Photographic evidence: Santa gives the Nazi saluteI know it’s almost May, and Christmas isn’t exactly around the corner, but I’d just like to go on the record and say how fed up I am with Santa Claus. I saw someone yesterday in a Santa suit (I didn’t ask why) and it got me thinking about how completely perilous Santa is and always has been.

When you think about it, Santa’s a lot like Hitler.

• He lives far away and so doesn't really seem like a direct threat.
• He keeps slaves of a lower caste to do the labor he needs.
  
• He steals into people’s houses late at night when they're least expecting it.
  
• He discriminates, makes lists (and apparently checks them twice), and has some eerie way of knowing who’s naughty (Jews, ahem) and nice (informers, possibly?)
• He wears a strange uniform.
  
• He has at least half of the world’s children under his thumb.
  
• Oh yeah, and he saturates the media with his own likeness, ideas, and philosophy.

Does anyone else think this might be dangerous? And don’t give me any crap about him having anything to do with Christmas—show me where it says Santa in the New Testament. Show me the nonsense about cookies and milk and Rudolf. Give me chapter and verse and we can chat. Until then, keep Santa away. Santa is an anagram of Satan, and as far as I’m concerned, Santa-themed sweaters might as well have big black swastikas on them. Mark my words: One of these days "Heil Santa" will catch on as a holiday greeting. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Man, I forgot all about this guy's song. Well, let's dust it off and enjoy it another year, even if it is a day late. (And, on a related note, hit Tamar's post that ponders our actions on Christmas and Easter.)

I’m such an anti-conformist I don’t spend Christmas eating Chinese food and seeing a movie. I had coffee and a bagel with a friend this morning (the kosher bagel place was hopping, of course) and then finished my grading for the semester, napped, and watched West Wing DVDs. My mother and I had a scintillating discussion about the clearance sales starting tomorrow.
Christmas Dinner: is it a fine line, or am I overly sensitive?
But the whole thing has me wondering if there’s a really appropriate way of celebrating someone else’s holidays.

There are a lot of reasons I don’t buy into the whole Jesus thing, but that’s doesn’t mean I’ve got a thing against Christians, and I’ve got mixed feelings about whether I’d be comfortable at a Christmas dinner (kashrut aside), or a midnight mass. On the one hand, I think it’s nice to be with friends when they’re celebrating whatever it is they want to celebrate, and I do have the day off and there’s nothing open, really. But it feels like a fine line between attending someone else's celebration of Jesus's birth, and celebrating that birth myself.

This goes back to my thing against religious voyeurism and how I don’t think prayer or religion should be spectator sports. I’m all for interfaith efforts and people working for better understanding between faith communities, but the idea of non Jews coming to, say, Kol Nidre because of the pretty music, or even just because they like me and they know it’s important to me seems really bizarre.

I don’t think I would be comfortable at an Easter dinner even though it’s just a meal (though the customary ham would pose a problem), and I really can’t get into any of the Christmas hoopla, either. Does anyone know of a great way to deal with Christian holidays in a way that doesn’t feel like too much of a shout out to Jesus?

For a time, Christmas felt like a kind of kryptonite, in all its various colors and effects. Christmas carols, lights, Santa Claus, and even the inexplicable Stollen, produced in me various levels of discomfort, confusion, and even a little misplaced nostalgia. I grew up a very secular Jew, and while we acknowledged that Christmas had come and gone, like most Jews we basically kept our heads down until it was all over. I watched the surreal animated puppets in Santa Claus is Coming to Town with the same hunger that any child watched the annual television show that let him stay up late. I once even sat on Santa’s lap in the mall. But even then I knew I was only a visitor in a foreign land. Santa was a Christian, and his workshop didn’t employ any Jews.

Who needs a crackling fire on Christmas: When you've got the glow of neon?Over the years I took on more Jewish observance, and surprisingly my relationship to Christmas changed, even deepened. I looked forward to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as moments to define myself against what I wasn’t. I sat in empty coffee shops, went to the movies with friends, and had Chinese food. The cold air and the deserted streets were glorious. I loved the lights in the trees and the darkened windows of the stores. Christmas meant lovely isolation and I felt deeply Jewish.

I would give my friends Christmas presents, but none of those people were really Christian. The obligation felt weird. If they didn’t believe Christ was really born on this day, why weren’t they all in Chinatown with me? My only devout Christian friend eschewed really owning anything. Whenever I gave him a gift he looked at it with the discomfort of a man struggling with a live fish He seemed to worry about it flopping on to the floor. I secretly hated his devout Christianity that was ruining Christmas. What else was I supposed to do for him on this day? There was no way I was going to eat Stollen.

