I will never have a Christmas tree. I said this at a party the other night and the man I was talking to looked as though I had just swallowed a live baby chick. When I told him I have a two-year-old son, his eyebrows shot to his hairline. How, he asked, could I be so cruel as to deny my son a proper Christmas?

I formulated my answer as delicately as I could. I am Jewish, I told him. And my son is Jewish. And Jews don't have Christmas or Christmas trees. This time his eyes widened and he cocked his head, as if seeing me for the first time. It's a reaction I've grown used to in my four years in Berlin. Germany's Jewish community may number over 100,000 and Berlin's about 12,000, but I am still the first living Jew many Germans I know have ever met. The only other Jews they've known are the famous ones from Germany's past. And the Holocaust, of course, looms also. Their initial surprise often morphs into embarrassment -- and nervousness. Suddenly they no longer know what to say.

The truth is, it is never easy to be Jewish at Christmastime. But, it is especially difficult in Germany. This year, I admit, I may be particularly sensitive. For the first time, my son is old enough to ask questions -- and to get a glimmer of what will be his lifelong heritage -- a sense of being left out while the world celebrates a holiday he doesn't share. My first instinct is to protect him -- to save him from that awful hot flush and surge in the stomach that comes from being ashamed of being yourself. I want to teach him to be proud of his tradition. I fear, though, that in Germany it will not be easy. For him or for me.

As much as Germany wants to open up to immigrants, as much as Berlin struggles to be multi-cultural, it fails. The society is -- and sometimes I fear it will always be -- irreparably homogeneous. It's a topic getting a lot of press lately, mostly in connection with the Turkish Muslim population. How, everyone keeps asking, can we all live side by side as an integrated whole?

Maybe, I keep thinking, the answer has less to do with academic analysis, quotas and demographics than with the common courtesies of everyday life. In America, for instance, most people at this time of year wish their colleagues, teachers, butchers and bakers, a generic "happy holidays," letting them fill in the blank for what holiday that is. In France, they say "joyeuses fetes," or "bonne fete." Here, on the other hand, most simply wish everyone a "Merry Christmas" as if Christmas is all there is. German school breaks are not called spring and winter vacations, as I am used to, but Easter and Christmas holidays.

I don't think this Christian focus is meant to be hegemonic. I think it's much more innocent. People just don't know what else to say, what else to call things, what others might be celebrating. Yet wouldn't Muslims -- who also don't celebrate Christmas -- feel more included if something as simple as the language of the seasons were bent to be inclusive rather than unwittingly exclusive? I know I would feel better. How nice if just once I went somewhere in December or April and everyone didn't automatically assume I, too, was preparing for Christmas or Easter.

I have never felt as Jewish as I do in Germany. Part of that is the history that surrounds me. But it's also because the people are so obviously Christian. One of the main political parties here -- as in other parts of Europe -- is called the Christian Democratic Union (does that mean, one of my newly-arrived American Jewish friends asked, that Jews are not welcome?). The government finances Christian hospitals and the nation guides itself according to the Christian holiday calendar. Last week in my son's pre-school, his teachers lit advent candles and told the story of Jesus. This wouldn't bother me if other religions were also taught, but they are not. (I provided a Hanukkah lesson for his class). Why, I keep wondering, does a nation so adamant about forbidding Muslim headscarves in schools see nothing problematic about Jesus in the classroom?