Progress partially due, I suppose, to my finally having grown less uncomfortable with the whole thing. See, I was eleven when my family started putting up a Christmas tree � old enough to have lived a significant portion of my life being defined as �that kid who does not have a Christmas tree -- which is a large part of being Jewish child.

My family is not Christian, and all three of us were raised with exclusively Jewish religious education, but my mother was born in a Christian family � and we have always celebrated Christmas day at my cousins� house, a tradition I both love and value. Nonetheless, though, starting to have an actual tree, in our house, right as I was in the thick of self-definition time in my life caused me (I think understandably) a little angst.

It�s a semi-difficult thing to explain: yes, we are still different; no we still don�t go to church; yes, I am still a Jew � and it was especially difficult to explain to other Jews. And other Jews were really most of the problem. Other Jews, when you are eleven and twelve and thirteen years old, are some of the most judgmental people on the planet. I mean, all teenagers are judgmental, but somehow, something about Jewish Youth makes them even more judgmental than your run-of-the-mill middle-schooler, which is saying something.

And, as the Jewish kid who seriously did not fit in with the other Jewish kids already (not that I fit in with the Christian kids either, particularly), the whole Christmas tree thing just made me feel even weirder. And more alienated. So, add that to the angstiness caused by general growing up in both me and my mother, and to traditional conflict in our household surrounding How Much Help Is Given and Received, and, voila � generally icky emotional horridness surrounding Christmas tree, my mother, and me.

But this year � like I say, knock wood, but still � this year it�s better. Part of that is that I�ve been trying as hard as I can not to provoke the fight, but part of it is also that I think I�ve finally come to some acceptance of my discomfort with Judaism in general. And perversely, that helps. I mean, I�m kind of angry at Judaism right now (not at God, though � just at how I feel in relation to a lot of Jewish culture), but it helps that I�ve finally aired that with myself. And so I don�t have to be ashamed of that part of me.

Part of my angst surrounding the Christmas tree (and, I suspect, part of my mother�s as well) was like that of the stereotypical homophobe whose discomfort with homosexuality masks a secret fascination or attraction: I love Christmas, and I like going to church, and I really like a lot of things about Christianity � and often I feel more welcomed there than in the religion in which I was raised.

But admitting that�I�ve often thought that the absolute worst thing I could do to my grandparents, besides, say, murdering small children, would be to convert. It is not done -- though of course it really is done, and that�s the problem. We just can�t talk about it. To convert is�sometimes in Sunday school, it would seem as if to be a convert would be as bad as to be a Nazi. Siding with Them, with the Christians is as good as sending Our People to a slow destruction. That�s hyperbole, but not by much. Because we are a people that�s had to do a lot of fighting to exist, we are very sensitive about issues of attrition.

But that didn�t stop me from feeling attracted to Christianity. It just made me feel horrible about it. Thus: a large part of my discomfort. I didn�t know how to relate to the Christmas tree because I feared I liked it too much.

This past year, though, I�ve come out to myself about these issues a lot more. I�ve allowed myself to say that maybe I�m not entirely comfortable with being a Jew right now. And that though I don�t ever want to devalue my heritage, this might be a time for me to understand that I may wish to seriously question it, or even call myself something else, for a while. I still don�t know if it�s exactly okay for me to like Christianity. I�m afraid even of typing it now. But I�m at least making the move of admitting it.

And thereby reducing some of my Christmas-tree-related anxieties, and averting some tension at home. Win! There now, isn�t that all comfortably twentieth-century-American of me? Just by admitting I had an inner conflict, I made things better! All things are solved by obsessive self-exploration!

Or not. Probably the real thing helping is that I�ve just been trying very hard not to be bitchy � at which I do not always succeed, but, you know, every little bit helps. Still, it would be all nice and psychoanalytic of me to chalk it all up to self-knowledge.

And regardless, I'm happy it's Christmas. Tonight I'll spend at my cousins' house, first quietly singing along with their church service, where Annie rings the bells each year, then whispering quietly with her until we both fall asleep, just as I have done for the past twenty-two Christmases of my life. And tomorrow morning, we'll crowd into their Victorian living room, and red-cheeked, as we all get when happy, we'll exclaim over each other's gifts, and delight in being together. And that, I can unreservedly, unashamedly, say I love.