Hanukkah, on the other hand, was always a letdown. The attempt to match Christmas in spirit seemed contrived. I would feel irritated when the local mall would put up the obligatory menorah next to the Christmas tree. I didn’t want Hanukkah to have to compete with Christmas. It couldn’t. What is winter without Christmas, without the blinking lights, without the giant plastic peppermint sticks covered in snow? Like this year, Hanukkah sometimes comes so early it doesn’t even feel like winter yet.

But then I married a gentile and everything changed.

My wife came from a family even more secular than my own. They never talk of God or Christ, and I have never heard them mention the Virgin Mary or the manger. But they celebrate with the fervor of postulants.

I grumbled my way through the first few years. I would read The Forward while they busied themselves with wrapping presents and keeping the fire going in the fireplace. I looked out of the corner of eye for any sign of a baby Jesus so I could leap up with an “Ah-Ha! I knew it!” Eventually Johnny Mathis and the smell of the tiny pine cones used in decorations got to me.

Take your holiday cheer: and stuff itWhat finally undid me, however, was the joy they took in giving. Stockings stuffed to overflowing, the old family photos lovingly framed, just the right sweater, all the perfect books. I would have called it out as obsessive consumption and ugly consumerism, but they always had wonderful things for me. (On Hanukkah, my non-Jewish friends always gave me “Jewish” things, as if Hanukkah presents are supposed to be about Hanukkah.)

As I began to embrace Christmas as part of my wife’s tradition I realized that Hanukkah was also special for me as a Jew. It’s just a coincidence that Hanukkah and Christmas fall around the same time of the year. My mistake was thinking that since Hanukkah is really a minor Jewish holiday and didn’t have anything about it that was distinctly seasonal, it wasn’t worth making a big deal about it. But Hanukkah is a Jewish day, and it marks, like so many other Jewish holidays, the sheer fortitude of the Jewish people. Over and over again we survive. Our lights keep burning, even when they are not as nearly as bright as my neighbor’s giant automaton reindeer.

And so for the last few years, Hanukah has been another time to mark being Jewish. In my home, we don’t celebrate the two holidays together, but go by where they land on the calendar. And secretly, I hope when I light the shamash and the first candle of the menorah that it will start to snow, and that it will be snowing all winter, especially when one year I take my family to Chinatown, and show them how Christmas is really done.

Christmas time is silly season in the newspapers; stories abound of politically-correct churchmen replacing nativity plays with right-on interfaith ceremonies, local councils banning advent calendars for fear of offending Muslims, and so on. Some of these stories are true, most are bullshit, and the world continues to turn.

 

But now they’re coming for the Finest Christmas Song Of All Time ™, and it’s time to draw a line in the sand. ¡No pasarán!

 

BBC Radio 1 has said it will allow the Pogues' Fairytale of New York to be played on the station uncut, after criticism of a decision to censor it.

The words "slut" and "faggot" had been dubbed out from the 20-year-old festive hit by station executives. But after a day of criticism from listeners, the band, and the mother of singer Kirsty MacColl, they changed their minds.

Sanity prevailed on this occasion, but for a while there it looked as if one of the festive season’s few pleasures had been emasculated. Radio 1, which is still Britain’s most popular chart music station, has courted controversy before; famously refusing to play “Relax” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood after twigging to the pretty thinly-veiled sexual references, their decision to ban it sent the song rocketing up the charts and into immortality (it even spawned a bizarre computer game).

 

Banning songs now seems like a throwback to a distant age, but the whole arsenal of dubbing, bleeping and ‘clean’ edits to avoid offending the oversensitive souls among us still rankles. I don’t really care that much when such soft censorship is applied to gangsta rap, or whatever the hell you call it, because there’s only so many times I can hear the word “motherfucka” before I start to get bored anyway – but when a great song like Fairytale is targeted, we’re crossing from mere silliness into full-on absurdity.

 

Sadly but unsurprisingly, it seems like Peter Tatchell, for whom I have a lot of time, doesn’t agree. In condemning the BBC’s U-turn he argues, slightly disingenuously, that he’s not calling for homophobic language to be banned, merely for some consistency between homophobic and racist abuse. He has a point, of course – most of us wouldn’t belt out Fairytale with quite the same drunken abandon if the word “nigger” appeared in the slot occupied by “faggot” – but ultimately Tatchell’s complaint falls because he doesn’t address context.

 

Even Peter doesn’t claim to find the lyric offensive; I’ve never met a gay man who does. Fairytale doesn’t call for gays to be murdered, for example, as the Jamaican dancehall artists targeted by Tatchell's Stop Murder Music campaign do. The lyrics depict a drunken domestic fight, and the song uses earthy, ‘offensive’ language, but - news flash - this is the way people in the real world talk. People are more sophisticated than usually given credit for, and they understand that they’re listening to two characters talk and squabble, not an attack by the singer on their way of life. Most gays are no more offended by the use of homophobic language, in this context, than I was when Tony Soprano mocked Uncle Junior for enjoying “eating pussy”.

