# Gentiles and Menorah Lighting for Chanukah **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 10, 2015, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073 "2015-12-10T14:29:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2015, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/21 "2015-12-10T19:10:33Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > As an Orthodox Jew, I have no problem with anyone lighting a menorah, as long as they understand what the menorah is for. I’d hate to see it done as a “generic winter” symbol as the Christmas tree seems to have become to many Americans. Is it any worse than the way Christians use their own symbols for decoration? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2015, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/22 "2015-12-10T19:13:25Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Another vote for no problem with non-Jews lighting with or without prayers. > > Of course realize that Chanukah is in fact a very minor holiday. The historical part of it was a war that was fought, not so much against tyranny (as the Hasmoneans/Macabbees were pretty damn [nasty tyrants themselves](http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/features/1.633308)\*, and their incompetent rule was what destroyed the Hebrew kingdom for good) but for the ability to maintain an identity in the face of an overwhelming “other.” Obviously the way to honor it is to elevate into a gift giving bonanza so that Jewish kids can better fit in! 🙂 > > Enjoy the connection to your family history, light the family mementos, eat some fried food! You gotta have some latkes (which beat out Hamentoshen every time). Gotta love us some winter solstice celebrations! > > \*Oh things like: “… had his mother starved to death and to further cement his rule, he threw three of his brothers in prison. One, a close confidant of his, remained free, but eventually Aristobulus grew suspicious of him too and had him killed. … During one Sukkot holiday, as he was officiating the libation of water as a part of his duties as high priest, Alexander poured water on his feet instead of on the altar as tradition dictated. The shocked crowd pelted him with etrogim. In response he had the whole crowd - according to Josephus, over 6,000 men - put to death. …” > > And stuff like [this](http://www.aish.com/h/c/t/h/48942121.html): > > This we celebrate? Oy. > > 🙂 As someone or other put it, at Hannukah we celebrate the miracle that saved the Jewish nation from becoming a puppet client state of the Macedonians - to the joyful liberation of becoming, eventually, a puppet client state of the Romans. 😃 None of that actual history exactly matters for the meaning of the holiday, as I doubt one Jew in ten knows the post-revolt history of the Hasmoneans … as far as the ‘meaning of the holiday’ goes, Antiochus “Epiphanies” is pictured as just an insane tyrant who wanted to destroy the Jews as a people because they refused to worship him, a sort of Hitler of the ancient world (never mind the actual history was _slightly_ more complex than that, with factions of Jews on both sides - I suppose a case could be made that the Hellenizers were ‘modernists’ and the Maccabees were ‘fundamentalists’ … 😉 ). I’d say the _holiday_ is all about the mythology of liberation from tyranny and oppression, though a close reading of the _history_, alas, teaches a more complex lesson. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2015, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/23 "2015-12-10T19:18:08Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > I remember one year my brother began singing “Happy Birthday” and everyone cracked up. Not _quite_ the same, but on the first night of Chanukah this year, I suddenly found myself singing the words of the Barukh Atah to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” I don’t know why; it just came to my mind and it fits perfectly. Once she stopped laughing, my wife informed me that was horribly blasphemous, and once I stopped laughing, I felt very abashed. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2015, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/24 "2015-12-10T19:20:04Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Is it any worse than the way Christians use their own symbols for decoration? Well, to be fair, I’m unsure of the deeply symbolic “Christian” meaning of a Christmas tree, or Santa Claus. 😃 I don’t think too many religious Jews would have a problem with decorating with (say) dreydels as a generic symbol of holiday-ness. Menorahs, OTOH, have a more religious function. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2015, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/25 "2015-12-10T19:23:53Z")
> [@Barrett\_Bonden](#): > > We didn’t go to services, but I did observe the Yom Kippur fast with a Jewish friend of mine one year. He promised we would also celebrate Purim together, but for one reason or another, we didn’t manage that. Darn, Purim is my favorite! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2015, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/26 "2015-12-10T19:26:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > This might be a good place to mention the [Christmas Menorahs of Billings, MT](http://www.religioustolerance.org/menorah.htm). I have always liked that. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2015, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/27 "2015-12-10T20:48:16Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > This might be a good place to mention the [Christmas Menorahs of Billings, MT](http://www.religioustolerance.org/menorah.htm). I’d never heard this story, thank you for posting it. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2015, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/28 "2015-12-10T20:54:52Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > This might be a good place to mention the [Christmas Menorahs of Billings, MT](http://www.religioustolerance.org/menorah.htm). That’s an awesome account - I’ve never heard of it before. Great stuff. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2015, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/29 "2015-12-10T20:57:21Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Darn, Purim is my favorite! 🙂 A holiday where you are _supposed_ to get drunk, and the women dress up as Persian harem girls? What’s not to like? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2015, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/30 "2015-12-10T21:16:51Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Well, to be fair, I’m unsure of the deeply symbolic “Christian” meaning of a Christmas tree, or Santa Claus. 😃 Those aren’t exactly Christian symbols, they were [del]stolen[/del] appropriated from Northern European Heathens and Pagans. As a Pagan, I’m OK with those symbols being used by others because they reflect my faith and give me an alternative to crosses and nativity scenes. While I don’t have a problem with acknowledging other peoples’ holidays and symbols, one should be aware of what is behind those symbols and treat them with a little respect, not just throw-away tokens of inclusion. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2015, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/31 "2015-12-10T21:24:28Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > A holiday where you are _supposed_ to get drunk, and the women dress up as Persian harem girls? What’s not to like? 😃 The only bad thing is that it occurs but once a year. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/32 "2015-12-11T03:08:31Z")
