Christmas and Hanukkah Without Our Extended Family

Every year, my parents host a Hanukkah party for their three adult children, their spouses and their 11 grandchildren ranging from 1 1/2 years old to 23 years old. The 19 of us are spread throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Usually, this is the point where I also point out that most of us aren’t Jewish, we’re a mashup of Jewish, Christian and Catholic. But I’ve more recently come to understand that this mashup is more complicated than it seems. How do I explain in a word or two my Catholic-synagogue-going-Jewish-ritual-loving wife or my Jewish-sometimes-Catholic-church-going brother?