Justice
The Data Doesn’t Lie: Chinese Food Really Is a Christmas Tradition
We used Yelp and Google Trends data to see if people really swap the eggnog for chow fun.
Not everyone spends Christmas Day eating home-cooked meals beside a tree draped with tinsel and ornaments. For many Jewish families in the United States, there’s another Christmas tradition: maybe a trip to the movie theater, and definitely dinner at a Chinese restaurant.
The custom was mentioned in the New York Times as far back as 1935, and Jewish comedians like Alan King and Buddy Hackett helped solidify the trope in American culture. Even Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan joked about it during her confirmation hearing in 2010.