 

It’s not uncommon, where I come from, to taunt a colleague who’s sticking to the soft drinks on a night out by calling them a “poof”. I plead guilty to doing it myself, quite frequently. No offence is ever meant, nor taken. Yet if, in the midst of a drunken argument, I deliberately insulted a gay friend by calling him a “faggot”, he would probably be an ex-friend by the time we sobered up. Context is all; the word has only the meaning we choose to attach to it.

 

Such is our terror of “causing offence” these days, though, that companies like the BBC employ whole teams of people to ensure that it never happens, pre-empting any possible complaint by neutering the sentiments in the original song. And, as Brendan O’Neill points out in his response to Tatchell, it’s funny to note how censorship has, slowly but surely, mutated from a tool of the intolerant right into a weapon that is more frequently used nowadays by the oh-so-tolerant left. In its painfully angst-ridden-liberal way, the BBC’s elitist sympathies are there for all to see; appalled at such uncouth language befouling the airwaves at a time of family celebration and determined, in their own narrow-minded, thin-lipped and very British way, to uphold a certain level of decorum and protect the fragile diversity of our society. If we don’t stand up for the faggots, the towelheads and the niggers against this sort of rough abuse, they fret, who will?

 

The idea that gay men might not need to be protected from Kirsty MacColl, or that we might not want to see all the rough edges in our culture smoothed out into a bland homogenous soup, clearly doesn’t occur to these guys. But that, finally, is why Fairytale is so enduringly popular. Christmas isn’t all about crackling fires and kissing under the mistletoe any more than life is a bowl of cherries, and if it takes an addle-brained old piss artist to remind us of it, so much the better. Censoring art is more offensive than the word “faggot”.

 

UPDATE: Video of the song below. 

Brandon Walker was a lonely Jew on Christmas with no place to go. Then he discovered Chinese food and movies. He wrote a catchy song about it, and the rest is YouTube history.

 

 

Anthony Bourdain Says: you're rude.I'm not going to pretend that I'm a fan of Anthony Bourdain. This is a man who has labeled all vegans as "rude" (ironic, considering he's easily one of the rudest people on television) and calls them the "Hezbollah-like splinter-faction" of vegetarians. This is a man who has said that "the sooner we asphyxiate in our own filth, the better." This is a man whose appetite is whetted by watching a live cobra have its still-beating heart ripped out, then served to him in a dish. Clearly, Bourdain and I have very different world-views and principles. Perhaps the one thing he and I agree on is that Rachel Ray is really, really insufferable.

Though I often can't stomach his Travel Channel show, No Reservations, thanks to his caustic and surly hosting (and penchant for the cruel), clearly I'm in the minority. People seem to love (maybe it's love/hate?) the guy, so much so that Food Network, home of his first television series, A Cook's Tour, has announced that they'll be reprising the series with a marathon on Christmas.

The series, featuring outspoken chef Anthony Bourdain, returns to Food Network with a Christmas Day Marathon, airing four back-to-back episodes on Tuesday, December 25th from 9-11pm ET/PT. The series will then join the primetime lineup in its new timeslot on Tuesday, January 8th at 10:30pm ET/PT.

The Christmas Day marathon includes:

9:00pm "So Much Vodka So Little Time" -- Russia
9:30pm "Dining with Geishas" -- Japan
10:00pm "How to Be a Carioca" -- Brazil
10:30pm "Stuffed like a Pig" -- France

So, there you go: order in some Kung Pao and Moo Shu and celebrate the winter solstice with Bourdain.

 

Video c/o College Humor.

 

 

This holiday season, Jews everywhere can experience the taste of a Christmas ham--without actually eating one. Yup, the crazies at Jones Soda are at it again, and this time they've created a Christmas Pack and a Chanukah Pack. Christmas flavors include Christmas ham, Christmas tree, egg nog, and sugar plum, and the sodas come with one "very cool stocking stuffer." The Chanukah Pack includes latke, apple sauce, chocolate coins, and jelly doughnut and comes with a dreidel. Both are certified kosher, caffeine free, and can be ordered on their Web site.

These are the same people who came up with dirt, sports cream, and perspiration sodas as a tribute to the Seattle Seahawks. They pride themselves on the accuracy of their flavors.

 

Hallelujah, Already: Now don't forget to grab that big candlestick-thingYou know the Messiah? 

Not the Jewish future-dude who makes men in black hats dance... but the musical winter holiday event with lots of shouting? 

You know... Hallelujah!! Hallelujah!!!  Hallelujah!!! Halellujah!!! Hal-lay-lay-ew-YAH!  That one?

 Well, it's weird, but I've always thought of that as a pretty inoffensive Christmas event.  Maybe because my Jewish grandmother once took me to hear it performed by the Baltimore Symphony when I was a kid.  Maybe because I think of it as "classy", unlike little babies in plastic mangers and zoo animals with red shiny noses...

