Jewish Americans eat Chinese food on Christmas because, starting on New York's Lower East Side around 1900, Jewish and Chinese immigrants lived side by side, and Chinese restaurants stayed open when most others closed for the holiday. Chinese cooking also rarely mixes meat and milk, so it felt like "safe treyf." A habit of neighbors became a tradition.
Where Did the Jewish Chinese Food Tradition Start?
Like so many Jewish-American stories, this one starts on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As My Jewish Learning puts it, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and Chinese immigrants were two non-Christian immigrant groups living side by side in neighboring Manhattan neighborhoods.
Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, a historian who wrote a whole book on the subject, A Kosher Christmas: 'Tis the Season to Be Jewish, traces the paper trail in a piece for JTA. The highlights:
- 1899: The first mention of the phenomenon. The weekly American Hebrew scolded Jews for eating at non-kosher restaurants, singling out the ones who flocked to Chinese restaurants. Nothing makes a trend official like a Jewish newspaper complaining about it.
- 1903: The Yiddish Forward coined the word oysessen, eating out, for the growing custom of Jews eating outside the home in New York.
- 1910: About one million Jews lived in New York City, more than a quarter of its population.
- 1928: The Yiddish daily Der Tog covered the culinary tug of war between old world and new, complete with the battle cry "Down with Chop Suey! Long Live Gefilte Fish!"
- 1936: A Lower East Side paper, the East Side Chamber News, reported that at least 18 Chinese "tea gardens" and chop suey places had recently opened in the heavily Jewish neighborhood, all within a short walk of Ratner's, the famous Jewish dairy restaurant.
Gefilte fish did not lose that war, for the record. It just learned to share the table with an egg roll.
Why Were Chinese Restaurants Open on Christmas?
Because, for the most part, the people running them did not celebrate Christmas either. My Jewish Learning notes that Chinese restaurants were likely the only option open for Jews on a holiday like Christmas. On December 25, two communities outside the holiday found each other at the only tables in town.
Plaut adds a few reasons the match worked so well beyond the open door:
- No conditions at the door. Chinese restaurants accepted Jews and other immigrant groups as customers without precondition. Chinese owners and waiters had no history of prejudice toward Jews, so there was no antisemitism to get past on the way to the table.
- No Christian symbols. Jews often chose Chinese restaurants over other cuisines, Italian included, because the decor did not come with a nativity scene.
- A good deal. It was a satisfying, inexpensive meal, and a night out that felt worldly.
The Christmas part of the story goes back at least to 1935. That year, Plaut writes, the New York Times reported that a restaurant owner named Eng Shee Chuck brought chow mein on Christmas Day to the Jewish Children's Home in Newark. Somebody, somewhere, was already doing Jewish Christmas right.
What Is "Safe Treyf"?
"Safe treyf" is the term sociologists Gaye Tuchman and Harry Gene Levine used for Chinese food in their 1993 study, "New York Jews and Chinese Food: The Social Construction of an Ethnic Pattern," published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, volume 22, issue 3. Treyf is the Yiddish word for food that is not kosher. Safe treyf is non-kosher food that does not feel like it.
Here is the logic, as JTA and My Jewish Learning summarize the study:
- The forbidden stuff is hidden. Pork and shellfish were often finely chopped and tucked inside dumplings or egg rolls. Plaut points out that a pork wonton looks remarkably like kreplach, the Jewish dumpling. Out of sight, out of mind, more or less.
- Milk and meat stay apart. Chinese cuisine rarely mixes them, so a Jewish diner never had to watch a cheeseburger happen.
- The flavors felt familiar. Onions, garlic, and vegetables were ingredients an Eastern European palate already knew.
- It felt sophisticated. For the children of immigrants, ordering Chinese was a way to show they had made it in America and could step outside their comfort zone.
Tuchman lived it, too. In a 2023 interview with My Jewish Learning, she remembered a freshman-year outing from Brandeis to a Chinese restaurant in Waltham. Two of the students kept kosher. Their solution was to pull the pork out of the egg roll if they saw it. That, in one sentence, is safe treyf.
Why Does Chinese Food Work So Well With Kashrut?
To be clear, a regular Chinese restaurant is not kosher. Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws, forbids certain animals altogether, requires a specific method of slaughter, and forbids mixing meat and milk. As My Jewish Learning explains, the Torah repeats three times that you may not cook a baby goat in its mother's milk. The rabbis of the Talmud read that to mean that meat and dairy may not be combined in a dish or eaten at the same meal, with a waiting period, usually between one and six hours depending on custom, between meat and then dairy.
That last rule is where Chinese food shines. In a kosher home, meat and dairy never share a plate, and that habit outlasted strict observance for many families. Tuchman told My Jewish Learning that even Jews who did not keep kosher were turned off by mixing dairy and meat, simply because it was not how they grew up eating. Chinese food, which uses little to no dairy, never asked them to cross that line.
The rules did bend in some households. Plaut quotes Neil Postman, who grew up in a heavily Jewish part of Brooklyn in the 1930s and 1940s, remembering his family's regular Friday night Chinese dinner: "egg drop soup, an egg roll and chow mein. And then a little bowl of ice cream with a fortune cookie." For 30 cents, plus a dime tip. The ice cream suggests the family had made its peace with a few things.
What Did Elena Kagan Say About Chinese Food on Christmas?
