Every year around this time, one question seems ripe for any Jewish family, but almost never comes up. It is a question, as during Passover, for the youngest child to pose, and it is this:

"How come Santa Claus don't come here? Ain't we good enough for him? What is he, an anti-Semite? Is that it? I'm gonna call a cop!"

Throughout what seemed like a longer childhood than usual in a very Christian neighborhood, I never seriously worried why I got presents from one place instead of another.

"I've not really heard that question," agreed Rabbi Jerome David, of Temple Emanuel, who works with children every day, and so would presumably be the one they'd ask. Anyway, he's the one I asked.

But I do remember forming an implicit reaction to the whole thing. After all, everybody in my neighborhood spoke with fervid conviction about this fat guy who wore red pajamas and appeared on TV with a frequency matched only by Leslie Nielson.

Meanwhile, in Jewish homes, all the presents came from our parents - who may indeed have been jolly and fat in their own right, but were hardly twinkling or mysterious, particularly if you ever saw them eat.

I knew Santa Claus wasn't anti-Semitic. What seemed more likely was that, since my dad had to pay for everything and nobody else's dad did, somewhere somebody must have negotiated a bad contract. Later, this theory was replaced with a belief that this simply was another thing the Christians believed in that we didn't. There's lots of other stuff like that. Christ, for instance. "It's a matter of, `This is not my story,'" as Rabbi David put it.

But that requires a rather sophisticated, even ironical attitude for a 5-year-old. This is not usually an age during which you typically hear kids saying, "Let them all chase their green-golden baubles, their second-hand rhinestone dreams. I shall stake my portion here, upon the stony island of truth." I only ever heard a kid say that once. Then I heard him say shortly afterwards, "I have no teeth at this time, for one of my chronological peers has struck me with a skateboard."

Even while maintaining a cool distance, you have to react to things that surround you. My family and I once put our heads together and invented our own mythological figure to counter Santa Claus. In a rocketing streak of originality, we called him the Hanukkah Man, and simply made him everything Santa Claus wasn't: skinny, bitter, diabetic. I think we even gave him a kidney disorder.

Another story I developed was that, although Santa Claus likes Jewish people, we confuse him. I mean, last year, Hanukkah began Dec. 4. This year, it was the evening of Dec. 21. Next year, it's on the 10th. The year after that, August 23rd. We are absolutely the craziest people ever!

The main thing going on here, however, as every Jewish child knows, is that although Christmas and Hanukkah share a tradition of gift-giving, they share absolutely nothing else. Christmas celebrates ... I forget what. Hanukkah, in the meantime, merely commemorates a military victory in 165 B.C. in which Jews took back the holy Temple in Jerusalem from the Syrians. This actually was not a major event in our history. But it's a good holiday for the kids. Not all Jewish holidays are.

Tisha B'Av, for example. Try selling that one to a 9-year-old: "Well, you don't eat, Daddy doesn't bathe, and when we go to the temple, everybody's breath smells like Aunt Zoey's cat when it got very, very old."

Anyway, around 400 years after the Maccabees take back the temple, a monk named St. Nicholas is born in Patara, near Myra in modern-day Turkey. This original prototype for Santa Claus supposedly roamed the countryside giving away his inheritance. What's the connection to Hanukkah? (Assume I'm screaming this while banging my hand against a flat, hollow surface.) Nothing! Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing!

So let me put it to you this way - because, in a certain sense, this is actually true. Santa Claus would love to come to a Jewish house, since all of us have been very, very good. But we have asked him not to. We wish him well and everything, but we've kind of been on our own for a while, and it's best that we take care of ourselves.

It's a delicate balance to remain independent when most people around you hold a different set of beliefs, and sometimes, for odd reasons that are hard to explain, we just have to draw the line somewhere.

But Santa can contact us if he needs anything. He should watch out for crazies on the road, and call when he arrives so we'll know he's all right. And after he's had cookies and milk at every single Christian home in the world, he might think about calling up a Jewish friend. We've got pills for lactose intolerance.