Christmas songs were composed to buck up the populace during national crises. “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” which is not about Jesus but about snow, was made famous by crooner Bing Crosby in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

The songs, and the non-religious sentiments they evoke, found universal echo in the past three years in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland and Austria, whose television networks have shown the film repeatedly.

Interestingly, the evolution of Christmas from a religious observance to a general feel-good celebration was preceded in colonial America by a reverse development.

The stern pilgrims saw Christmas as a heathen holiday and an excuse for drunken orgies and the governor of Massachusetts ordered all inhabitants to keep working on that day.

Keeping up with their Christian neighbours, American Jews have to some extent secularized Chanukah, with more emphasis on gifts and dreidel spinning than on prayers.

In our days, Christmas has even been drawn into the political arena. Greeting someone with “Merry Christmas” or instead “Happy Holidays” now indicates a person’s political leanings, just as wearing a face mask or not has become a similar division point in pandemic times.

To catch a virtual screening of “Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas” will require some research, said Phil Miller of 7th Arts, the film’s distributor.

He advises interested fans, of whatever religious preference, to Google the film’s title and see if any nearby theaters are streaming it. Some 20 theaters have signed up so far, mainly located in New York state, Arizona