An Excerpt from Common Prayer: Faith, Family, and a Christian's Journey Through the Jewish Year by Harvey Cox

Harvey Cox's superb book on interfaith marriage surveys the rich possibilities of a family sharing in the holidays of their two faiths. Here is a concrete example of the spiritual practice of hospitality.

"We have the [Christmas] tree in our living room, with a star on top and the manger scene at the bottom. But we do not have it because it is a generic icon. We have it because without it, the celebration of the birth of Jesus would seem incomplete to me, and because my wife and I try to respect each other's traditions and to participate in each other's practices as far as our consciences will allow. Not to celebrate Christmas at home, with the traditional songs and readings and feast, would deprive the Christian partner of the one day of the year in which that faith is customarily marked at home. It would be the equivalent of the Christian partner insisting there should be no Passover Seder.

"But what about the children? the skeptics ask. Won't they get terribly confused? There is no reason for this to create disorientation among children. Our son, for example, realizes that Christmas is his father's holiday, but he also knows it is a holiday in which he and his mother participate, just as I share the Sabbath, Passover, and the others. But preparing children to live out their faith in a religiously multifaceted world is not just a task for mixed-marriage families. As the twenty-first century begins to unfold, all children should be prepared to live in a society where the different world religions are no longer across the ocean but across the street. Learning to appreciate the foods and festivals of 'the others' not only inoculates children against bigotry, it also helps them appreciate the distinctiveness of their own tradition."