Merry Chrismukkah: Cards blend holiday themes

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Every December, Zack and Hilary Rudman used to send out nonsectarian cards with winter scenes and generic holiday greetings.

Now, however, Zack Rudman, a Kansas City lawyer, has found a variety that seems to better suit a Jewish man and an Episcopal woman with two young children as familiar with the menorah as with a manger scene.

These cards proclaim: "Merry Chrismukkah!"

"I'm all for holiday cards but I want to make sure when we send something it respects both sides of our family," Rudman said. "I always like to deal with religious differences with humor. These were right up my alley."

Christmas and Hanukkah, two holidays that seem to share little more than a calendar page, are increasingly being melded on greeting cards aimed at the country's estimated 2.5 million families with both Jewish and Christian members.

"It's representative of the way people live and the way they spend the holidays," said Elise Okrend, an owner of Raleigh, N.C.-based MixedBlessing, a card company devoted to interfaith holiday greetings. "And it's an expression of people understanding the people around them."

MixedBlessing was among the first to come out with holiday cards intended for Jewish-Christian families about 15 years ago.

In its first year, it sold about 3,000 cards. This year, Okrend projects sales of 200,000 cards off its 55-card line.

Kansas City-based Hallmark Cards Inc. says one of its most popular categories of Hanukkah cards combines Jewish and Christian themes.

"The essence of these cards is not about interfaith households as much as it is about friends and family members of different faiths acknowledging the different holidays that they all celebrate," said Shalanda Stanley, a Hallmark product manager.

American Greetings Corp. has about 10 Hanukkah-Christmas line offerings this year.

"It's an interesting market," said Kathy Krassner, editor of Greetings Inc., a trade magazine. "But it's a limited market."

The newest player is Chrismukkah. Ron Gompertz founded the company this year with his wife, inspired by an episode of the popular Fox series "The O.C." in which character Seth Cohen, whose mother is Protestant and whose father is Jewish, coins the term.

"It's a little bit of both," Gompertz explains.