Dispatch from the War on Christmas
Nov. 28th, 2010 09:35 pmAnd lo, with the passing of Thanksgiving, it is now Christmas Season everywhere I go. I never quite know how to handle this time of the year. I grew up with all the correct "do not feel sad, little Jew, there is stuff for you in December too!" books, but my general takeaway was always that they were protesting a bit too much. No matter what Bubbie and Zadie Come to My House says, there are no magical flying grandparents that come to visit Jewish children and make them feel better about not celebrating Christmas.
Chanukah is just such an unexciting holiday. I mean, it's not unexciting of itself, but it's a lot like carob--very tasty until you start pretending it's an adequate replacement for chocolate, at which point it just becomes a bit tragic. And in my case, things were complicated by the fact that my dad's family was Christian, and we did celebrate Christmas, but I was always a bit resentful of the fact that we did so. I settled into my "not a Christian" identity a long time before I had a Jewish community outside of my family and was able to formulate my own Jewish identity.
So it wasn't until college that I finally realized that Judaism had all sorts of kick-ass holidays, they just didn't fall in December. F'rinstance, I'd rather have Purim than Christmas any time--that's when all the other kids are eating chocolate, but you are drinking mimosas until you forget the difference between your friends and enemies and it turns out you never liked chocolate much anyway. ssshhh, don't tell anyone
Granted, there are tons of Christmassy things I love, but they're mostly from my somewhat bizarre Waldorf education and its tendency to appropriate random German holidays? The things that I love about Winter Christian Thingies are bell choruses and St. Nicholas Day on December 6, and St. Cecelia Day on November 22, and Advent Candles, and the smell of pine, and the odd story in The Seven Year Wonder Book about the line of apple trees from the seeds Adam and Eve took from the Garden of Eden that only bore edible fruit when the Christ Child was born. (Like I said, conflicted confusing religious education in early childhood!)
So I generally spend the month of December alternating between sympathetic giddiness collected from the people around me, and seething resentment of all the times it's been taken for granted that the holiday is everyone's. (One of my least favorite tropes ever: Christmas in [Alien|Fantasy] World X, because everyone across the universe celebrates Christmas, silly! Doctor Who and Yuletide fic are the two biggest offenders here, but I quickly learned to skip any Yuletide fic that bears a hint of December holiday theme.)
Recently, there has been the bonus fun of ongoing reporting on the "war on Christmas", wherein evil atheists and their lackeys the people with religions other than Christian intentionally water down the winter holidays with commercialism and non-denominational cheer. As though so much as mentioning on occasion that we do in fact exist is a grievous offense. To be fair, though, I have my own resentments of the PC genericization of "Merry Christmas" into "Happy Holidays", in which Chanukah and Kawanzaa are tacked on sloppily to Christmas sentiment to make the wisher feels less gauche about being in the majority. This, more than anything, is the reason for my creeping avoidance of Chanukah--it reminds me all too much of attempting to explain to highly religious Christian friends that I didn't believe in Jesus even though his story was in the Bible and thus incontestable truth. Christians, you are welcome to December. Just know that I will be making you jealous when I am wasted in March.
This is not, of course, intended as a complaint against the many lovely Christians, religious and otherwise, who I know and love, who I encourage to celebrate their major holiday as they choose! It is just not my holiday, is all. It's the institution I'm complaining about, not your practices.
tl;dr![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
epershand is a conflicted grinchy Jew. PS I like "Grinch Night" so much better than "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", even though it is objectively not as good.
Chanukah is just such an unexciting holiday. I mean, it's not unexciting of itself, but it's a lot like carob--very tasty until you start pretending it's an adequate replacement for chocolate, at which point it just becomes a bit tragic. And in my case, things were complicated by the fact that my dad's family was Christian, and we did celebrate Christmas, but I was always a bit resentful of the fact that we did so. I settled into my "not a Christian" identity a long time before I had a Jewish community outside of my family and was able to formulate my own Jewish identity.
So it wasn't until college that I finally realized that Judaism had all sorts of kick-ass holidays, they just didn't fall in December. F'rinstance, I'd rather have Purim than Christmas any time--that's when all the other kids are eating chocolate, but you are drinking mimosas until you forget the difference between your friends and enemies and it turns out you never liked chocolate much anyway. ssshhh, don't tell anyone
Granted, there are tons of Christmassy things I love, but they're mostly from my somewhat bizarre Waldorf education and its tendency to appropriate random German holidays? The things that I love about Winter Christian Thingies are bell choruses and St. Nicholas Day on December 6, and St. Cecelia Day on November 22, and Advent Candles, and the smell of pine, and the odd story in The Seven Year Wonder Book about the line of apple trees from the seeds Adam and Eve took from the Garden of Eden that only bore edible fruit when the Christ Child was born. (Like I said, conflicted confusing religious education in early childhood!)
So I generally spend the month of December alternating between sympathetic giddiness collected from the people around me, and seething resentment of all the times it's been taken for granted that the holiday is everyone's. (One of my least favorite tropes ever: Christmas in [Alien|Fantasy] World X, because everyone across the universe celebrates Christmas, silly! Doctor Who and Yuletide fic are the two biggest offenders here, but I quickly learned to skip any Yuletide fic that bears a hint of December holiday theme.)
Recently, there has been the bonus fun of ongoing reporting on the "war on Christmas", wherein evil atheists and their lackeys the people with religions other than Christian intentionally water down the winter holidays with commercialism and non-denominational cheer. As though so much as mentioning on occasion that we do in fact exist is a grievous offense. To be fair, though, I have my own resentments of the PC genericization of "Merry Christmas" into "Happy Holidays", in which Chanukah and Kawanzaa are tacked on sloppily to Christmas sentiment to make the wisher feels less gauche about being in the majority. This, more than anything, is the reason for my creeping avoidance of Chanukah--it reminds me all too much of attempting to explain to highly religious Christian friends that I didn't believe in Jesus even though his story was in the Bible and thus incontestable truth. Christians, you are welcome to December. Just know that I will be making you jealous when I am wasted in March.
This is not, of course, intended as a complaint against the many lovely Christians, religious and otherwise, who I know and love, who I encourage to celebrate their major holiday as they choose! It is just not my holiday, is all. It's the institution I'm complaining about, not your practices.
tl;dr
epershand is a conflicted grinchy Jew. PS I like "Grinch Night" so much better than "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", even though it is objectively not as good.
