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David and Vivian Dowsett don't have a Christmas tree.
They do have a roughly 2-foot-tall, handmade Santa Claus doll — complete with spectacles, boots and beard — perched on a chair in their living room each Christmas Eve to be surrounded with presents.
It's one of a number of traditions the Salt Lake City couple have adopted to suit their preferences and values as an interfaith family — David was raised Protestant, while Vivian and their two grown sons are Jewish. The family, who are active in the Jewish community, wanted to mark Christmas without diving into it headlong. They don't hang lights, attend church or eat a big turkey dinner, but they do exchange gifts, watch the film "A Christmas Carol" and often participate in community service.
"We take a very minimalist approach to this," David said, "and it really started as a recognition that it was part of my upbringing, and that I wanted our children and my wife to understand aspects of my heritage."
Each year, many Utah families face the question — long known as the "December dilemma" — of whether or how to observe Christmas when one spouse is Christian and the other is not. Some celebrate with all the usual rituals and trimmings, while others scale back. Some Jewish-Christian couples partake in Christmas and Hanukkah, and some choose only one. Other interfaith couples, of a variety of religious backgrounds, celebrate Christmas but integrate their own cultural traditions into the holiday.
Laurie Rozakis, author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Interfaith Relationships and an English professor at Farmingdale State College in New York, said it's an increasingly common dilemma with the rise in interfaith marriages.
"It's more common," Rozakis said, "because it's more accepted."
Interfaith marriages, for example, are occurring more often among Jews. About 46 percent of Jews who wedded between 1991 and 2001 married non-Jews, according to a United Jewish Communities survey.
Rozakis advises interfaith couples to try to settle on religious issues before they marry — right along with other key matters, such as whether to have children.
But it can be a delicate subject, she said, because "faith is emotional, faith is not rational."
Changing traditions
For many interfaith families, how to celebrate the season is an evolution.
That's how it was for the Dowsetts.
Vivian said when she was pregnant with her first child, she and her husband initially thought they might rear their kids as both Jewish and Christian. But the more Vivian thought about it, the more she realized how difficult that would be for her.
"I was more attached to my customs and traditions of Judaism than David was [to his]," Vivian said.
So the couple opted to raise their kids Jewish, celebrating Jewish holidays, sending them to Jewish religious classes and having bar mitzvahs. They also decided to integrate Christmas but in a minor way, so as not to confuse their children. Both their grown sons now identify as Jewish.
But the family's traditions changed through the years. When their kids were young, they wrote notes to Santa. They repeated certain traditions from David's childhood, such as watching "A Christmas Carol." In recent years, they began having everyone in the family write a memory about another family member to be shared on Christmas Eve and preserved.
David said it's never bothered him that the family didn't have a tree.
"It's just a symbol and not one that I think is very important," he said. "I think what's more important around that time of year is to remember your family and connect with your family."
Miriam and Bruce Eatchel, of Park City, long ago reached a similar conclusion in their family.
Miriam is Jewish; Bruce was raised as a Christian. They reared their 8-year-old twins Jewish, but, like the Dowsetts, they also observe Christmas to a certain degree in addition to Hanukkah.
Each holiday season, Miriam takes out the family's three menorahs — one that she bought, one from her parents and one from family friends — and takes turns lighting one each of the eight nights of Hanukkah.
But the family also observes some Christmas rituals. They don't hang lights or display a Nativity, but the kids get gifts from Santa and eat a Christmas Eve dinner, and the family has a 20-foot-tall Christmas tree.
Miriam said she and her husband wanted the towering tree because "it's fun."
She acknowledged the tree makes some Jewish relatives uncomfortable, but she doesn't see it or Santa as religious.
"I don't think we're celebrating the religious aspect of it," she said, "but more the festive aspect."
Larger meaning
How and whether to celebrate Christmas is not just an issue facing Jewish-Christian couples.
It also can be an issue, Rozakis said, for Christian-Hindu couples, Jehovah's Witnesses married to non-Jehovah's Witnesses, Christians married to atheists and even Christians married to Christians of different denominations or geographic origins.
When Shilpi Culmer, who is Hindu, married her husband, Chet Culmer, they made adjustments to celebrate Christmas together. Chet was reared as a Mormon but said he no longer is active.
Though Hindu, Shilpi attended Catholic schools while growing up in India, and her family typically displayed a mini, artificial Christmas tree in their home each year. But it wasn't the same type of all-encompassing celebration in which American Christians typically engage.
That wasn't something Shilpi would experience until she married Chet — whom she met through mutual friends — and moved to Utah to be with him.
During one of their first Christmases together, Chet made a point of getting a big tree and inviting the whole family over to decorate it.
"Instead of me doing my usual 3-foot Charlie Brown Christmas tree, I said, 'Let's do the one that goes to the ceiling,' " Chet recalled. "I kind of wanted to be boastful, like, 'This is what we do.' "
Accustomed to jubilant Hindu holidays, Shilpi was delighted.
"That's something I really enjoy because I always wanted to have a tree growing up," Shilpi said. To her, Christmas is about cheer, giving and spending time with family.
The Woods Cross couple, who have been married for about eight years, have avoided conflicts over religion largely through open-mindedness.
For family Christmas dinners, Shilpi makes traditional Indian dishes such as samosas and korma to go along with the turkey and rolls. And when Chet's uncle gave Shilpi a Hindi-language Book of Mormon as a Christmas gift, she was fascinated rather than offended.
"She just wanted to read it and learn," Chet said. "She took this as, 'Now you're showing me the background of your family,' not, 'You're trying to convert me.' "
Chet celebrates Hindu holidays with his wife at the Sri Ganesha Hindu Temple of Utah in South Jordan.
"I married a girl from another culture," said Chet, who describes himself as spiritual rather than religious, "and I understand that these are things that are important to her, just like she's been learning what's important to me."
Many solutions
For interfaith couples, Rozakis said, it's not always about choosing one religion over another but rather about finding arrangements that work for them.
"Every family is different," she said, adding that, in many cases, preferences have more to do with what an individual did growing up than anything else.
She said it's also important to be supported by friends and family.
"If they're not behind you, good luck," Rozakis said. "It gets very difficult."
The Dowsetts and the Eatchels say their respective synagogues, Congregation Kol Ami in Salt Lake City and Temple Har Shalom in Park City, have helped them worship as interfaith couples.
Har Shalom Rabbi Joshua Aaronson estimates half his congregants are interfaith families. He said if a family is looking to give a child the best possible opportunity to form a single religious identity, "the best thing to do is for a family to decide they're going to observe one religion and observe that religion in the home," though that can take many forms and doesn't preclude going to a grandparent's home, for example, to celebrate Christmas.
He noted that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to do it.
"You don't want to do anything that's going to divide the family or make one partner in the family feel less a part of the celebration than another," Aaronson said. "We live in an age where people want to be sensitive and inclusive, and I think that's the road most people are taking."
Miram Eatchel doesn't think there is a wrong or right way for interfaith families to celebrate the holidays — or not.
"Every family has to kind of figure out what works for them," she said. "I would not feel like I would say my way is the best way to do it. It's the best way for us."
Twitter: @lschencker —
Tips for interfaith couples
Laurie Rozakis, author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Interfaith Relationships, offers these tips to help interfaith couples navigate the holiday season:
Communicate • If one partner wants or doesn't want to partake in a certain tradition, celebration or ritual, let the other partner know. Don't let the feeling fester or hope it changes on its own.
Find a comfortable, unique path to follow • Find something that works for you as a couple and do it.
Work out the issue before having children • Things can get more complicated once kids arrive.