From: faigin@aero.org (Daniel P. Faigin)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: I Hate This Time of Year!
Date: 15 Dec 92 07:25:26
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: soldan.aero.org
In-reply-to: js@cs.tulane.edu's message of Tue, 15 Dec 1992 04:23:50 GMT

Given the subject, I might as well post something that I just put in the
Liberal Judaism Mailing List. It probably won't be an issue for most of you,
but there are a few...

The following is from an article in the 12/11-17/92 edition of the Los
Angeles Jewish Journal. The article is titled "Why Jews Should Not Celebrate
Christmas", and it is by Rabbi Steven Z. Leder of Wilshire Boulevard Temple,
one of the largest Reform temples in Los Angeles. In this article, he
presents the following 10 reasons why Jews shouldn't observe Christmas:

1. Celebrating Christmas will confuse your children. He knows -- he sees a
   lot of them later in his office for counseling. They can't understand why
   their parents, who raised them embracing Jewish and Christian holidays are
   suddenly so surprised when they choose a non-Jewish spouse.

2. If you are an interfaith couple with children and are celebrating
   Christmas and Chanukah in an attempt to raise them in both religious
   traditions, don't kid yourself. You might end up with children who feel
   neither Jewish nor Christian. Don't heap your own ambiguities upon your
   children. Make a consistent and clear choice about their upbringing.
   Children deserve and need their parents to be consistent and clear.

3. Christmas is often crassly materialistic. Our children have enough
   materialism to contend with; a little less won't hurt them. (That goes
   for extravagant Chanukah gifts, too.)

4. Jews celebrating Christmas is an insult to Christians. It is a religious
   holiday many of them take seriously. It is a day of piety, prayer, and
   hope. Jews have no right to appropriate and trivalize it by proclaiming
   it "just a day to clebrate with family, decorate the tree, and exchange
   gifts." If Christians want to dismiss the religious significance of
   Christmas that's one thing, for Jews to do it is quite another.

5. Most Jews who celebrate Christmas do so because they want to be like
   everyone else. Guess what?  Celebrating Christmas won't make you like
   your Christian neighbors any more than visiting a poultry farm makes you
   a chicken.

6. When Jews are no longer proud of being different it marks the beginning
   of the end of the Jewish people.

7. Christmas generally falls around the same time of year as Chanukah.
   Chanukah celebrates the victory of the Maccabees and their followers over
   the mighty Greek/Syrians. The Greek/Syrians oppressed our people. They
   took away our right to practice and celebrate as Jews. They defiled our
   Temple, raped, imprisoned and tortured our people. They sought in every
   way to destroy us.

   When Judah Maccabee fought to reclaim our freedom of religion, he didn't
   have in mind the right to negate our own Judaism by adopting the
   practices of non-Jews. If he were alive today, Judah Maccabee would
   wonder why he fought for us all. He would be sad to see mezzuzot on our
   doors and Christmas trees in our living rooms. Very sad indeed.

8. Celebrating Christmas and Chanukah by calling them "the holidays" implies
   they have something in common. They do not.

9. Your bubbe and zayde would be ashamed of you.

10. Jews have been gassed and burned for holding on to Judaism. Celebrating
    Christmas is disrespectful to them.

He concluded by presenting an 11th and best reason. We have something better
-- Chanukah. It's the best not because we get eight presents instead of one,
but because Chanukah was and is about holding onto Judaism against the whims
of popular culture. Chanukah is about the miracle of Jewish survival. Its a
miracle worth celebrating, and worth protecting too.

--
[W]:The Aerospace Corp. M1/055 * POB 92957 * LA, CA 90009-2957 * 310/336-8228
[Email]:faigin@aerospace.aero.org              [Vmail]:310/336-5454 Box#13149
		    "And as they say, the rest is compost"