What Dec. 25 looks like for Long Islanders who don't celebrate Christmas
The Weiss family of Dix Hills doesn’t celebrate Christmas; so some years, they’ve taken that holiday week to go on vacation. Here they are pictured in Antigua in 2016. Credit: Weiss family
Carole Traster-Wilk jokes that she has big plans for Christmas Day: She’ll be home in Commack scrolling through her email and deleting old ones that she doesn’t need.
For Long Islanders who don’t celebrate the holiday, Christmas Day can be, well, a snooze. Many venues are closed, and the weather outside might be more frightful than delightful.
But not everyone is content to just kill time until it becomes Dec. 26. Here’s what Traster-Wilk, 67, a former classroom teacher, and several other Long Islanders say they do on the day that, for them, is a not-so-big day:
Enjoy a ‘Jewish Christmas’
Randi Goldberg, 59, of Plainview, says she and a group of friends have a “Jewish Christmas.” That is, they gather at one of their Jewish friends’ homes for afternoon hors d’oeuvres followed by a potluck dinner. They also play a grab-bag game that involves gifts people bring worth $30, with a lot of “stealing” of gifts from each other as they each take a turn choosing.
“We used to always go to a movie and have Chinese food, that was our ritual,” says Goldberg, an assistant controller for a group of plastic surgeons. But about six years ago she and her husband, Barry, 60, who just retired from a life insurance company, and their friends started the Christmas Day gathering, which, aside from the pandemic years, draws about 20 people.
“Our kids are older, but they come, too,” Goldberg says; hers are in their 20s and come from Manhattan. Because the last night of Hannukah falls on Dec. 25 this year, the group will surely also light the Hanukkah candles together, she says.
Embrace the holiday spirit anyway
Taru Rai is not Christian; she’s Hindu, originally from India. But she puts up a tree in her Bethpage home and decorates it anyway. “I personally believe this is the magic time of the year. Every year, I buy one special ornament and keep gifts under the tree for my family and friends.” On Christmas Day, Rai, 39, a real estate agent, says she’ll bake and watch Christmas movies and spend time with her family, which includes her husband, Ritesh, 44, also a real estate agent, and her mother Praveen Mehrotra, 73.
This time of year, we forget the worries and just enjoy the blessing and move forward to the New Year with positivity,” she says. “No matter who you are or which religion you follow, the most important thing is the spirit of any festival.”
Rachna Bhatia, 49, a realtor from Bethpage, does the same — when she moved here from India in 2010, her younger daughter was only 5. "We didn't want her to feel different," Bhatia says, so she and her husband, Aankur, 50, a data scientist, incorporated a Christmas tree and cookies left for Santa into their life in a secular way. "We respect all religions and we celebrate diversity," she says.
Skip town
When there’s no pressure to see extended family on Christmas, it can be a good time for a vacation. “Some years, we have gone away,” says Mitchel Weiss, 62, an attorney from Dix Hills. He and his family — which includes his wife, Jessica, 53, a teacher, and his children, Gabby, 19, and Jared, 22, have some years gone with another family or two to a resort in the Caribbean.
“Everybody was off, the kids were off from school,” Weiss says. They are Jewish, so if Hanukkah overlapped with Christmas week that particular year, “we brought our little Hanukkah menorah and lit it in our room,” he says.
Diane Shulman Rabin, 62, a produce shopper who lives in Nassau County, says she and her family are thinking of also going away together this year — though it will likely be renting an Airbnb in New Jersey big enough to fit eight adults and five children from the New York metro area.
Help converts ease nostalgia
Long Islanders who grew up celebrating Christmas but have converted to the Islamic faith are invited to break bread together on Christmas Day at a meal hosted by Mufti Mohammad Farhan’s Children of Adam nonprofit organization, at its Center of Excellence headquarters in Huntington. “Just to make sure they don’t feel left out,” Farhan says, on a day that used to be so important to them. Other Muslims join the families, many of whom are Hispanic, in a meal catered by a halal/Latino restaurant from Brentwood. Farhan says he expects up to 60 people to participate this year.
Farhan’s Islamic Center of Long Island in Westbury also delivers toys to a local church on Christmas morning so that families who come to service don’t go home empty-handed, he says. The toys have a tag that says, “On behalf of the Islamic Center of Long Island,” he says.
Volunteer to work
Beth Lipson of Melville always raises her hand to work on Christmas Day. She is a longtime employee at the Petite Pets Puppy Boutique in Huntington. “The store is closed, but there are still live animals that have to be fed and cleaned up after,” Lipson says. “I always volunteered … so other people can be with their families.”
Besides, who wouldn’t love to play with puppies, she says. “They’re like our babies,” she says. The store might have between 16 and 28 puppies — all Maltese, Shih Tzus, Yorkies or Poodle Mixies — that need attention on Christmas just like every other day of the year.
Check off the to-do list
Traster-Wilk was joking — well, half joking — about using the day to clear out her email. But she says she does use the day to do the kind of things she would do if where were snowed in for a day and nothing’s open.
“I’ll rearrange the house; I’ll do a photo album; I’ll replant things,” she says. She and her husband, Alan, 79, who is retired, may try making a new recipe. “Once in a while we are invited to people’s houses” — maybe a neighbor or former student from the Catholic school she taught at will invite them to drop in to share in a part of their Christmas celebration — “and I’ll go.”
Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.
