My family is half secular Jewish, half Catholic, and HATES Judaism. We’re finally not going to their big Xmas celebration anymore.

Just to get the backstory in briefly, I was raised by 2 Jewish parents, but very secular. All “American” holidays were celebrated, including Dec. 25 and Easter (Although Xmas is much more festive for them). We’re estranged from all other family except for my mom’s sister and her family — my mom’s sister converted to Catholicism and married a Catholic, and are raising their two girls as Catholics. They purposefully tell their girls that they aren’t Jewish, and have tried to argue with me before. The whole family hates Orthodox Judaism and I am the pariah. I am a BT. My husband’s family are Conservative Jews, we are Chabad.

We got married in November last year, and so a month later was going to be the Xmas celebrations when my whole family gets together. I told my husband I think we shouldn’t go, but he insisted. He felt that it was more than important to connect with family, and that we will just say beforehand that we don’t want to participate in Xmas. I knew that wouldn’t work but whatever. We were a month out of our wedding, where my family ditched me alone for the 2 days leading up to the wedding event to party with treif at their hotel, including the day of my wedding, where I sat alone in the bridal suite with my best friend until they finally arrived right before the wedding started. So you can see why I was already wary about going back to my hometown for the holidays, lol.

Well, even though we had texted the groupchat a long time beforehand and asked specifically to not participate in gift-exchanges, and despite this already being a long battle I had fought with them for the last few years, they got us gifts. We thanked them and politely said we would wait until after the specifically X-mas gift exchange time to open them.

They FREAKED OUT. Screamed at us that “it’s not Xmas, it’s Hanukkah!” We said, Hanukkah was weeks ago. I thanked them for the gifts again and mentioned we would open them tomorrow. More screaming. My aunt started singing (with completely incorrect lyrics “Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel” and then the Catholics tried to explain to the Jews that Hanukkah was about opening gifts and being with family. I explained Hanukkah was about not assimilating to different religions. My dad screamed at my husband to “be a man,” as if I were keeping him from opening gifts/celebrating. We stayed strong.

A day or so later, my aunt spent a great deal of time trying to get my husband to eat Skyline chili. It was then that I realized they thought I was eating Kosher but he wasn’t. They thought I was forcing him to observe things that he didn’t want to do. Later, my dad was incredulously asking my husband, “really? So you’ve never eaten pork?”

So I said, we are absolutely done with this. We are not going back for the holidays, they clearly can’t handle it. We have already said quite a few times at this point that we will not be there for Xmas. This has resulted in a LOT of crying from my mom and some guilt-tripping from my dad and my aunt. But we are not going.

My husband said we will have a huge Chanukah party at our house and that we can invite them all to stay with us and attend, lol. My aunt’s family lives about a 10-hour drive from my fam, who live about a 5-hour drive from us. They’re using the whole “but it’s the one time a year we are all together!” My husband and I have flown to my aunt’s family, and have driven to see my family twice this year. NO ONE from my family has come to visit us! (Except for my brother, who flew from Mississippi back in the Spring!) They still think I’m bluffing about not coming this year, but it’s about time there were some proud Jews.