Or maybe because it's in another language, so you don't know what's being said... you don't know WHY they're so full of joy and hallelujah-ness.

But now we know what they're saying.  Thanks to this week's Sunday Times.  And it should come as no huge surprise:

“Messiah” lovers may be surprised to learn that the work was meant not for Christmas but for Lent, and that the “Hallelujah” chorus was designed not to honor the birth or resurrection of Jesus but to celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in A.D. 70. For most Christians in Handel’s day, this horrible event was construed as divine retribution on Judaism for its failure to accept Jesus as God’s promised Messiah.

Yeah, it turns out this was intended to be another fun Easter game for us.  Along with bloody Passion plays and pogroms.  A celebration of God's rejection of the Jews.

The article is pretty complicated, and goes on to discuss the complexities of the libretto and the religious text from which it was taken, but it doesn't much matter to me.  I'd always understood that the Hellelujah chorus was a celebration of a birth.  And I could overlook the Jesus factor in the name of ecumenical good spirit.  The idea that this rousing chorus was in fact intended as a celebration of our destruction... that's all I need to know, really.

But this brings up another bigger question too.  The Richard  Wagner question.  The TS  Elliot question.  Can we admire and appreciate brilliant art when the artist has an anti-Semitic agenda?

Can you?

Instead of discarding leftover Christmas trees in a giant pit outside a dumpster, as is tradition in the U.S., in a more eco-friendly Germany, the trees get recycled by zoo animals, as is seen in this pic of a baby elephant in a Dresden zoo enjoying his last shoot of shrubbery.

twinkle, twinkleThe other day, a friend asked me about the new tradition Jews are adopting of putting up “Hanukkah lights”.   “I mean, is it okay if you only use blue and white lights” she asked me.  “Since blue and white are the Jewish colors?”

I scratched my head at this.  Because while I often see Jewish cards/ posters, random crap in blue-and-white, I can’t remember ever being taught we had an official color scheme.  Or a mascot for that matter.  I mentioned this,  and she asked me, “Well, why do you think we do everything in blue and white then?”

To this I responded that, today, in honest terms, I thought it was a Zionist thing.  Whether or not it began that way, that’s certainly what I assume when I see those colors all over anything.

I said I imagined it all originated with the colors on a tallit, but that today, more people recognized the Israeli flag then a tallit.  (Incidentally, that blue dye in a tallit is supposed to be made from snail goo. Ick!) 

Then I looked it up.  Indeed, the Israeli flag is made to look like a tallit.  And “the idea that the blue and white colors were the national color of the Jewish people was voiced by early on Ludwig August Frankl (1810-1894), an Austrian Jewish poet.”  Not a very good poet either.  So that’s the ancient history of your “Hanukkah lights”.

But now that we know…  I’m curious to find out  what other people think of blue and white twinkle lights.  Can we pretend that it’s okay, since it’s the “festival of lights” and we’re using “our colors”  Or is this just another dumb consumer way we’ve gotten suckered into playing “secular Christmas”?

Hmmmm?

Brought to you courtesy of Adam Hanft of HuffPo:

I'm actually okay with leaving the Christ in Christmas. (I just don't want to find him in the classroom, or in Congress, or anyplace else.) I wouldn't want the Maccabees taken out of Chanukah, and, in fact, I don't think any tradition should be stripped of its narrative to satisfy those who choose not to accept it.

I also think that the attempts to broaden out the holiday with such abominations as Christmukkah and Kwanza are horrific attempts to create commonality where there is none. Feeling marginalized from the mainstream may not be an ideal state, but it's certainly better than a false sense of inclusion. And there's no question that a lot of great art has come from the pain of exclusion, more than has come from the fakery of a culture of kumbaya.

I can accept the seasonal incorporation of Christmas into the visual plane, even the manifestly intrusive and ugly crèches and nativity scenes, as a sociologically interesting and perhaps even necessary expression. I just wish that those who advocate for them stopped viewing their display as an entitlement, but rather as part of the informal contract between the faiths that has worked pretty well for a long time.

Meanwhile, consider that the Jews invented not just the soundtrack of Christmas, but its nostalgic heft. "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire); "White Christmas"; "Let it Snow"; "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer"; "I'll be Home for Christmas" and "Silver Bells" were all penned by those who managed to turn outsider status into someone else's war worth fighting.

.Merry Christmas, to all of you, who are likely feeling overwhelmed by the inane "holiday" songs on the radio, offended by the plastic reindeer in every window, and disgusted by the fat men in red suits who overrun our shopping malls through November and December.

All of those feelings are natural and justified, and you have every right to be bothered.  I'll even admit that I got a little LOUD at the dinner table last night when my (non-Jewish) mother suggested that "it wasn't fair that she didn't get off FRIDAY for the holiday".  I went on a tear about how I've missed coming home for the high holidays year after year, but Christians expect "Easter Monday" off from work (There is no such day in any religious sense).  I yelled at her, was a wicked daughter... although she hadn't done anything wrong.  I was just feeling touchy.  So I totally certainly understand if you resent this week of the year.

