I don’t want a tree, or a ‘Hannukah bush’. I don’t want wreaths or santa and Rudolph.
I’d be stunned and disgusted if any of my family members said they wanted those things. My great grandfather (whose name was Israel) fled to America after having to kill one of the Tsar’s soldiers in a pogrom. Grampa Izzy was targeted because he was a Jew. He fled to a land where his children could be Jews. I am his legacy and I won’t drop the torch by assimilating.
I don’t think less of those Jews who, like Eve, have asked the big questions and become atheists. I do think less of those Jews who bow to social pressure and put up Hannukah bushes, and have children write letters to Bubby and Zeyde Hannukah.
Why is Hannukah a minor holiday anyway? We got back the Temple! To me, this is cause for great celebration miracle or no. For years I’ve been asking why Hannukah is considered a minor holiday. I always get the same answer and it never satisfies me.
BTW- I do reserve the right to send out Christmas e-cards of me wearing nothing but strategically placed sprigs of mistletoe with the caption “Kiss me under the mistletoe, baby.” I tried it once with latkes and burned myself quite badly.
But that isn’t your call to make. It’s no one’s call to make. No one owns Christmas in any way, so an atheist like me can’t be “invited” to partake. Invited by whom? You can’t change how people feel about Christmas by saying that they shouldn’t feel one way or another. It’s like telling me that I should like the color blue more than I do.
If you don’t think conversations here have any effect, then this OP seems very odd indeed.
That is okay, the mistletoe part is purely pagan (Celtic & Norse to be precise) anyway. If you consider the Christmas E-cards to be Holiday Cards, than there is no betrayal of great grandfather with Christian celebrations.
Actually, I consider them to be similar to birthday cards. It isn’t a special day for me. But, I recognize that it is a special day for the recipient and wish them well just as I would like them to wish me a happy birthday or a happy new Jewish year.
Eh. I’m reminded of the Onion’s bit on a merger between the winter holidays … can’t find a real link but another link seems to have stolen it and it went like this
Except that Kwanzaa was in the mix too.
Christmas is not just a secular holiday of consumption. As a Jew I do not want to be included in it and if I was Christian I’d be sad that so many celebrate it without any sense of spirituality let alone religiousity.
Chanukah is disgusting enough for me … ironically elevated to its commercial gift-giving idiocy so that our kids can better fit in … ironic since this minor holiday commerates a war fought so that Jews would not have to conform to an overwhelming other culture (the Syrian Hellenites). And doing Chanukah schtick in the schools so that they can feel okay about ramrodding this secularized and pseudo-neutered celebration of Christ’s Mass in public schools because they are “celebrating diversity” at the same time, is also not okay. Treat religion with some respect.
My favorite holiday time story: I’m sitting in the doctors cafeteria with a Muslim, a Hindu and a Bahai and another Jewish guy comes over and wishes us a Merry Christmas. “Only in America.”
We’ve got non-Christians who like Christmas because it’s just good fun. We’ve got Christians who like it because it’s the birth of Christ. We’ve got non-Christians who don’t like it because it’s the birth of Christ. We’ve got Christians who don’t like it because it’s too commercial. Then there’s black people who think Kwanzaa is bullshit, and others who think it’s legit. Whit folks who think the same about Kwanzaa. Jews who enjoy Christmas but think Hanukkah has been co-opted. Others who think the opposite. Jews who dislike Christmas forced upon them, others who get into it superficially and for fun. Militant atheists who want to spend the entire time sitting at home playing video games with the lights out, and others who think Christmas is harmless fun…
As a pagan I think we should call the winter solstice celebration Winfest or you could call it after me Sinfest (I’m not proud).
I personally wish people “Happy Holidays” (because I can’t tell the Christians from the Jews, from the Kwanzans from the Bhuddists. I can however find the pagans, they’re all naked!) or “Sure as shit wish I get my power back tomorrow days” (for those in St Louis ). Merry whatever is so Victorian anyway. When do you every wish people Merry in real life???
The problem is, if we don’t - if we call them Yule wreaths or Solstice lights - certain other Christians, who are a lot more aggressive than you, will complain that we’re declaring a War on Christmas or dissing their faith or something similarly heinous. In the end, it’s the old You Can’t Please Everyone principle at work, so you might as well please yourself, and most of us find the path of least resistance to be the simplest. So we call it what everyone else is calling it, and we have our very secular Christmas trees and gifts and cookies, even if etymologically it’s all a little odd.
It’s easier in Norwegian, where the holiday is still called jul, a name with roots back to pre-Christian times, and one that might once have been a sacred name but only to people who have been dead for close to a thousand years.
I enjoy Christmas season myself whenever I happen to bump into it (especially in NYC - look at all the pretty lights!) but I never think it has anything to do with me personally, nor do I want it to. It’s like the time I was invited to a Bastille Day party at the French consulate - I drank a lot, had a great time, but I didn’t go home and hang the Tricolor in my window.
P.S - and telling a Jew that Christmas customs are actually Pagan only makes it worse.
I’m with you on that point, for sure. As a Catholic, it’s pretty bad anyway – not because I have any issue with Pagans, but because many people seem to feel that they’ve stumbled on to some DaVinci Code-esque conspiracy that they’re going to let me in on … um, I learned that in Catholic school, it’s not really a secret.
A note about Kwanzaa – I was a little skeptical about what exactly was going on with Kwanzaa until a college classmate invited everyone in the class to her family’s Kwanzaa celebration, and it was all kinds of awesome. So what if it was made up recently? All traditions have to start sometime.
Back to the OP, I still feel like there’s a disconnect between what goes on in public, and what goes on in my house. I try to stay really mindful and focused on the religious parts of Christmas in my house, and I do include all sorts of people – they seem to enjoy it and I haven’t had any complaints. I still think it must really stink to be “included” (whether you want to be or not) in celebrations in more public arenas.
If you read the Bible (Torah or O.T.), a great deal of emphasis is placed on not following pagan customs. Consider the episode of the golden calf, when Moses went up on Mount Sinai and many of the people started to backslide to pagan practices. Paganism is associated with idol worship, the worship of false gods, human sacrifice, sexual immorality, self-mutilation and other evils. Even the appearance of following pagan customs is prohibited.
). Merry whatever is so Victorian anyway. When do you every wish people Merry in real life???
