Franz Kafka was Jewish, but his novels were not… or so very subtly. When, in The Metamorphosis, he makes Christmas a form of absent celebration, ardently desired and then totally silenced, he insists on the empty symbolism of this Christian commemoration, while denying the Samsa family any Jewish particularism. Zionist, Kafka was it, manifested it, claimed it; but it is the sign of the cross that Gregor's parents make in front of his remains, and it is the hope of a beautiful present for his sister that illuminates, in his moribund thoughts, an absurd Christmas that fiction will postpone, eternally.