BUT...

I also want to take a minute to mention to all of you that there are other ways to handle the Christmas situation than either hating it, or doing your best to ignore it.  And I'm wondering if it's possible to find a way to give it some meaning (not Christian meaning... I'm not expecting anyone to celebrate it... but Jewish meaning, or maybe your own personal meaning).

 And in mulling over how one might accomplish that goal, I thought about how, in hospitals, overworked Jews end up working on Christmas, so that the overworked Christians can be home with their families.

And then I thought about the Jewish focus on tzedekah (did you know it's especially good to give unwillingly?), and about how one NICE thing about Christmas is the way a lot of churches open themselves up to the homeless, set up soup kitchens and shelters, adopt-a-family programs, and toys-for-tots kind of stuff.  About how we can, as Jews, appreciuate that tradition, as something that resonates through our own faith.

And then I wondered how often Jews volunteer to help out on Christmas, in churches. I wondered if Jews ever step in an serve up the figgy pudding, dress up as Santa, so some tired Christian can go home to his/her family for the holiday.  And I thought that maybe next year, I'd do something like that for Christmas.  Skip the Matzo Ball and do something to help the people I'm busy resenting.

Just a thought.  I mean, what else do you have to do?

How many godforsaken hours can one possibly pass via Chinese food and movies? How many hours of our lives must we watch tick away waiting for the world to start up again? Unlike Ms. Chupak, I do not get off on appropriating the (a)religious rituals of others.You smell like chimney and old people.

Humiliatingly enough, tried to take part in revelry with my purported peeps, but was turned away at the door for insufficient proof of ticket purchase. Alas!

There is nothing to be done but get fucked up, haul out the best Hanukkah present ever, and start taking bets as to how long until those jackass decorations go away for another year.

And! Compose a Haiku:

Christmas is boring
Everything is closed and shut
I want a latte.

I should have known when I read the Jewlicious post on former "Sex & The City" writer Cindy Chupack's NY Times Style section editorial entitled, "Jewish In A Winter Wonderland," that I'd get eminently pissed off. That every shred of moral integrity and depth in my being would cringe. My body elicited the same gagging reflex reaction every time I turned on an episode of "Sex & The City" and watched these four single woman describe their worth and those of the opposite gender in terms of Manolo Blahniks. It was the height of shallow, phony self-indulgent materialism.

In her latest chef d'oeuvre, Chupack translates her materialistic tendencies into a blasphemous ode to Pottery Barn and, in her signature self-satisfying style flagrantly boasts about her "subversive" behavior by deciding to celebrate Christmas over Chanukah. Why does she make the jump? Because a Pottery Barn catalog made her lust after the commercialization of Christ's birth.

So as I browsed past velvet monogrammed stockings and quilted tree skirts and pine wreaths and silver-plated picture frames that doubled as stocking holders (genius!), I said to myself, as much as to my husband: “This is why I sometimes wish I celebrated Christmas. Everything looks so cozy and inviting.” And much to my surprise, he said, “We can celebrate Christmas if you want.” And like a 12-year-old, I said, “We can?” And he said, “Sure.”

After Chupack and her hubby succumb to the Holiday season, she expresses some initial remorse, but it doesn't last too long:

But despite our differences, we both love our little winter wonderland. Some nights, I put on our Starbucks Christmas CD, light a fire, turn on the tree and play with the different settings, put liquid smoke in the train’s smokestack and turn on the choo-choo sound effects and then I sit back and enjoy my first Christmas, in all its kitschy splendor. I feel a little guilty when I look at our lone menorah on the mantel (the only evidence of my faith other than my guilt), but I ask you: how can this much pleasure be wrong?

And then comes the rationalization/absolving of guilt:

On the other hand, maybe it’s nice to teach children that holidays can be done à la carte. Every religion, every culture has so many beautiful rituals and traditions to choose from. Maybe celebrating is a step toward tolerating. I can hardly wait for Hanukkwanzaa.

lama?The Independent posed the question, "What would the Virgin Mary encounter if she and Joseph headed towards Bethlehem today?" In his blog, Laurence Simon responds to this question in a modern day context. Here's a brief intro to whet your appetite:

Now, if they [Mary and Joseph] were far-left anti-Zionist self-loathing Jews like Adam Shapiro, well, they'd be in Bethlehem protesting the Separation Barrier. Probably facing down soldiers and border police in protests every day, throwing rocks and providing a front line from which Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP, and Fateh snipers could attack. Maybe Mary, despite her gravid condition, would attempt to attack a riot policeman, end up miscarrying the Baby Jesus. Nice going, Joseph, letting the women pregnant with your baby and the so-called Messiah miscarry and kill the Baby Jesus.

