Why should a pagan religious custom be any more acceptable than a Christian one? Why should we tell the difference between the two?
Me too—I was picturing him dressed up as Hanukkah Harry.
DrDeth, I would agree with you if it wasn’t for the fact that the entire idea is so commercially transparent.
It is not rude, or offensive, or demeaning to any Christian faith in any manner, for Jews to have separate and completely different traditions and customs. Not in any manner, ok? There is a pagan-ish tradition of a tree or bush with candlelight and it has become an icon of a Christian holiday, that’s for Christians to suss out and decide if they want to go along, or feel it’s too pagan for them. -shrug-
It has nothing to do with Judaism. The Hannukah Menorah DOES. It’s not pagan, it’s not a stolen icon from a long-faded away religion. It is the direct image of what was used in the Temple thousands of years ago and is still used today. I would guess it’d be pretty neat to use a real oil-burning menorah but I have athsma and can’t handle the soot.
The entire idea of a Hannukah bush is an attempt to be “just like everyone else” and to just " go along and have ours too". This is what dismays me. If you are a Jew, be a Jew and practice as you personally see fit or wish to. If you are something else, then practice that as you see fit or wish to.
Diversity is not a foul word.
( lest I suffer dearly for hypocrisy, I have to be personally honest here. I was raised Jewish with Quaker influences and have attended Quaker Meeting for the last year or so and associate much more with many tenets of that faith. However, my understanding of at least Reform Judaism is well intact. )
Let me see if I can shed some light on this idea with an example.
IAAJBB (I am a Jew by birth - I’m a godless heathen now) and I have heard that the Christian prayer “our father” is not intrinsically offensive to Jews; meaning that a Jew could pray that way if he felt like, no problem with the big guy upstairs.
HOWEVER, since this prayer is at the heart of Christianity, Jews don’t pray that way. It would just be gauche and feel wrong. There are probably plenty of Islamic prayers that would fit in this category, too, and would not be recited for the same reasons.
The same with Christmas trees. Since they are so closely associated with Christians - even though they have no religious significance whatsoever - it would be gauche to erect one in a Jewish home. Thus was born the Chanuka Bush!
Me, I’m lucky, I married a Christian, so my many years of Christmas envy (a corollary to penis envy, also identified by Freud) growing up Jewish without a tree can now be satisfied. (We didn’t have Chanuka bushes in our homes back then.)
By the same token, I don’t think Halloween - even though it demonstrably has Christian roots - is associated with Christians at all nowadays. Ask your person on the street (not us dopers!), and I’d bet only 1 in 10, or less, would know where Halloween comes from. Thus Manny Cohen, Lenny Goldstein, and even Hermey the Dentist can all go trick-or-treating.
And I don’t care what anyone says, I still think it’s Herbie!
The thing is, the whole point of the celebration of Hannukah is that it is a REJECTION of assimiliation. The Maccabees refused to assimilate to the Hellenic customs. And Hannukah celebrates their rejection of worshiping like their neighbors. Hannukah is all about sticking to your own ways, and ignoring what everyone else does. And the fact that christmas trees are pagan rather than Christian is no help, since religiously Jews would regard paganism as worse than heretical monotheism. Worshiping a tree is just as wrong as thinking that G-d was incarnated as a human being. I know, we don’t really worship trees anymore, but still.
Of course, IANAJ.
Yeah, and compare that chocolate egg with the hijinks of Dingus Day (Easter Monday – scroll to bottom).
Beats any egg hunt I ever went to, I can tell you right now!
Wow. I had no idea just how good feminists have made things for me! Can you imagine what would happen if some group tried to practice Easter Monday in average US suburbia? They’re be a lot of boys and men with goose eggs on their skulls 
::enters “trip to Prague” in 2005 datebook::
I want the biggest eggsack and most decorated whip in town!
Now, what was that again about a Hannukah bush?
IAAJ. I think it’s generally used as (a) a complete joke or (b) a humorous way to explain a Christmas tree in a Jewish household.
One of my Jewish friends back in high school (family name, amusingly enough, is “Pagan”) told me that her family always had a tree. That was their “hanukah bush”, ha ha.
Another of my Jewish friends got quite upset at his Christian roommate for putting up a Christmas tree during the holidays. Silly, IMHO. Said friend is now married to a nice Catholic girl and he takes great pleasure in helping to pick out a tree each year, hang ornaments, lights, etc. I think that they have both jokingly called it a “hanukah bush”.
And I assume that when he gives his wife something slinky from Victoria’s Secret he is anticipating a little Hanukah bush as well 