According to the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, 82% of Jewish households never have a Christmas tree (and the idea of a "Chanukkah bush" is mostly a joke, not anything anybody takes seriously).A 2013 Pew survey found that less than a third of Jews have a Christmas tree, and most of those are intermarried.• Most Jews do not celebrate Christmas • Most things are closed, so there is little to do on Christmas • Chinese restaurants and movie theaters are often open • Family get-togethers and work are other options Christmas is not a Jewish holiday.Many Christians think of Christmas as an American holiday, a secular holiday or a cultural holiday, but most Jews today do not think of Christmas that way.

My goal is to make freely available a wide variety of basic, general information about Judaism, written from a traditional perspective in plain English.

Even among those who are intermarried, only 71% had a Christmas tree, far less than the 92% of Americans who celebrate Christmas.

A 2007 survey by Interfaith found that only 37% of interfaith families that have decided to raise the children Jewish have a tree in the home.

It is this particular claim--to have experienced God's presence in human events--and its subsequent development that is the differentiating factor in Jewish thought.

As ancient Israel believed itself through its history to be standing in a unique relationship to the divine, this basic belief affected and fashioned its life-style and mode of existence in a way markedly different from groups starting with a somewhat similar insight.