Not being cmkeller, I can’t answer for him, but I’ll give my own answer.
My kids (in addition to being Jews) are also Americans. As such, they celebrate Independence Day and Thanksgiving. (Valentine’s day, with it’s Christian origins [yeah, I know, it’s been more or less shorn of that by now, but even so] not.
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Tell that to all the Christians who do celebrate it as the birthdate of their Messiah. Tell it to all the churches who hold midnight Christmas masses. While it may have well been commercialized in the present day and age, it is still now very much a Christian religious observance, regardless of the origins you quoted.
Well, that’s kind of…dumb. I mean, Hannukah’s a fun, kid-friendly holiday, even. You’ve got grownups giving you money and chocolate coins, you’ve got progressive candle lighting, you’ve got gambling with tops, and you’ve got Judah Maccabee, who kicks Greek ass. It’s a great holiday for kids, even without putting up bushes.
We ‘went to all the trouble’ because The Constitution requires there be a seperation of Church and State…not because Christians were trying to ease our troubled brow or any such nonsense.
And without that we’d still have them there. I have severe doubts that without the constitutional issues the dominant religion (Christianity in all it’s myriad forms) would run roughshod over every other group around. Without malice, possibly, but it would happen.
July 4th, Thanksgiving, etc are purely american holidays, very relevant to Jews, and to any caring person. Christmas is different–it can be commerciallized, and treated like a big birthday party, or a New years eve bash–but it is still, at the heart of it, a religious holiday. Jews dont feel at all uncomfortable about the secular holidays, but Dec 25 has deeper connotations about your identity and beliefs.
In the not-too-distant past, I worked in a firm that was about half/half Christian (to various degrees) and Jewish. We all agreed that we would have a corporate Chanukmas party, though the company’s owner (a very non-pracicing Jew) decided that it would be nice to decorate the office with Christmas decorations. Some of the Jewish staff wanted to take days off around Chanukah and were permitted to do so without taking it off of their holiday allotment. They still got Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day off like the rest. Nobody seemed put out by any of the company traditions.
zev, there are different aspects to Christmas, both religious and secular. I don’t know of any other adult who has trouble recognizing that the Nativity story is part of Christianity, but that Santa Claus is a western folk tradition. The holiday’s origins are religious, yes, but that certainly does not mean it’s exclusively so.
Are all the Hanukkah activities Captain Amazing described part of Jewish religious practice? Hey, I’ve played dreidel myself - it’s fun to grab your friends’ candy and make them watch.
chaim, you must be using a different definition of “idolatry” than one I’m familiar with. No Christian I know worships a tree or considers it a religious icon. It’s just a home decoration.
Granted that Christmas has gained some secular aspects. But what, then, are you advocating? That I have a Christmas tree in my house and teach my kids about Santa Claus but not recognize it for what it really is (a Christian holiday)? That’s just patently absurd.
I read a description from one secularized “Jewish” family who celebrated Christmas by having a tree and gifts. The person ultimately rationalized it by stating “There’s simply no Christ in my Christmas.” That struck me, as ridiculous. That’s like celebrating Memorial Day without any mention or tribute to the war dead. What’s the purpose of the holiday then? How can you celebrate “Christmas” without Christ? Doing so simply takes all the meaning away from it. If that’s the case, if you’re asking me to celebrate a holiday with no meaning and no substance, just for the sake of having a holiday, I’ll pass, thank you. Life’s too short to waste it on meaningless holidays.
With the exception of the candle lighting, they’re cultural. But that’s the point. Hannukah has enough fun cultural traditions itself without Jews having to borrow from another religion’s traditions.
When I was little my parents would give me and my brother presents on Christmas, I think so we wouldn’t feel left out. We never had a tree, and I don’t remember ever believing in Santa. Now 90% of my friends and neighbors were Jewish, so we were the dominant religion. (This was Queens.) By the time I was six we switched to Hanukah, which was not a big deal.
I think Santa could be very helpful, since Santa is something a majority of kids believe in who does not exist, just like Jesus. One does not have to trumpet this to your friends, but it is a useful analogy.
::meekly raises hand, before realizing that this would open a whole different can of worms, and then slinks quietly away unless and until someone starts another thread::
(Although I do love caroling because I’m a huge a cappella vocal harmony geek, and because it makes both participants and audience feel warm and fuzzy and full of good cheer, I confess that the carols that go on and on about the Savior and crown of thorns, etc. make me a tad uneasy deep down.)
I can agree with the difference between the actual religious holiday and then the celebration and traditions that are associated with it.
