On December 23, Larry and I traveled 400 miles to spend time with our friends, Chris and Bernie Grossman in their new home in Tallahassee, Florida, And on December 25, the Shapiros and Grossmans upheld tradition as steeped in Jewish culinary ritual  as brisket on Rosh Hashanah, potato latkes on Chanukah, and matzo ball soup on Passover. We ate Chinese food on Christmas Day.

Growing up in a small town in Upstate New York, my family  didn’t eat Chinese food on Christmas Day, or most other days of the year. If there was a Chinese restaurant in Plattsburg, the “big town” near us, I don’t remember ever going there.

Once or twice a year, my father would pile my mother and the four children into the station wagon and drive the ninety minutes to Montreal. We would weave our way into Chinatown and head to the Nanking Cafe. We would climb a set of steep stairs and crowd around a table in a booth. (Family lore tells of the time that my brother Jay drank the water in the finger bowl.) The wonton soup and noodles would be followed by chow mein (much better than the stuff we ate out of cans that we got at the local Grand Union). We would finish up with fortune cookies and vanilla ice cream and head back home. To be honest, that was the extent of our seeing Montreal until I visited the World’s Fair in 1968.

The Chinese food at Christmas tradition started for me after Larry and I married and bought a home in Saratoga County in 1976. Ling’s, near the corner of Routes 146 and 9 in Clifton Park, was the only restaurant open on December 25th. (It was also the only Chinese restaurant in a ten mile radius; there are now at least ten!) Larry and I met half the Jewish population of our community there.

By the next year, we were going to Ling’s with a group of friends. And by the time our children left home, we had a standing date for a December 25th dinner with the Grossmans and several  other couples in various Chinese restaurants throughout the Capital District. Wherever we chose to go, we could count on sharing the evening with tables of fellow Jews—including many rabbis and their families.

The tradition continued when we moved to Florida in 2015, when the Grossmans and another of our regulars, Joyce and Mel Toub joined us in Kissimmee for three days. Of course, we had reservations at the local Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day.

Last year, Chanukah started on December 24. Congregation Shalom Aleichem in Kissimmee held a community dinne. I was hoping we would be dining on huge metal pans filled with vegetarian or kosher style dishes  from one of the two Chinese restaurants close to our shul. To my disappointment, the committee planning the event opted for Italian. The next day, we joined my brother Jay, his wife Leslie, and their family for a traditional Chanukah meal in Sarasota.  This year, however, we are back on track for wonton and moo shu. This time we are doing the traveling—four hundred miles to Tallahassee—all to get into the Jewish ritual of eating Chinese food on December 25.

According to Mathew Goodman, author of Jewish Food: The World at Table, the Jews’ love dates back over one hundred years ago, where the Lower East Side of Manhattan was populated by Eastern European Jews, Italian, and Chinese. “Italian cuisine and especially Italian restaurants, with their Christian iconography, held little appeal for Jews,” Mark Tracy wrote in a 2011 Atlantic article. “But the Chinese restaurants had no Virgin Marys. And they prepared their food in the Cantonese culinary style, which utilized a sweet-and-sour flavor profile, overcooked vegetables, and heaps of garlic and onion”—all similar to Eastern European cuisine.

Another theory was included in a 1992 academic (seriously!) paper by Gayle Tuchman and Harry G. Levine in which they supported the idea that Chinese food was ‘Safe Treyf.’ True the dishes featured un-kosher foods including shellfish and pork. But it was chopped and minced and mixed with so many vegetables, it as disguised. As stated in a 2007 blog post Feed the Spirit, “If pork was in wontons (which looked very much like Jewish kreplach) or in tiny pieces in chop suey, it didn’t seem as bad as chowing down on a ham sandwich. And the Chinese typically don’t cook with dairy products, so no one had to worry about mixing milk and meat. “

The concept has made it to the highest court in our country. According to the Judaism 101 website, Justice Elana Kagen brought up the Jewish/Chinese food connection  up at her 2010 Supreme Court confirmation hearing. When a senator asked her where she was on Christmas, she said, “You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.”

In 2009, Brandon Miller even penned a song: “I eat Chinese food on Christmas/Go to the movie theater, too/‘Cause there just ain’t much else to do on Christmas/When you’re a Jew.”

As you can tell by her undecidedly non-Jewish name, Chris was not born Jewish. She converted after she met Bernie at Grinnell College. Chris, whose Hebrew name is Chava, keeps kosher. So on December 15, in a Chinese restaurant in Tallahassee, she ordered the egg drop soup and a fish or vegetarian entree.

The rest of us, however, ate “Safe Treyf.” Larry ordered shrimp in garlic sauce. Bernie got the egg rolls and something with beef (“Bernie always eats something with beef, no matter what ethnic variety food we have,” quipped Chris).And I got my favorite—chicken moo shu chicken with wonton wrappers and plum sauce. After the main meal, we popped open our fortune cookies and shared the Chinese predictions for the upcoming year. Then we went back to the Grossmans and dined on my “world famous chocolate chip cookies,” another long-standing holiday tradition  for us friends. We raised a glass of wine, shout  L’Chaim (ToLife!) and anbei (sounds like: “gon bay”) the traditional Chinese toast which literally means ‘dry cup.’

The Hebrew year is 5778 and the Chinese year is 4715. That must mean, the old joke goes, that against all odds the Jews went without Chinese food for 1,064 years.As fortune (cookie) has it, however, this year we enjoyed Florida sunshine, friendships, and Chinese food.

(Capital District) Jewish World, December 28, 2017.

The Grossman and Shapiros walking off our Chinese dinner.

