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telemann for the video link...Jon Stewart has aired his annual first shot at the yearly attempt to manufacture a "War Against Christmas" among the Fox News commentariat. Go ahead and watch the whole thing. I'll wait.
Now to be entirely fair, complaints about the nature of Christmas in the United States of America did not originate with Fox News and are not recent. Tom Lehrer presented the following song as an appropriate Christmas Carol for the year 1959:
Nevertheless, there is something odd about the past ten years or so of complaints about Christmas being "spoiled" by efforts of including some of the other religious holidays that share a common season in our pluralistic society or even acknowledging that others celebrate no specific holiday. It's led to a staggering amount of huffing and puffing and even periodic boycotts of retailers who, in an attempt to draw a broader crowd of holiday shoppers, offer "Season's Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas".
The alleged "war" has taken to billboards in the New York metropolitan area where an atheist group paid for this billboard approaching the Lincoln Tunnel:
And found themselves countered by The Catholic League a short while later:
All of which gets me thinking of my first encounter with allegations that Christmas was "under assault". It was 1987, and I was 18 years old, returning home from my first semester of college to a small town in Massachusetts that was nearly 70% Jewish. Despite this demographic oddity, the fire department of the town annually decorated Town Hall in lights and a fairly garish, plastic, lit Santa Claus. The center of town was usually decorated tastefully with wreaths and white lights.
Well, right around my beginning high school, our town attracted a group of Chabad Labuvitch, a sub sect of Hassidic Jews who have a particular and peculiar mission. Among their various philosophies is a movement to bring about Messiah -- in fact, some in Chabad actually believe to this day that their late leader, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson WAS the Messiah. But even those who do not believe it is their duty to bring all Jews to a PROPER expression of our faith...which if you know anything about Judaism is a really funny project.
Labuvitchers do this by being uncharacteristically upfront about their faith and even in your face, especially if you are a Jew. Here in New York City, they operate a giant Sukkahmobile so that they can invite people they think are Jewish inside to participate in the Mitzvah of sitting in a Sukkah during the holiday of Sukkhot -- Now if you can imagine the controversy that a bunch of bearded men in large black overcoats might engender when they invite elementary school aged kids into a truck with them, you can probably guess that, unlike most Hassidim, Labuvitchers are not adverse to controversy and public attention.
So in my little town, this group's rabbi went to our town's board of selectmen and insisted that if the fire department was putting up a giant plastic Santa Claus on town property, they should also accommodate the rabbi's GIANT EIGHT FOOT TALL CHANNUKAH MENORAH which had previously only been visible to cars that passed his house on Main Street. The board accomodated him -- for one year, and in 1987 they declared that displays of specific religions should not be on town property, but the general holiday theme of lights was fine.
You would have thought that someone had taken Rudolph, cut him loose from his sleigh harness and stuck him on a roasting spit while he was still alive...all in front of the children's choir. People wrote lengthy, weepy letters to the town paper declaring that the "Grinch" had taken over town hall and protesting that Santa Claus was just a "jolly old elf for ALL children." While I was somewhat sympathetic (largely out of my belief that Chabad was a giant pain in the town's collective tuchus), I could not agree with the assessment of Santa Claus as a symbol for all children. Saint Nicholas is not a Jewish figure or a Muslim figure or a Hindu figure or an atheist figure -- he's a Christian Saint, and it is not only demeaning to other religions to graft him on their faiths, it is demeaning to Christianity to deflate an important figure to nothing more than the last car of the Macy's parade.
Now, more than two decades later, I have lived in plenty of places with very few Jews, and I know full well that I am a religious minority in this country and the vast majority celebrates and observes Christmas as a religious holiday. Even in New York City, I have to find constant ways this time of year to explain to my almost four year old daughter that we won't get a Christmas tree for our home no matter how much she wants one...spurned on by the omnipresence of Christmas and her inability to comprehend the importance of us being Jews not Christians.
I don't hold any grudge or desire for entitlement in the face of that, but I cannot help but wonder why some people feel such an urgent need to portray almost any nod towards a more pluralistic holiday season either from government or corporations as a "war" against the Christianity of Christmas. I see lots of lights up. I hear lots of music in public spaces that is geared towards Christmas. And while it is utterly dickish to try to purge any trace of Christianity from public view, it is even more dickish to wail that this is actually happening on any grand scale or that minor efforts like relabeling a parade constitutes an attack on Christians.
telemann for the video link...Jon Stewart has aired his annual first shot at the yearly attempt to manufacture a "War Against Christmas" among the Fox News commentariat. Go ahead and watch the whole thing. I'll wait.Now to be entirely fair, complaints about the nature of Christmas in the United States of America did not originate with Fox News and are not recent. Tom Lehrer presented the following song as an appropriate Christmas Carol for the year 1959:
Nevertheless, there is something odd about the past ten years or so of complaints about Christmas being "spoiled" by efforts of including some of the other religious holidays that share a common season in our pluralistic society or even acknowledging that others celebrate no specific holiday. It's led to a staggering amount of huffing and puffing and even periodic boycotts of retailers who, in an attempt to draw a broader crowd of holiday shoppers, offer "Season's Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas".