The Tref Home In QuestionIn an Orthodox neighborhood in L.A., a Jewish mother and heiress to an exotic-lingerie fortune (who now runs the Trashy Lingerie franchise with her hubby), decided to decorate her home this holiday season with ornate Christmas decorations including two giant snow globes, illuminated angels, candy canes, and a few large Santas. Her neighbors, who are mostly Jewish, have expressed mixed feelings about her actions.

“Some people are so offended, you have no idea,” said Mary Loomis-Shrier, who has long erected the giant display on a lovely street south of Hollywood. “But some of my neighbors think it is great. Some of their kids drop their list of toys in my mailbox. I don’t care because I love it, and it is my right."

Oh, I think we have plenty of ideas as to how Jews might not make light of "inherently Christian" acts.

Thanks to its made-up miracle and not-quite-Christmas status, Hanukkah has a bad reputation—but I love it anyway. Here are three reasons you should as well:

1.) Hanukkah has social justice built in. Hanukkah gelt was originally given as real money, not chocolate, to children. They were encouraged to give it as tzedakah (charity).

2.) For American Jews, the holiday of Hanukkah should reinforce the urge not to assimilate. American is an assimilation machine, but we want to maintain some cultural distinctiveness as Jews. Putting on a big display of tacky Jewish-ness (i.e. Hanukkah) is a positive defense mechanism during a time of year when we are assaulted by a tacky display of Christian-ness (i.e. Christmas).

3.) There's even a Zionist aspect to this holiday. Hanukkah has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity also in Israel. As a country which sees itself as a continuation of Jewish sovereignties of antiquity and which prides itself on possessing the first Jewish army in more than a thousand years, this holiday is perfect.

Last night I went to a holiday party at a friend’s house, and at some point the Jewish contingent (all three of us) went out to the backyard to light the hanukiah I had stashed in my purse. I felt a little awkward about the whole thing, but it was a huge relief to be away from Mariah Carey’s Christmas album, which was playing inside. The Yids ended up staying outside for awhile with a couple of delightfully irreverent musicians and the inevitable discussion of sex and what we all wish people knew about sex ensued. I have had some variation of this conversation at every party I’ve attended in the last five years, so I kind of assumed that when I went inside to get more beer and baklava everyone else would be having similar debates, but since the rest of the party was mainly grad students from Vanderbilt’s Divinity school, they were talking about church and the Word. So lame. And Mariah Carey was still playing, which I just couldn’t get over. When I accidentally stepped...

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Hey everybody, I'm Tamar, your Hanukkah blogger and latke queen. Currently I live in Nashville, where I'm a grad student at Vanderbilt University and do all kinds of work in the Jewish community. Every day I'll have some notes about Hanukkah fun and tips for your own celebrations.

It's kind of funny that I'm blogging for Hanukkah, because for the past few years I've been trying to get over my Hanukkah-hatred. For years I was all belligerent that Jews celebrated this pseudo-holiday with such gusto because it all just seemed so derivative of Christmas. I felt like Jews had been tricked into celebrating Jesus's life, and that made me crazy. Then, two years ago I heard a dvar Torah by Prof. Ben Sommer of Northwestern Univeristy about how the lulav and etrog that we wave around on Sukkot are derived from pagan rituals. Sukkot is my favorite holiday, and I'd always thought it was so original and different from anything anyone else did, so the dvar pretty much blew my mind.

Here's the thing, though: Just because we borrowed some custom from another group or religion doesn't mean we can't make it awesome. And even if the first people to get into the holiday were doing so because they secretly loved Christmas trees- well, so what? YOU don't have to love Christmas trees.

So yeah, it still bothers me that everyone thinks that Christmas and Hanukkah have some kind of moral connection, (even though our holiday is about war and strife and how good we were at killing the people who wanted to kill us, and Christmas is about virgin birth) but I'm not letting the War on Christmas get between me and my rockin' Hanukkah cookies. This Hanukkah, put up decorations, sing some songs, eat a donut—and be glad Hanukkah Harry never really caught on.

While walking to the bus stop every day, I see a good number of Christmas displays, some more impressive than others and some tackier than others. It wasn't until today that I noticed one simply more terrifying than others.

Until this point, my Christmas display-related amusement was relegated to a small house half a block from where I meet the bus. There was previously nothing remarkable about the house's other holiday decorations (skeletons around Halloween, turkeys for Thanksgiving), but over the course of a week, the proprietors slowly pieced together a gaudy plastic (glowing, at night!) nativity scene with Joseph, Mary, 3 Wise Men, and the little Baby Jesus.

It existed in full for about 2 days before gradually tragedy struck. Over the course of another week, I realized the figures were being systematically knocked over, one by one, until the only things left were Baby Jesus and Mother Mary.

"A thought-provoking analysis of Christianity's true heart - the love between mother and son?" I wondered.

