Every year around this time, a handwritten sign goes viral on social media, and appears taped to the windows of many of New York’s Chinese restaurants: “The Chinese Rest. Assoc. of the United States would like to extend our thanks to The Jewish People. We do not completely understand your dietary customs… But we are proud and grateful that your GOD insist you eat our food on Christmas.”

Although it’s not prescribed in Jewish texts that we do anything to observe Christmas, American Jews have a long history of breaking out the chopsticks in late December while Christians are slicing into honey-glazed ham.

According to Joshua Eli Plaut, an American Jewish historian, the first documented instance of a “Jewish Christmas” dates to a 1935 New York Times article that mentions restaurant owner named Eng Shee Chuck who brought lo mein to the Jewish Children’s Home in Newark, NJ. Now, Chinese food is an evergreen staple in many Jewish homes. It has been said that moo shoo is among the first non-English words learned by American Jewish children. In 1936, The East Side Chamber News reported the opening of 18 new Chinese tea gardens and chop suey restaurants within a few blocks of Ratner’s, at the time the most popular kosher dairy restaurant in Manhattan.

Part of the early appeal of Chinese restaurants was the lack of Christian iconography unlike that found in Italian establishments. “And the steamed pot sticker looks like kreplach,” Eli Plaut said.

While the time-honored custom of wonton soup during yuletide has its origins in New York, it is now a national habit for American Jewry. As Jews spread throughout the country, Chinese restaurateurs followed some of their best patrons out to the suburbs.

“The Chinese restaurant has become a place for us to announce our identity, and a place where identity expresses itself in a Jewish way on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,” Plaut said.

[Excerpted from The Forward, by PJ Grisar]