The three turtles…

The pelican that joined our menagerie in 2016.

Larry and I have many “pets” in our home. A butterfly rests outside our front door, and two larger ones fly on our lanai wall. A two foot bear clutching his “Bear Feet Only” sign greets visitors on the front porch. Pedro the Parrot hangs on a curtain rod. And various bulldogs—stuffed, ceramic, and metal, are stationed around the house in honor of the nickname my boss gave me when I moved from the classroom to an administrative office.

However, I would have to say my favorite animals in our menagerie are three turtles and a pelican. These metal copper sculptures are the creative work of a talented  Albuquerque, New Mexico, artist who made last year’s Chanukah very special.

In July 2015, Larry and I were spending the summer in Frisco, Colorado, with our daughter Julie, her husband Sam, and their newborn daughter Sylvie Rose. We had arrived in the Rocky Mountains less than a month after we had moved into our new home in Florida. We had brought several pieces of art for our walls, but many other spaces were empty by choice. We knew that much of the art work that was on the walls from our Upstate New York—much of it reflective of the Adirondack Mountains fall scenes, Early American accents would not work in Florida, especially since we had purchased the very Florida furniture in our resale from the previous owners.

One area that was tricky for us to decorate was a shadow box effect in the living room. We needed to find something to fill a recessed space in a hallway that would reflect our now Southern address. In August, we were at an art show in downtown Frisco when we noticed some colorful, unique pieces in copper. Many of the objects were reflective of the Southwest: lizards, snakes, kokopellli. We introduced ourselves to Greg Gowen, the artist manning the outdoor booth.

Greg, a native of Texas, was born in 1968 and began welding at age eight under the guidance of his father and mother, Mike and Martha Gowen, both well known artists and gallery owners.“My daddy showed me how to sculpt,” he wrote on his webpage, “and my mother taught me to make it beautiful.” At the age of eighteen Greg turn to the art world for his career. He began participating in art shows around the Southwest. Galleries quickly became aware of his talent and began exhibiting and selling his work. Today, Greg’s sculptures are displayed in private collections, galleries, and museums throughout the United States and abroad.We were lucky to happen upon his beautiful copper sculptures. We were especially attracted to his turtle design.

After we emailed the the dimensions of the shadowbox when we returned home, Greg suggested we purchase three turtles, a “mother” and two “babies,” to fill the space.

The family of turtles arrived as ordered within the next few weeks. The colors, the size, the way they fit into the space-they were perfect. We named them—Mother Turtle Tessie and her two children Tommy and Tillie—and posted a picture on Facebook announcing their arrival. The three turtles were a conversation piece when we showed people our new home.

It was time to fill more walls. We found a photo of a beach scene mounted on wood that fit over our couch. We added a palm tree clock to the laundry room and a fish clock onto the lanai. In Key West, we found two signs for our guest bedroom: One read, “Honestly now. What’s Your Hurry? You’re here!” The second was a colorful road sign showing the mileage to Boston, New York City, and San Francisco.

What was missing was a piece for our guest bathroom. I was the butterfly lover and bulldog-moniker nickname bearer of the family, but Larry loved pelicans. I knew from his website that Greg had not done pelicans before, In May 2016, I contacted Greg via email to see if he could work his magic in creating a version of Larry’s favorite bird to hang over the toilet. Greg responded a couple of days later with his answer. Yes, he would love to create the figure. As I had already missed the deadline for Larry’s May birthday, he promised to have completed by Chanukah.

Greg and I were in touch over the summer. In late October, however, I realized I hadn’t heard from him, nor had any pelicans flown our way via UPS. When he failed to respond to an email, I sent him one more. If he couldn’t get it to us in time for Chanukah, I understood. I’d give it to Larry for his May birthday.

On December 24,Greg emailed me his apologies.  He wanted to surprise Larry and me with the pelican in time for Christmas but mailed it to the wrong address. He felt terrible as it won’t be under our Christmas tree.

I wrote him back immediately with the good news that we were Jewish. December 24 was not only Christmas Eve, but also the first night of Chanukah. Getting it on the third or fourth day of our holiday would be fine.

True to his word, the pelican arrived on the following Tuesday. “Peter the Pelican fits perfectly in our bathroom,” I wrote. “Larry and I are very happy with the newest member of our menagerie. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” Greg wrote back. “I was late in getting it to you. It is my gift for the aggravation I caused.”

Larry and I were grateful for Greg’s generous offer, but we couldn’t accept. I wrote him a note thanking him but telling him we were very aware of the time he had taken to design and craft our pelican and ship Peter to his new home. I enclosed a check for $180. “The number 18 has special significance in Judaism,” I told Greg.”It signifies life. Use the money to  do something special for you or your grandchildren.”

A couple of months later, Greg emailed me to tell me that he had used our money to treat Greg, his wife Debbie, and Martha and Del Pettigrew, two fellow artists, to dinner at a lovely restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona. The four of them raised their wine glasses in a toast to the Shapiro’s. “I love creating metal works for patrons like you!” wrote Greg in his thank you.  “May God richly bless you.”

I was happy to learn that our gift to him had created wonderful memories with his friends—memories that were more poignant when Del passed away a few months later. That special dinner was the last time they saw their dear friend.  “What a profound effect your generosity has had,” Greg wrote recently. “I will never forget!”

Greg continues to sculpt, drawing inspiration from all over. He carries around a sketch pad in case something sparks an idea. “My favorite part of my art is when I see a customer connect with a piece,” he wrote on another art gallery website. And through his turtles, his pelican, and mutual generosity, we have connected with Greg.

First published in The Jewish World, December 7, 2017.