I’m an atheist who was raised Jewish, and my husband is an atheist who was raised Muslim. We both light the Christmas tree, and we both light the Menorah. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/33 "2015-12-11T03:38:05Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Those aren’t exactly Christian symbols, they were [del]stolen[/del] appropriated from Northern European Heathens and Pagans. Agnostic loser Jew here, married to atheist former Protestant missionary. I go Christmas caroling almost every year with some very old friends (we’ve done it since middle school; the choir geek side of me wins out over the Jewish agnostic side). You are reminding me of the year it was cold and slushy, and we decided to hit one more house, then go in for hot chocolate. So we picked what we thought was a likely suspect: huge lighted tree on the front porch, etc. Rang the doorbell and launched into something highly religious like “Good King Wenceslas.” The man who answered the door was scowling, and hey, we’re actually not bad singers! After we finished the first song, we asked him if he had any requests. He asked why we thought he was a Christian (pretty much nobody in our group was a remotely observant Christian either, as far as that goes). “Ummm, the huge tree? The lights and decorations?” The reply: “The Christians co-opted the Yule log from the Druids!” I think he was actually insulted. Ah well, we went inside and had some mulled wine and have laughed about it ever since. As far as non-Jews lighting menorahs: I can’t imagine anyone being offended. Well, I guess I can imagine, but it’s a stretch. And as others have already mentioned, Hanukah is not a hugely significant holiday from a theological standpoint. And then there’s Passover - one year I invited someone who is now a dear friend, but whom I didn’t know that well yet at the time, to Mom’s house for Seder. My mom is kind of a semi-reformed hippie, and her Seders are not so formal. My friend, whom I’d met via her Balkan dance troupe, showed up in skin-tight jeans, spike heels, and quite a lot of cleavage. The moment I opened the door to let her in, she yanked me aside and showed me a big flowered Russian grandma headscarf and asked whether she should put it on, you know, to cover her head. I was hard-pressed not to break out in hysterical laughter, but just pointed at my mom in her flowy hippie skirt and Birkenstocks, and said “trust me, we’re not so formal around here.” Apparently my friend’s (3rd-generation East European-American) mom had told her that she should cover her head to show some respect 🙂 Gotta love living in a multicultural society! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/34 "2015-12-11T03:49:07Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I’m an atheist who was raised Jewish, and my husband is an atheist who was raised Muslim. We both light the Christmas tree, and we both light the Menorah. Do you do the goldfish thing at New Years? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/35 "2015-12-11T05:12:04Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > My dad had grown up Protestant or Presbyterian (not sure the difference). Presbyterian is a type of Protestant, it’s one of the Protestant Churches. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/36 "2015-12-11T06:16:39Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I think Rabbi Teleushkin (sp?) said that since Christianity grew from Judaism, it was ok for Christians to participate in Jewish ceremonies and stuff. > 🙂 In the United States at least, most young Christian males even get circumcised! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/37 "2015-12-11T12:42:49Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Presbyterian is a type of Protestant, it’s one of the Protestant Churches. Yep, I’ve been told that before, I just promptly forget.😉 ETA: similarly I always wished my Jewish friends a “happy holiday” when the holiday was all about atonement and all. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/38 "2015-12-11T13:48:37Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Darn, Purim is my favorite! 🙂 That was the first Jewish service I attended as a kid (with Jewish cousins), and my 7-year-old self thought it was WAY more fun than the Catholic services I’d attended with my grandmother. (My parents were, at the time, unobservant – one Catholic, one Protestant). We got noisemakers! And we got to yell BOO! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/39 "2015-12-11T14:10:26Z")
> [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > That was the first Jewish service I attended as a kid (with Jewish cousins), and my 7-year-old self thought it was WAY more fun than the Catholic services I’d attended with my grandmother. (My parents were, at the time, unobservant – one Catholic, one Protestant). We got noisemakers! And we got to yell BOO! I had an intoxicated Rabbi hug me in New Hampshire. It was an unusual experience. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073/40 "2015-12-11T14:13:36Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Those aren’t exactly Christian symbols, they were [del]stolen[/del] appropriated from Northern European Heathens and Pagans. > > As a Pagan, I’m OK with those symbols being used by others because they reflect my faith and give me an alternative to crosses and nativity scenes. > > While I don’t have a problem with acknowledging other peoples’ holidays and symbols, one should be aware of what is behind those symbols and treat them with a little respect, not just throw-away tokens of inclusion. Some symbols have a more direct religious meaning than others. A nativity scene is more meaningful for Christians than Santa Claus. While the latter may have evolved in some lengthy manner from Odin, it’s a bit of a stretch to think he represents Odin these days - more like a (historically debatable) echo or call-out. I wouldn’t say it is disrespectful appropriation to either Christians or modern-day pagans to put Santa Claus on a Coke ad, because his actual religious meaning these days is near nil. Likewise, dredyls are symbols of Hannukah, but they haven’t got much religious meaning - they are for gambling with during the holiday. The menorah has more religious meaning. I don’t think even the most religious Jew would mind if dredyls were used in (say) commercial advertising. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gentiles-and-menorah-lighting-for-chanukah/740073.md?page=3)