The cruel truth is that Hanukkah is a seasonal festival of light in search of a pretext and as such is doomed to be forever the poor relation of Christmas. No comparable grandeur in the singing, no comparable grandeur in the giving, no comparable grandeur in the commemoration (no matter how solemn and significant the events we are remembering), in which even the candles are small and burn out pretty much the minute you light them.
In countries that turn snowy in December, Christmas has been brilliantly marketed. We see the baby Jesus shivering in his wintry crib, admire the twinkling lights in the Norwegian pines, and go out on to the snow on the new toboggan Santa brought us. It’s of a piece.
Compared to this, no matter how conscientiously we go on reinventing Hanukkah for the electronic age, exchanging animated Hanukkah messages by e-mail and sending one another links to Hanukkah YouTube videos, those Hasmoneans ”” who sound too hot for this time of the year ”” don’t have a chance of engaging our imaginations.
He’s self-admittedly culturally/ethnically Jewish, but nonpracticing, nonpraying… nonbelieving?
Hannukah, however, has the dreidel, and it has Hannukah food.
I grew up around enough Jews that I worked as a shabbat-goy and can chant parts of the Passover seder in Hebrew. The worst trouble I ever got into in junior high was during Hannukah when we were flipping the dreidel for quarters. Wonderful silver quarters, worth about $5 each in today’s money.
Well the pot kept getting bigger until it was pushing 20 bucks. That was a [i]huge[/i] amount of cash and things became lively enough that we drew a crowd. Not long after we also drew the principal. Game over.
He took the money “for the library.” All the guys were given double detentions, and the principal informed me that obviously because I wasn’t Jewish I must have just been observing, right? I looked him straight in the eye and said “Hell, NO. I had about three buck in that pot.”
Once he understood I wasn’t going to play his game I got a double detention, too. Whereupon we picked up the game with chits of paper functioning as notional quarters. Asher Nickelsburg eventually took a pot valued at around $23. We all squared up with him next week.
Yeah. Hannukah is boring and no fun at all.
What? No Hanukkah Bush? It was a great invention and, with the exception of the ornaments, looked as grand as any Christmas tree. My best friend from junior high school, the eldest of five kids in a family of Sephardic origin, looked forward to it every year. They had tons of presents. And the Hanukkah menorah. I’m afraid the author of the piece has been too sheltered.
Yes, #3, but this is only a copy of Christmas and a sham at that. Let the Jews follow this practice; it is harmless. This kids will love it. But it is a fake. Larry
#4-
Hanukkah is NOT a fake! It is the true celebration of a truly miraculous event in Hebrew history.
What IS a fake is trying to make Hanukkah a Jewish Christmas. And it’s even MORE of a fake when Christians encourage that!
Larry- I have no problems at all with a Jewish Christmas. Why not? Christian Christmas has things like Advent wreaths, Christmas trees, greenery of various kinds (especially holly). All pagan. So, the only true and real Christmas is a pagan one? They are, btw, all season-specific theological festivals.
In our home we always put up the very pagan tree on the solstice, accompanied by appropriate pagan libations. Christmas day is quiet, and we ration the few gifts we do have to last through Epiphany, thereby celebrating the entire season of Christmas.
Be that as it may, Jesus was probably born in May in any case. That’s the natural season for lambing, and the only time of the year you’d have shepherds out there “abiding” … ie, living with their sheep on the land.
#5 you have misunderstood me. I never said that Hanukkah itself is a fake. My apologies. But see your third sentence. THIS is what I was referring to. To make it into an ersatz Christmas is a fake indeed and cheapens Hunakkah.
A Jewish Christmas #6 cannot be a Christmas at all or the name of the event is meaningless. Is it Christ’s Mass? Or not?
I say it is and I say for a Jew to appropriate the gifts and the tree while denying the meaning of the day and the season is dishonest and false to Judaism and the Jewish broad cultural past.
It is harmless (in the American context in which names mean nothing except what you want them to mean), as I said, and the kids love it. But it is a fake. Larry
I dunno. I grew up as a Christian in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood (OK, the local synagogue is Reform. Still …) The only thing Hanukkah copied was the gift-giving, (much to my envy there were presents every evening for seven days! With a Norwegian father and British/Yankee mother my brother and I at least had two days.) No one ever called it “Jewish Christmas” and I don’t remember any of my Jewish friends being serious about a “Hanukkah bush.” The young kids, a little envious perhaps of their goy friends, got presents in December, and it’s ironic that some may think that gift-giving among Jews is “fake” Christmas and then turn around and lament the commercialism of Gentile Christmas. Riffing off Larry’s comment (#8) I’d say that a Gentile Christmas is just as “fake” if it focuses solely on gift-giving, lights and ornaments.
My friend from junior high school and her family never confused Hanukkah with Christmas. They genuinely celebrated Hanukkah, and, besides, there were those eight days of presents, as Rich Gabrielson mentioned. (He is also correct about the Gentile Christmas seen as only a post-war (WWII) blowout.) Larry Morse is entitled to his opinion, and they are entitled to theirs.
Rich, as to the gentile Christmas, you and I are in agreement. I am guilty of course, guilty as sin. Tomorrow, I shall go out back with the atv and a chainsaw and cut this year’s Christmas tree. Pagan? Do I care or even think about it? No. I shall put on the lights and the glass ornaments and tinsel and love it all, all. There won’t be much under the tree because we’re broke, but that doesn’t change anything. Still, in my heart, all the shimmer and shine and balsam sweetness, wake me to the Christ Mass which this is. There is no fake here, and the presence of the Mass changes everything, sparkle and shine and glitter, to illuminate their origins.
#10, but the confusion, if this is the right word, is real here – not confusion, really, but manipulation for benefits, tree covered with lights and all. It is worth noting that it is forbidden to sing Christmas carols in school here, but the Jews are invited in to talk about Hannukah, jelly doughnuts and all. Larry
Larry,
The people I knew were not confused. The family was Conservative, BTW, and my friend had a Bat Mitzvah (sp?). The parents were not manipulated into anything; they loved their children and loved giving them presents, is all. The community was at least 40% Jewish; we had one Episcopal church, one Lutheran church (at the time ALC), and one Methodist church (now UMC), in addition to an Orthodox synagogue and a Conservative one. The Roman Catholics were in the next ‘burb and the Greek Orthodox were downtown. By the time we got to high school study halls emptied out on the High Holy Days. We Christians were a tad envious, as the Jewish kids got all our holidays and theirs as well. OTOH, clergy from the various religious organizations led invocations at school events, in rotation, of course, so all was fair. Imagine any clergy at a public school event these days!
As for Christians being disenfranchised well, there’s some of that. A case in point: when I was last in grad school (in the late 80s and early 90s) I remember a history seminar dealing with the Achaemenid Empire (yes, I took courses out of my field from time to time) where a Zoroastrian young lady was allowed to do a show-and-tell presentation on her religion instead of a paper worthy of publication as was expected of the rest of us. Prejudice against Christians is hardly new, and, really, is as old as Christianity, if you think about it. I guess I’m not surprised that your local schools forbid carols…I assume they’re public schools. Sad.
New Pilgrim: Loved that first paragraph.
Yes, they are public schools. Larry