A few days later, Jesus and Mary were knocked over too, but a life-sized inflatable snowglobe with moving parts and snowing snow had been erected next to them. A day after that, everything was uprighted.

This new house, though, beats all. I only get a chance to see it in passing while the bus whizzes mercifully by, but there are a few key elements that it encompasses which make it, in my mind, the pinnacle of bad Christmas displays:

1. This house has a giant yard. With a giant yard comes more creepy figurines. Somehow, it also means (overall) more creepy figurines per square foot. Ouch.
2. One of the creepy figurines is a giant inflatable Homer Simpson dressed like Santa. While this monstrosity is already heinous, given his oddly-wrinkled smoker-mouth and eyes lolling in the back of his skull, this Homer Simpson is only partially inflated for God knows what reason, giving him a disturbingly withered, scoliotic appearance.
3. There is also what appears to be a "Persistence of Time"-inspired ginormous uninflated inflatable Santa draped hanging half off the garage into the muddy lawn beneath. It's as if Santa Claus, frustrated with the commercialization of his likeness, bellyflopped out of his sleigh one tragic evening high above Queens and pancaked himself into a flaccid mess of plastic and the crumpled dreams of children everywhere.
4. Keeping with that theme, further down the roof is a triangular battalion of cherubic 3' tall toy soldiers, all marching in step toward the precipitously close edge of the roof. I don't really know my stance on euthanasia, but in this case, who would blame them?

Poor, poor Christmas.  

The town of Chappaqua, NY is up in arms over holiday decorations that appear "too Jewish." In anticipation of the holiday season, local business owner Liza Caverzasi gave $3000 toward blue banners with white snowflakes that say "Welcome." Unfortunately, the town's reaction was anything but appreciative and the Liza Caverzasi is now paying the price for her generosity.

Dozens of residents called Town Hall to complain, saying the colors were those of the Israeli flag and that at least one of the snowflakes looks like a Star of David. Caverzasi, who is not Jewish, also has been receiving angry phone calls from residents.

Caverzasi's response to the Town's disapproval: "There has to be some tolerance."

Seriously. People need to save their frustrations for the road and leave Judaica alone.

Over the next few weeks, you’ll find a lot of good Chanukah tips here at Faithhacker, from a host of fabulous guest-bloggers. A list of ways to make your holiday season more meaningful, fun, creative, unusual! But to start us off, I can’t help using this platform to say something I think is really important… especially for the interfaith set, at the risk of pissing some folks off.

STOP freaking out so much about Christmas trees!!!

I’ve spent the last year of my life traveling around the country, reading and talking to people who are either intermarried, or mightily afraid of intermarriage, and without fail, the thing everyone is most scared about is a fucking pine tree.

“What will the kids think if we have a tree???”

“What will my mother say???”

Tell your mom it’s not a big deal. Tell her it’s a houseplant.

There are plenty of hard issues you’ll face in your religiously pluralistic household, and you may need a therapist to help you figure out your kids’ Sunday school identity, or how to handle the in-laws. You may need to talk about whether your new extended family thinks you’re going to hell, and whether you’re allowed to avoid them altogether if they do… but a tree? C’mon, it’s no different than little pink hearts at Valentines Day or a jack-o-lantern at Halloween (a similarly druidic/Christian holiday… and I doubt you’ll freak out about those. What’s the big deal with Christmas trees? I mean, Israelis put them up for Sylvester (itself basically a Christian holiday).

Instead of worrying about these symbols, ask yourself how to make your own observance more meaningful, so that the tree isn’t a threat. Take a look at what your own symbols stand for, and if you aren’t sure… go read a book (I use this one)! The more your own tradition means to you, the less upsetting and threatening you’ll find a cultural Christian symbol.

And if the absence of a tree is what makes you Jewish… well, that’s pretty lame.

Tumescent X-mas tree ornaments cause a minor stir in Florida:

"It is just sad they have to stoop to this kind of thing to defame Christmas," Hillcrest Baptist Church Rev. Jim Patterson said. "It says we are nothing more than sexual acts or psychical being and we are much more than that. We are spiritual beings and this is a spiritual holiday. And, why bring it to that level. It makes no sense to me."

Yeah, because nothing says Birth of Our Savior like seeing a shorts-wearing Santa lying face-down around an aura of yellow snow and Jim Bean.  

Awwww: But noIt’s “holiday” time, which means credit card debt and family horror shows and nice, friendly reminders from your parents’ friends that you’re a total loser.

We here at Jewcy do not understand what the impetus for a Family Holiday Newsletter might possibly be. Could your close friends and family not have heard about little Johnnie’s triumphant Emmy win or the breathtaking wedding you threw Jane and her new lawyer-husband? Do you think the arrival of little Sophie/Molly/Abby really calls for formal announcement? Do you not realize that infants wearing ribboned headbands look like fucktards? Do you really think anyone but you and Elliot Dorff give a flying fuck what your total “Grandchild Tally” is this year??

