How does Dennis, as a Jew, celebrate Christmas?

Do you celebrate Christmas? And also, what kind of activities do you and your family partake in during the holiday season? Thank you so much. Thank you, Olivia. I'm a religious Jew, and obviously Christmas is not my religious holiday. At this time of the year, it would be Hanukkah. However, there is a big however. There are a few howevers. You've asked me, actually, one of my favorite questions, because this is, this is a, I've never told this. You will find this interesting. So, I love Christmas in America. I love the Christmas season. It is actually my favorite season. What is it? Isn't that lyrics in one of the famous Christmas songs? The most wonderful season of all? Wonderful time of the year. Wonderful time of the year. Yeah. I do feel that, actually. I love it. And I didn't know it. I didn't know it growing up. I grew up in a sort of Jewish, religious Jewish cocoon in Brooklyn, New York. I went to a yeshiva till I was 19. Yeshiva was half the day religious subjects in Hebrew and half the day secular subjects in English. And I went to an Orthodox Jewish camp. And so, I grew up in a sort of cocoon, religious cocoon. But I was very well aware of Christmas. You will find this of interest, all of you, including Olivia, that though my family was Orthodox, wearing even, in fact, a skull cap or yarmulke or kippah, whatever term you use, at home all the time, on Christmas Eve, my family watched the mass from the Vatican. Like, I'm telling you, it was a given. We are sitting down, and it was midnight. It wasn't broadcast early. It was broadcast at midnight. And there we are, my father in his yarmulke, my older brother wearing a yarmulke, my mother with us, me wearing a yarmulke, the Jewish skull cap, and watching the Christmas mass, the Catholic mass, from the Vatican on TV. And I remember saying to my parents when I was a kid, look, he wears a yarmulke too, because the Pope wears a skull cap as well, and so do the, not the bishops, the cardinals who were there. And I loved it. I was just enthralled by it. I was always fascinated by Christmas, by Christians, by Christianity. But I didn't realize, I didn't put two and two together until I went to England in my third year of university, third year of college. And during the Christmas break, I traveled by train down to Morocco. So I crossed the English Channel by boat, then train all the way down to the bottom of Spain, and then again by boat—this was the cheapest way to do it and fascinating as well—by boat across the Strait of Gibraltar, the westernmost part of the Mediterranean Sea, over to Morocco and arrived by boat. I spent two weeks in Morocco alone. So this was also my first non-western country, and certainly my first Muslim country. And it was a fascinating two weeks to say the least. Something huge happened to me internally, because I've always monitored myself. I sort of want to know me like I want to know others. And I realized, you know what? I'm missing something. And I didn't even know what it was. And then to my shock, this kid from this religious Jewish cocoon said, I miss Christmas. It was revelatory inside of my mind. It was revelatory how much I missed it and how much I loved that season and its music and the decorations and the spirit of the society much more tragically than today in America, I'm sorry to say. I mean, my whole street that I grew up on, virtually every home had great lights outside. Some had a manger scene. I loved it. And especially, I will admit, the music saturating the And of course, Morocco being a Muslim society, there was basically no Christmas. It was another week of the year. And that awakened me to how much I loved it. I'll tell you another thing. Again, I know that I haven't mentioned this. So my stepson, one of my two stepsons, one of my wife's two sons is autistic. And he lives with us. He's nearly 40 years old and he lives with us. He's, by the way, extremely easy to live with, but obviously he can't take care of himself. That's why he lives with us. And we have made sure that he, though he is now has been living in a home almost 20 years. He has been living in a home of Jews. Nevertheless, it would be selfish of us to remove Christmas from his life. So we have Christmas for him, as it were. And that's important. It would make my religion mean, or my religiosity, not my religion, make my religiosity mean to deprive him of that just because that is not my religious holiday. But I love it. I listen to the music. I make sure, I mean, if ever possible, I will go to And so that I hope is, it's a very long, it might be the longest answer to the shortest question that I ever received at a fireside chat. Now, what was the other part of your question? Let's see. Oh, and let's see. What activities do you and your family partake in during the holiday season? Well, obviously we, we like Hanukkah candles for the eight days of Hanukkah and that might attend a Hanukkah party that somebody might hold. But beyond what I described to you, that's, there's not much that specifically is done, though we do have a special meal with my wife's family who are Christian. She, she has great love of Christianity. She converted to Judaism, but her roots are beautiful Christian roots and I honor them and I honor her family. I do the opening blessing. I've got it down. I've got to say. So thank you.