The tradition got its most famous public moment at Elena Kagan's Supreme Court confirmation hearing on June 29, 2010.
The tradition got its most famous public moment at Elena Kagan's Supreme Court confirmation hearing on June 29, 2010. Senator Lindsey Graham, questioning her about the 2009 Christmas Day bombing attempt, asked where she was on Christmas. Kagan began a legal answer, and Graham cut in that he just wanted to know where she had been. According to the official hearing record, she replied:
"You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant."
Graham answered, "Great answer. Great answer." Senator Chuck Schumer of New York explained the custom to the room in five words: "No other restaurants are open." JTA covered the exchange at the time, and Plaut later wrote that the comment drew laughter and lowered the tension in the room. The line has been quoted every December since.
Are There Kosher Chinese Restaurants?
Yes, and they have a proud history of their own. For Jews who keep kosher, a kosher Chinese restaurant is the full tradition without the egg roll surgery. My Jewish Learning's history of kosher Chinese restaurants covers the landmarks:
- Bernstein-on-Essex (Schmulka Bernstein's): Widely credited as the first kosher Chinese restaurant. It opened as a kosher deli in 1957 and began serving Chinese food in 1959. Many of the staff were Chinese, Roumanian pastrami turned up in Chinese dishes, and the "lo mein Bernstein" was made with chicken livers. It stayed open until the 1990s.
- Moshe Peking: Opened in Manhattan's Garment District in 1978. According to the New York Times coverage cited by My Jewish Learning, sea bass stood in for shellfish, veal for pork, and pastrami for ham.
- Chopstix: Opened in Teaneck, New Jersey, in 1996. Co-owner Elie Katz grew up eating at Schmulka Bernstein's.
Counting them is tricky, since different certifying agencies list different places. My Jewish Learning's best guess is about a hundred kosher Chinese restaurants in the U.S., mostly in New York City and its suburbs, with Los Angeles second. If you keep kosher and want to find one near you, start with our kosher restaurant directory, and confirm a restaurant's current certification before you go.
How Did a Habit Become a Jewish Christmas Tradition?
Over a century, the Chinese restaurant stopped being a fallback and became a ritual. Plaut calls it a place "where Jewish identity is made, remade and announced." By the 21st century, he writes, the custom had spread across the country.
The tradition even grew a stage. In 1993, comedian Lisa Geduldig organized a Christmas Eve show of Jewish comics at the Four Seas Restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown and called it Kung Pao Kosher Comedy. JTA reports that about 400 people came and nearly 200 more were turned away. Henny Youngman headlined in 1997, at 91. The show celebrated its 33rd year in 2025.
The night has deeper roots than most people realize. In Eastern Europe, Yiddish-speaking Jews had their own name for Christmas Eve, nitl, and as JTA describes it, memoirists remembered it as a night off from Torah study, with games and cards. The American version swapped the card table for a lazy Susan.
It is worth saying plainly: none of this is about Christmas. Hanukkah is our December holiday, and it is not the Jewish Christmas, as our guide to Hanukkah vs Christmas explains. Jewish Christmas is something else entirely, a day when the rest of the country is busy and we get to be gloriously, comfortably ourselves.
How Do You Do Jewish Christmas Yourself?
There is no rulebook, which is very on brand. But the classic program looks something like this:
- Eat Chinese food. Dine in or order takeout. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are both fair game. If you keep kosher, find a certified kosher Chinese spot. If you would rather cook, My Jewish Learning has 17 Chinese takeout recipes to make at home.
- Go to the movies. The second half of the classic double feature. In a 2020 essay for JTA, Alex Kirshner described his childhood routine: a movie in a small theater with about 30 other people, nearly all of them from his synagogue, then Chinese food, coincidentally with many of the same people.
- Catch a Jewish comedy show. Kung Pao Kosher Comedy in San Francisco is the original, and New York comedy clubs have run their own Jewish Christmas shows, too.
- Do a mitzvah. Plenty of Jewish families spend the day volunteering. A 2002 JTA report described Jews serving dinners at homeless shelters and helping out in hospitals, shelters, and nursing homes while their Christian neighbors celebrated. That is tzedakah with excellent timing.
- Visit a Jewish museum. The same 2002 report noted that Jewish museums stayed open on Christmas and often drew their largest crowds of the year. Check your local museum's hours.
One calendar note for this year: December 25, 2026, falls on a Friday, so Shabbat begins at sundown on Christmas Day. Thursday night, Christmas Eve, is your prime night out, and if Friday dinner is a Shabbat table at home, the dumplings can wait for Saturday night. Hanukkah comes earlier this year, running from Friday, December 4, through Saturday, December 12, so the latkes will be long gone. Our Hanukkah guide has the full candle-lighting schedule.
Is It Really a Tradition, or Just a Joke?
It is both, which is exactly what makes it so Jewish. It started as a practical answer to a closed city. It became a way for immigrants and their kids to eat out, feel modern, and still keep a few lines they cared about. Today it is a shared wink across generations: a Supreme Court nominee can mention it at her confirmation hearing and every Jewish family in America knows exactly what she means.
So this December 25, pull up a chair, spin the lazy Susan, and argue about who ordered too much. Somewhere, a grandmother from the Lower East Side is very proud of you, and slightly concerned about the shrimp.