Christmas

Christmas appears in Alleluia Cone’s family history as a contested observance rather than a simple emblem of belonging. Her father, Otto Cone, a Jewish Polish émigré, insisted that his Jewish family celebrate it as an English rite and a gesture of respect toward their host nation. Yet the same occasion became the setting for a performance that, in Alicja Cone’s eyes, spoiled the gathering.

The observance and its disruption

At Christmas, Otto entered the family gathering in a pantomime disguise associated with Mao and turned the celebration into an anti-communist joke. His insistence on celebrating an English custom and his decision to mock it in the same breath made the observance contradictory: it was both a declaration of respect for the country in which the family lived and a stage for his political anger. Alicja remembered the episode as one of his most embarrassing excesses.

Christmas within Otto’s English identity

The Christmas performance belongs to Otto’s broader effort to remake the family as English. He changed the family name from Cohen to Cone, reshaped names, and proudly declared himself English, although Alicja considered these changes an attempt to wipe away Jewish identity as well as the family’s past. His Christmas observance made that ambition public, but its disruptive theatrics exposed how uneasy and unstable the performance could be.

Alicja’s later observance

After Otto’s death, Alicja returned to the Cohen name and to Jewish religious and family customs, including the synagogue and Chanukah. Her return gives the remembered Christmas scene an afterlife: the holiday marks not only Otto’s chosen expression of Englishness, but also the difference between his desired transformation and Alicja’s renewed attachment to the identity he had tried to leave behind.