The alleged "war" has taken to billboards in the New York metropolitan area where an atheist group paid for this billboard approaching the Lincoln Tunnel:
And found themselves countered by The Catholic League a short while later:
All of which gets me thinking of my first encounter with allegations that Christmas was "under assault". It was 1987, and I was 18 years old, returning home from my first semester of college to a small town in Massachusetts that was nearly 70% Jewish. Despite this demographic oddity, the fire department of the town annually decorated Town Hall in lights and a fairly garish, plastic, lit Santa Claus. The center of town was usually decorated tastefully with wreaths and white lights.
Well, right around my beginning high school, our town attracted a group of Chabad Labuvitch, a sub sect of Hassidic Jews who have a particular and peculiar mission. Among their various philosophies is a movement to bring about Messiah -- in fact, some in Chabad actually believe to this day that their late leader, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson WAS the Messiah. But even those who do not believe it is their duty to bring all Jews to a PROPER expression of our faith...which if you know anything about Judaism is a really funny project.
Labuvitchers do this by being uncharacteristically upfront about their faith and even in your face, especially if you are a Jew. Here in New York City, they operate a giant Sukkahmobile so that they can invite people they think are Jewish inside to participate in the Mitzvah of sitting in a Sukkah during the holiday of Sukkhot -- Now if you can imagine the controversy that a bunch of bearded men in large black overcoats might engender when they invite elementary school aged kids into a truck with them, you can probably guess that, unlike most Hassidim, Labuvitchers are not adverse to controversy and public attention.
So in my little town, this group's rabbi went to our town's board of selectmen and insisted that if the fire department was putting up a giant plastic Santa Claus on town property, they should also accommodate the rabbi's GIANT EIGHT FOOT TALL CHANNUKAH MENORAH which had previously only been visible to cars that passed his house on Main Street. The board accomodated him -- for one year, and in 1987 they declared that displays of specific religions should not be on town property, but the general holiday theme of lights was fine.
You would have thought that someone had taken Rudolph, cut him loose from his sleigh harness and stuck him on a roasting spit while he was still alive...all in front of the children's choir. People wrote lengthy, weepy letters to the town paper declaring that the "Grinch" had taken over town hall and protesting that Santa Claus was just a "jolly old elf for ALL children." While I was somewhat sympathetic (largely out of my belief that Chabad was a giant pain in the town's collective tuchus), I could not agree with the assessment of Santa Claus as a symbol for all children. Saint Nicholas is not a Jewish figure or a Muslim figure or a Hindu figure or an atheist figure -- he's a Christian Saint, and it is not only demeaning to other religions to graft him on their faiths, it is demeaning to Christianity to deflate an important figure to nothing more than the last car of the Macy's parade.
Now, more than two decades later, I have lived in plenty of places with very few Jews, and I know full well that I am a religious minority in this country and the vast majority celebrates and observes Christmas as a religious holiday. Even in New York City, I have to find constant ways this time of year to explain to my almost four year old daughter that we won't get a Christmas tree for our home no matter how much she wants one...spurned on by the omnipresence of Christmas and her inability to comprehend the importance of us being Jews not Christians.
I don't hold any grudge or desire for entitlement in the face of that, but I cannot help but wonder why some people feel such an urgent need to portray almost any nod towards a more pluralistic holiday season either from government or corporations as a "war" against the Christianity of Christmas. I see lots of lights up. I hear lots of music in public spaces that is geared towards Christmas. And while it is utterly dickish to try to purge any trace of Christianity from public view, it is even more dickish to wail that this is actually happening on any grand scale or that minor efforts like relabeling a parade constitutes an attack on Christians.
(no subject)
Date: 10/12/10 03:35 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/12/10 03:39 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/12/10 15:32 (UTC)Here you seem to acknowledge that it should be perfectly possible to politely decline participation in a holiday of a religious tradition not your own, but earlier you stated that it could be MORE disrepectful to not do so. (edit to use your actual word choice)
What are you actually asserting in this thread? And if it is really that a Jew declining to celebrate Christmas is potentially offensive to people how does that actually work?
(no subject)
Date: 10/12/10 17:46 (UTC)Ah, I see the confusion now.
The Jewish/Christian thing is different than the atheist/Christian thing. There's no real reason for a Jewish person to celebrate Christmas as there are other cultural things in play. For an atheist with no ethnic Jewish roots, it's a different beast.
(no subject)
Date: 10/12/10 20:55 (UTC)You might be missing the point of religious freedom and choice...
(no subject)
Date: 10/12/10 21:32 (UTC)