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It's December, remember, when the eight nights of Hanukkah, which this year began at sunset Tuesday, overlap Christmas and believers of all stripes shift into happy/merry overdrive. While Christian faithful lament that Christ is too often overlooked on ...
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Updated 54m ago A Jewish writer says mixing Hanukkah and Christmas in Jewish homes refutes the very meaning of the Jewish holiday -- one that celebrates defying assimilation.
CAPTIONBy Sam Ward, USA TODAY The Horror! A Jewish parenting writer has dared to say that Jews should only celebrate Jewish holidays!
It's December, remember, when the eight nights of Hanukkah, which this year began at sunset Tuesday, overlap Christmas and believers of all stripes shift into happy/merry overdrive. While Christian faithful lament that Christ is too often overlooked on his birthday, Jewish faithful who know the Hanukkah story have a similar complaint.
The Hanukkah back story is that rebels led by the Maccabees defied the pagans who defiled the holy temple. Once they regained the sacred space, their faithfulness was rewarded by a miracle -- one day's oil for the eternal lamp lasted eight days.
But all heck broke out when Jordana Horn wrote an essay earlier this month on Kveller, a Jewish parenting magazine, headlined, "Actually, you can't celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas."
So it's not about some meaning-free "holiday spirit" or gifts or even the explosion of YouTube hams (so to speak) spouting Hanukkah songs like the Yeshiva University Maccabeats.
Now, Horn writes in the Jewish Daily Forward about the fallout -- letters and emails by the hundreds accusing her of dissing and dividing her fellows in faith. But she's not backing down.
I do feel strongly that it is incumbent upon each of us to closely examine what he or she does ? and does not do ? Jewishly, what that means to each of us and why. My fear, and one that I expressed in my original piece, is that a Christmas-tree-in-the-living-room tolerance seems to stem from a lack of understanding of Judaism: that it's evidence of confusion rather than of fusion. In efforts to be everything to everyone, I wonder if we, as Jews, risk dissolving into nothing.
Of course, that nowhereland of mix-and-match religion is exactly where many in America are headed, according to a 2009 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. While the survey couldn't find enough Jews for statistical comparisons, it did find elements of Eastern faiths and New Age thinking have been widely adopted by 65% of U.S. adults, including many who call themselves Protestants and Catholics. Merry merry ommmmmmmmmm...
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Who cares? Why not celebrate every Holiday? Isn't gathering with your family more important than dissecting Holidays and looking at them under a microscope?
But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son ; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." Matthew 1:
Cathy Lynn Grossman is too fidgety to meditate. But talking about visions and values, faith and ethics lights her up. Join in at Faith & Reason. More about Cathy.