For example, my brother is not religious. His girlfriend is Jewish. They will almost certainly get married. I wouldn’t say she is a strict Jew by any sense of the word, but she has apparently stated that she doesn’t want a Christmas tree, and the other things associated with the religious holiday of Christmas. My brother doesn’t care at all about the religious aspect, but he has the memories of the tree and the presents and Santa Clause that are associated with the holiday, and he wants his kids to have that too. So what do they do?
Just because my brother doesn’t care about the religious aspects of the holiday doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a connection to the traditions of the holiday.
At the same time because my brother doesn’t care and she does should he put up a fight for some traditions that don’t mean much without the religious aspect? I don’t know.
I guess my question in the OP stems from the fact that Christmas, with its Tree and Santa and Presents, seems like it is more appealing to children. Also, most of the children in this country are celebrating Christmas. When you are trying to raise a Jewish child, and they are coming home from school excited about Santa and gifts and all the fluff that has become Christmas, is it hard to get them away from the allure of Christmas?
Do you tell them Santa isn’t real, so they can tell the other kids? What affect will that have on their relationships with their friends in school, etc, etc…
zev, I’m advocating only that you and your family recognize the spirit of the holiday season for what it is, and, hopefully, participate in it. I was trying to be clear that Christmas is NOT exclusively a Christian holiday, but we seem to be having some difficulty on that point.
But the holiday season isn’t just Christmas, either. In the spirit of bonding and joy that we have each other, I’m glad it includes Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and Saturnalia and whatever else happens around now. I’m glad we can celebrate all of it, enjoying that we have diverse backgrounds but share a common spirit. Embracing it all strengthens each of our particular beliefs and cultural traditions by strengthening the spirit that it all urges. In no way does it threaten or even dilute a religion or culture to understand others.
And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
OK, Linus, time to provide a little Jewish education 101.
Do you know what the holiday of Channukah is all about? It’s about everything that is the opposite of what you just mentioned.
Twenty two hundred years ago, the Syrian-Greeks wanted to wipe out Judaism. Unlike Haman before him and Hitler after him, Antiochus (the monarch of the day) wasn’t interested in the physical annihilation of the Jews, simply the religious and cultural annihilation of Judaism. He forbade many relgious practices that the Jews observed and tried to Hellenize them. Channukah is, to a small degree, the celebration of our military victory over the Syrian-Greeks, but moreso, a victory over the concept of the Hellenization and assimilation of Judaism into the larger, broader culture. It’s a celebration of cultural and religious identity and by celebrating that victory with Christmas trees and Santa Claus, it robs Channukah of it’s very meaning and purpose. Channukah is a holiday which says “They tried to assimilate us into Greek culture, but we’re still here. They tried to assimilate us into Roman culture, but we’re still here. They tried to assimilate us into Persian, Arab, Eurpoean and American cultures, but we’re still here, with our cultural and religious identity intact.” That’s the meaning of Channukah. It most certainly is NOT one of enjoying “our diverse backgrounds” and our “common spirit.”
There is a time and a place for those things, but Channukah is most certainly not it.
I’m Jewish and until I was 10 I lived in an area where we were definitely a minority. I went to public schools and had many non-Jewish friends. My parents simply told me that we were Jewish, and so we didn’t celebrate Christmas. I don’t remember feeling any jealousy at all. After all, I still got presents!
If anything, I had a tendency to get indignant when somone would assume we were all Christians. If a teacher would ask what we were doing for Christmas, I would almost always say, “I’m Jewish, and I celebrate Hannukah!”, or something like that.
It actually surprised me to learn that many Christian children actually DID believe in Santa Claus, since it seemed so obviously made-up to me.
Well, in my church we don’t worship them, but we do regard Christmas trees as a symbol of the celebration of Christ’s birth. Artifacts of worship. So, depending on your definition of ‘icon’, that might be the right word. As such, we don’t throw them on the curbside or in the landfill after the holidays; we burn them (which is the traditional way to dispose of religious items used in worship).
Plus, all piled up, they make a kick-ass bonfire for Epiphany.
No matter how common it is for people to celebrate Christmas while stripping it of all religious signifigance, it still is at it’s heart a celebration of Christ’s birth. I can understand why Jewish folks would fail to be interested in participating.
Hence the clever title of Tim Allen’s Christmas movie, where his character finds himself forced, through an obscure passage in the law, to become Santa.
Valentine’s day was celebrated in the Christian church as the feast day of two martyred saints, and Halloween was “All Hallows Eve”, the night before all Saints Day. These are celebrated by numerous faiths and non-faith types nowadays as a secular holiday, despite having once been religious festivals (religious festivals older than Christianity itself, in fact). Is it the fact that Christmas, unlike Valentine’s or Halloween, is still considered a religious holiday by many that makes it unacceptable to celebrate as a secular holiday? Not being sarcastic or Socratic here, I’m honestly asking.