1 post tagged “christmas decorations”

Last winter, I was helping my Christian roommates find Christmas decorations for the mini-tree that they had set up in our kitchen. As a Jew, this was a first for me: I had never approved of lusting after Christmas decorations like some of my Jewish friends in the States once had. But now that we were living in Tel Aviv, I deemed it ok to help my roommates with their decorations.

It was a December night in Jerusalem and I was surprised to find that it felt much like a December night in Virginia; cold and windy. The Old City at night can be a little scary - much of it is closed and there aren't many people around. In the Christian Quarter, we managed to find an American-style Christmas store, and I waited for my roommate to find the decorations that she wanted.

Once she had gotten what she deemed enough, we walked from the Old City up Jaffa Street and detoured off onto Ben Yehuda Street. Who knew that they decorate Jerusalem the same way that they decorate DC in December? Ben-Yehuda Street was covered in strings of white icicle lights much as the streets of DC always are in winter. And the lights, combined with the freezing night, reminded me entirely of being back on the East Coast in December as one of the few Jews in a world of Christians. But here, as part of the majority, the sensation was simply odd. This is not a Christian country, yet here it felt like the Christmas season that I was used to in the States.

Nonetheless, it was quite beautiful - one of the few times that cold air feels good. And this was all on a "school night." The hour trip either way got us back home quite late, but watching my roommates put up their decorations turned the house from a nearly-empty apartment to a place that had some character and some style.