Dear Hey Alma,
I am having a dilemma concerning my daughter. I am Jewish, my husband is Catholic. Neither one of us is very religious, though we were married by a Reform rabbi. We would celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas when our kids were growing up, but no religious services were ever involved.
So recently our daughter, age 36, got married and had a baby boy in June. Her husband is not Jewish. My problem is she and her husband are planning on having the baby Christened. I am very unhappy about this; even though I am not a practicing Jew, I am still Jewish and so is she under Jewish law. I am not planning on going. It is her husband and his mother who want it, and to them it’s the normal thing to do. My daughter doesn’t care either way and is going along because he wants this although she did not put up any protest. She is OK with it, but I know would never have initiated it.
I told her I wasn’t going to go and she didn’t seem mad but said she thought I would go to the dinner after. I told her I didn’t think it was anything to celebrate. I also told her not to invite my brother or any of my friends. My parents are deceased, but I think they would be horrified even though they were not religious either. My husband and my son are both going.
My Jewish friends I have asked are pretty much split on it, some saying yes they would go to support their child and some saying they would do what I’m doing and not go. Am I wrong? Should I just suck it up and go and pretend to be happy about it?
—Crying Over This Christening
Dear Crying,
OK, I just want to be sure I have the facts correct. Your 36-year-old daughter recently got married and had a baby (mazel!). She invited you to a lifecycle celebration that is important to her family — by extension your family — to celebrate the healthy new baby — your grandson!!! — and you told her you won’t be attending any part of the event because you don’t think it’s anything to celebrate.
If I was your daughter I would be hurt, confused and frankly, angry.
You raised your daughter in an interfaith home. I don’t know the exact details of your or your husband’s relationships to your faith, but it sounds like you didn’t treat his Catholicism in a negative way, and it also sounds like you didn’t emphasize religious aspects of Judaism — which is fine! Yes, by traditional Jewish law your daughter is Jewish, but by modern day reality, you raised a child who embodies and respects multiple religions. That’s a good thing!
Fast forward, your daughter marries a non-Jewish man. This is likely in part because of the way you raised her — to be open-minded, accepting of people of all religions and searching for someone who is the right fit for her, not only the “right” religion. It’s possible she looked at you and your husband as role models for an interfaith relationship. It’s possible she just happened to fall in love with her husband and wasn’t thinking about you at all. Either way, she is now part of a family unit where she will be navigating her own interfaith relationship, much like you and your husband did. She will not always make the same choices you made, and that’s OK.
You take great care to tell us that your daughter never would have initiated this christening, but you also note that for her husband and his mother, it’s normal and something they want. Is your daughter’s husband not allowed to have wishes for his son? Is it not up to your daughter and her husband to decide what is important for their family unit? How would you have reacted to your parents telling you not to celebrate Christmas with your daughter when she was a child? This is a moment where it is not your place to call the shots. Your daughter is including you in a special moment in her child’s life. Meanwhile, you are bringing your own prejudice and your own baggage to her, and complicating what should be an easy, happy time for your whole family.
In short: Yes, you are wrong. There will be many, many times in your life that your daughter makes parenting choices you don’t agree with. They will not always be about religion, but sometimes they will be. When you were raising your children, it was up to you and your husband to decide what your interfaith household looked like. That is no longer your role when it comes to raising your grandchild. Now it’s your daughter and her husband who will make the decisions about what their interfaith household looks like. If there are Jewish traditions you hope your daughter will share with her husband and son, talk to her in a positive way about those things. Do not take a path of negativity about what you don’t want her doing with her son, especially if those things are important to her husband. Rather focus on the joy you may experience contributing to your grandson’s Jewish experiences in life.
My advice is to apologize to your daughter, let her know you’re working through your thoughts on why this has upset you and will be doing that on your own time, and ask if it’s not too late to join the celebrations around the christening. Then I would plan to attend with your husband and your son, and go one step further than pretend to be happy about it — see if you can actually be happy about it. This is a simcha, even if it’s not a Jewish one. Mazel tov.
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