Sometimes it’s hard when you feel like the only kid in town without a Christmas tree. (If you catch the Adam Sandler reference, bless you — you are officially old like me.)

According to the most recent Jewish community study, there are only 12,600 Jewish households with 22,100 Jews across the Kansas City metro. When you look at the numbers, that feeling of being the “only one” can go from “zero to 60” in an instant.

And during Christmas, the isolation can ring even louder. The lights, the trees, the caroling, it’s everywhere. A friend’s daughter told me that her class recently read a book that basically said Santa only comes for the true believers. Ugh. Moments like that land hard for our kids, even when the adults around them don’t realize it.

Let me be clear: I think Christmas is a beautiful holiday. Thanks to brilliant marketing, it may have the broadest cultural appeal of any holiday out there. Growing up, I was one of only a few Jewish kids in my town. I still laugh about the friend who came over during winter break, looked around my living room and sincerely asked why we didn’t have any Christmas decorations. She knew I was Jewish, yet somehow still expected a tree in the corner.

Assumptions are everywhere. The well-meaning hairdresser who asks my kids what they asked Santa for (their blank stares remain iconic). The worksheets covered in ornaments and candy canes at public school. (Meanwhile, my two who attend Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy came home singing a latke song performed to “Macarena.”)

Recently, while volunteering at my oldest daughter’s elementary school, I was cutting out mittens and winter trees for an activity. One little boy sighed and said, “Ugh, not more Christmas stuff, I don’t celebrate Christmas.” I smiled and told him, “Oh, me neither. I’m Jewish, and I celebrate Hanukkah.” His face lit up with the brightness of a thousand menorahs as he said: “Me too!” I reassured him that even if we don’t celebrate Christmas, we can still have fun with the activity, though inside, my heart tightened just a bit.

As I often do I turn to community and to stories that help name what our children feel. Recently, with our Jewish Girl Scouts, I read “The Only One Club,” a PJ Library book about a girl who is the only Jewish student in her class. It sparked a thoughtful conversation. Naming differences, honoring them and giving kids a chance to recognize themselves can feel like emotional oxygen. It lets them say, “Yes, that’s me,” and “it’s okay to be different.”

Not long after, my oldest daughter and I were walking through the aisles of Michael’s, surrounded by Christmas décor. She suddenly spotted a small Hanukkah turnstile tucked between garlands. Her whole face lit up. “Mom! Look! They have Hanukkah here! They are so nice!” We bought what we could, because when we see Hanukkah represented, we support it. Ever since, we’ve started scanning stores for Hanukkah items. Sometimes they’re there, sometimes they’re not. But my daughter notices every effort.

Every year in the Kansas City Jewish moms’ Facebook group, people post “spottings” of stores carrying Hanukkah merchandise. These posts feel like communal cheers, small reminders that somewhere, someone remembered we exist. It’s not everything, but it matters.

Maybe that’s really what we can offer them this season. Not an attempt to recreate someone else’s holiday, or to step into a cultural machine we were never meant to join, but a chance to deepen our own sense of community and pride. To remind our children that they are never actually alone. Our stories, our traditions, our joy, and even those small moments of being remembered on a store shelf, all of that brings its own light. And it shines just as brightly as anything twinkling on a tree.

And for the parents who have caved and bought the lights, the décor or anything else to help their kids feel included, I see you. It’s okay. We are all doing our best to bring joy to our children in a world that doesn’t always make that easy. Let’s keep finding ways to help our kids feel proud and celebrated. And maybe, just maybe, consider buying the “Mensch on a Bench” instead of the “Elf on a Shelf?”