Viral Tweet Revealed Details Why Jews In New York "Always Eat" Chinese Food On Christmas

You've likely heard about a Jewish custom that involves eating Chinese food on Christmas. However, do you truly know where this practice comes from?

Maryjane

• Published in Christmas
• December 12, 2021

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the roads are nearly empty as numerous Catholic families are happily munching on their festive supper and the Chinese eateries are as busy as they could ever be. You've likely heard about a Jewish custom that involves eating Chinese food on Christmas.

However, do you truly know where this practice comes from? A Twitter user named Megan, who presents herself as Jewish, feminist, and plant mom, will help us answer this question, as we now have this Jewish holiday custom clarified in a viral thread.

She said that if she had to pick words to describe the peculiarity of Jews eating Chinese food on Christmas, she'd say commonality, escapism, unity, and proximity. She also went a step ahead to explain how it actually works.

In Megan’s Twitter bio, she depicts herself as a plant mom and a feminist, and she claims that, despite the fact that most people believe that Jewish individuals would eat Chinese food since it's the only thing open.

The Twitter thread appears to be attracting comparable contentions to those discussed in the scientific article titled “New York Jews and Chinese Food: The Social Construction of an Ethnic Pattern” by Gaye Tuchman and Harry G. Levine. The article was published in 1992 and has been showcased in the "Contemporary Ethnography" magazine.

For quite a long time, Jews have been having Chinese food on Christmas as a part of a custom.

The thread starts

In a viral thread, Twitter user Megan explained the reasons why.

Jewish immigrants

As indicated by the authors, throughout the years, New York Jews have found a food-flexible open symbol in Chinese cafés, and this is a sort of clear screen on which they have projected a list of themes relating to their way of life as present-day Jews and as New Yorkers.

Tuchman and Levine further explained that the themes were not inherent in Chinese food itself, but rather that these Jewish New Yorkers connected these cultural themes with eating in Chinese cafés.

Eating at non-kosher Chinese restaurants

A diary-free meal

Jews felt more comfortable in Chinese restaurants

Eating Chinese food was revered

Christmas meals

A way to socialize

It became a tradition

Words of description

More history to uncover

More and more people joined the thread to comment and share their knowledge of this Jewish holiday tradition. 

An important era

Religious imageries

Likely religious imagery

Someone's happy to learn

Curious about a detail

Chinese foods are good

Other people had this to say

Sounds like what was open and still is

They are the only ones open

Very interesting

We learn everyday

Over the years, eating Chinese meals has become a significant tradition on Jewish holidays. It has also become a part and parcel of self-identity and day-to-day life for a large number of Jews, particularly those in New York.

Megan’s Twitter thread got more than 87K likes and 13.2K retweets, and this shows that there are some fantastic historical purposes behind the act of Chinese food places opening their doors to Jews every Christmas.

Maryjane