The end-of-year festivities are here, and with them their procession of epinal images. In the streets, the good people, who have never lost their childlike spirit, marvel at the brilliant decorations and rush to buy gifts and treats. In thatched cottages, a delicate aroma wafts from the kitchen, while the air is filled with the clink of glasses being toasted, laughter and the cries of overexcited kids. Everything is perfectly in place. However, we all know that this ideal image that families strive to create has its downside: just as a liver attack reminds us of the reality of what we thought was a bottomless stomach, the eruption of a political or religious rift can reveal the illusory nature of family harmony at any moment. In the collective imagination, the figure of the racist uncle has come to embody this threat of internal rupture, which can never be entirely averted. There’s no doubt that some of our readers will have come face to face with this during the many end-of-year meals… As for the others, they will be able to live the holiday spirit to the full by discovering O. Bouquet’s personal account of his antisemitic uncle, and the dilemmas facing the man whose children are Jewish in an old Catholic family.
Because the best remedy against indigestion of good feelings is still bad wit, we are also republishing Danny Trom’s analysis of Steven Spielberg and Joe Dante’s Gremlins. In this film, Christmas, and with it the cosmic order, are turned upside down: does this parodic detour belong to a specific genre, that of the Jewish Christmas movie?
Last but not least, in the spirit of reflections on the year gone past, we are also resharing Ruben Honigmann’s text on solitude, never-ending endings and being the penultimate Jew.
