Since there are several threads bitching about Christmas songs, I thought I’d take some time to bitch about one song I hate, and another situation that irks me, not to mention a particular grade school music teacher who STILL pisses me off to this day.
First, I want to say that I abso-FUCKING-lutely HATE the dreidl song with the heat of 1,000 suns. It is a stupid song, that no one would ever hear, except that it’s so stupid, it’s easy to teach to a bunch of mostly goyish kids when you want to include a single Chanukah song in what is essentially a Christmas show at school, but you are calling it the “Winter Holiday show,” to be “inclusive.”
By the way, the Dreidl song has verses that hardly ever get sung, and they are weird. Here they are:
It has a lovely body, with legs so short and thin.
When it gets all tired, it drops and then I win!
Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, with leg so short and thin.
Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, it drops and then I win!
My dreidel’s always playful. It loves to dance and spin.
A happy game of dreidel, come play now let’s begin.
Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, it loves to dance and spin.
Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel. Come play now let’s begin.
It clearly was written by a Yeshiva student who needed to get out more.
The first year I was in public school (3rd grade), the school had a “Christmas pageant,” and for a month, the Jewish kids got sent to the library during music class, which was fine with me, and which had been the school’s tradition for years, I gathered. I loved spending 45 minutes in the library.
Then, someone, and not a Jewish someone, some gentile, whose business it was not, complained that the show wasn’t “inclusive,” and after that, it became the “Winter Holiday pageant,” with the dreidl song included. Every freaking year. And I hate that song. No Jew sings that song at a Jewish party.
In 5th grade, the music teacher asked me if “Rock of Ages” was a “good Chanukah song.” There is a song we always sing right after candle lighting called “Maoz Tsur,” which is sometimes translated as “Rock of Ages”; the title more literally means “A rock that provides shelter.” There’s a well-known English translation of the song that isn’t a very close translation, and it old enough to have “thee” and “thine” in it, but it rhymes and fit the meter, so it lingers, and it is titled “Rock of Ages.” I had probably seen that translation at some point, because “Rock of Ages” struck me as familiar.
Anyway, so the next day we had music class, the teacher has this Christian hymn for us called “Rock of Ages,” that goes like this:
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
How anyone could have possibly thought that was a Jewish song boggles my mind, in retrospect. Anyway, I went up to the teacher and told her that was NOT “Maoz Tsur.” The problem was, I couldn’t really translate “Maoz Tsur,” even though I had it memorized in Hebrew. I had heard it in English before, though, and it did NOT go like that.
I finally convinced her to ask the one Jewish teacher in the school, who confirmed that no, that was not the Jewish song, and this teacher promised to get the music teacher a version of the “Jewish ‘Rock of Ages’” by the next day.
Thing is, I would have been perfectly happy not to be part of this thinly veiled Christmas production, with it’s two token Chanukah songs (the teacher decided to have all the Jewish kids from second grade upward-- all maybe 13 of us, come forward and sing “Maoz Tsur” in Hebrew before the whole school sung it in English; fun). I would have enjoyed going to the library instead of music for a month. My parents probably would have preferred not to sit through a program of Christmas carols and skits, whether I participated or not.
Calling it the “Holiday” pageant instead of the “Christmas” pageant didn’t cancel out the fact that everyone was wearing red and green, nor that there was a big, decorated tree on the stage, nor that the principal was dressed as Santa, and handed out candy canes. Nor that, by the date of the performance that particular year, Chanukah had been over for more than a week.
Geez. I’ll bet a lot of the goyim were grumpy that they couldn’t have Christmas because of us, and we would have preferred that they just have their Christmas and leave us alone.
I didn’t feel “included,” so much as I felt begrudged, and since this wasn’t something I wanted or needed, what the hell were we doing? Making some minority of goyim feel good? I hate that, hate, hate, hate when people decide what we get without asking us what we want.
That is all.