Are these insufferable newsletter freaks just that colossally insecure? Do their kids not call them often enough? Is it possibly a cry for help? Does it not occur to the braggarts that they sound very much like they’re trying to convince themselves everything’s awesome?

A friend of mine is terrorized annually by a Family Newsletter so fat, so obnoxious, so glaringly self-satisfied and inane that it somehow renders her entire existence momentarily meaningless. She calls me weeping every year. Is her life not a little irrelevant in the face of these smug, tangible, black-and-white laundry lists of life-cycle triumphs?

Every year, we wonder:
Are they trying to make us feel bad or is it just your garden-variety narcissism?
If their lives are so fucking great, why the hell are they spending so much time/energy trying to tell us how great their lives are? Shouldn’t they just be, oh I don’t know, busy enjoying?
And finally, aren’t “Holiday” Newsletters a little, um, goyische?

At the end of the day, if your life is fantastic and your family is intact and flourishing, it might not occur to you that many people have failure and disappointment and loss somewhat fogging up their figurative holiday windows. Be a mensch and don’t make it worse, why dontcha.

Share with us the most hateful, passive-aggressive, bullshit snippets from this year’s batch of newsletters. Read between the lines: what do these suburban yentas not realize about their own progeny in these euphemism-laden reports? When does “Bob and Marcie just celebrated their tenth anniversary!” actually mean “Bob’s fucking his raquetball partner and Marcie’s still struggling with body-dysmorphic disorder”? When does “Jakey will graduate from Brown next semester and is weighing his options for what’s next!” really mean “Jakey didn’t get into medical school and we’re terrified he might be gay”? Extra points if you sell out your own mom/grandma.

Bring it, Jewcers. We want to wince.

Any American Jew can tell you that Christmas is a schizophrenic holiday. There’s the Christmas of Santa, a six-week shopping festival in which the nation’s stores become temples where anyone with a credit card can come and worship. And then there’s the Christmas of Jesus, a day in late December that for those of us non-Christians is somewhat of a yawn. Santa Christmas is a national holiday; Jesus Christmas is a little more exclusive. Santa Christmas is all about Macy’s; Jesus Christmas is all about the hearth.

At Radio City Music Hall, they understand this split. They’ve organized their entire show around it. The Christmas Spectacular, now in its 73rd year, consists largely of a veneration of the god of toys and the magical gifts he bestows around the world, with a special emphasis on the glamour of the big city holiday season. Theirs is a Santa who loves New York City so much that he’s willing to imperil the entire Christmas operation by spending December 24th in midtown, shopping for Mrs. Claus’s favorite perfume.

The show opens with a 3D number in which Santa’s sleigh dips out of the sky and swoops over the city, passing Lady Liberty, ducking through the Washington Square arch, and finally coming to rest at Radio City. The local references return in “White Christmas in New York,” a long sequence about the virtues of snow featuring Manhattan’s weather forecasters, the skating rink at Rockefeller Center, a glowing Upper East Side department store, and a gorgeous neon city backdrop. A crowd of boys and girls in bright sweaters rush around the crowded streets in front of a store—Bloomingdales, maybe? —while in the windows, Rockettes dressed as mannequins prose and preen.

In the audience, we’re all flaneurs, observing the movement of the metropolis. You could even argue that the anonymity of the matching kickline dancers suggests the facelessness of city crowds. And in the middle of this, Santa Claus, incognito in a trench coat, carrying his wife’s perfume, reigns supreme. The message couldn’t be more clear: New York City and Christmas go together like white beards and red coats.

If you happen to think about it, you’ll notice something missing from this whole extravaganza. Not once in the hour-long show does anyone mention Jesus. You might be mulling over this as the curtain goes down, in which case your questions will soon be answered. When the applause ends, the curtain rises again. Suddenly you’re watching a totally different show, and this one appears to be directed by Mel Gibson.

There’s Mary—was she one of the mannequins?—and Joseph, and a giant glowing cloud on the LCD screen, and a bunch of wise men leading actual camels across the stage. Nobody is tap dancing. And then a screen descends from the ceiling, and a voice intones:

He was born in an obscure village

The child of a peasant woman.

He grew up in another obscure village…

He never had a family or owned a home.

He never set foot inside a big city.

Jesus, in other words, wants none of your Madison Avenue poofery. All that big city stuff that Santa loves so very much? Jesus is so much better than all that. Jesus would never go to Radio City Music Hall if he were still around, and for some reason Radio City Music Hall wants to make that very clear.

The nativity lasts for less than ten minutes, and then the audience—small-town tourists, big-city locals and all—is swept out onto 6th Avenue, home to Santa but not Jesus. Is this confusing? Hell yes. But it's also totally consistent with the American approach to Christmas. The Santa holiday is about how much we love to shop; the Jesus holiday is something else entirely.