As promised, my Christmas "The Rabbi Speaks"

Or, how the Rabbi got in trouble. :)

As broadcast tomorrow on WDEL (1150am).

Shavua Tov!

“Putting the Christ Back in Christmas And Why It’s Good for the Jews”

At this time of year I think of the Christmases I experienced in high school and college. In the weeks leading up to the holiday, I would go to my friend Michael’s house and help with the tree-trimming. On Christmas Eve I was always invited to his family’s Christmas party; we’d dress up and gather, visit with peers and adult family members and friends. The party broke up around 11, when they would go to midnight mass, and I would go home. The next day would bring the stereotypical Jewish experience: visiting family, maybe chinese food, a movie, and the inevitable phone call from my buddies at around 3pm when they couldn’t stand being with their families any longer—they always knew I was free.

Does that surprise you? Is it odd that the son of a rabbi, who would later become a rabbi, used to visit with a Christian family as they’d celebrate their festival? For me, it’s not. Nor was this just a way to express teenage rebellion. Rather, it’s a fond memory of participating in something quite profound and meaningful. Here I was, surrounded by people at one of their most sacred days of the year, enjoying their company and witnessing how meaningful and powerful this day was, and feeling honored that they chose to share it with me in some way. There was nothing coercive in this moment, no sense that, by participating, I was expected to betray my own faith tradition, or that theirs was in some way superior. It was the sharing that happens between real peers, with a healthy respect for each others customs and differences, without any sense of condescension or pity. And it was a mutual relationship; in return for their hospitality, Michael and his family (along with my other Christian friends) were invited to my confirmation, my ordination as a rabbi, Rosh Hashanah lunches, to sit shiva with my family when my grandfather died, and other meaningful, sacred moments.

I bring this up because of the controversies of late regarding what to do about Christmas celebrations in the public sphere. We’ve gotten used to them by now, I suppose: the most recent being West Chester’s struggle with their Old Time Christmas celebration and whether to call it a ‘holiday’ celebration, or Philadelphia going back and forth over the appellation for their winter lights. I even read of one office that hung a menorah on their office Christmas tree in a hilariously ill-thought out attempt at diversity and inclusion.

The right-wing media have made great hay over the so-called ‘war on Christmas’ the last several years, but those of my generation know these trends predate our recent experiences with whether to say “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas” (never mind the British “Happy Christmas”, which just sounds like a war on Charles Dickens). As a child I had to endure cringe-worthy so-called Holiday Concerts. You know the ones: they’re really Christmas concerts full of yuletide schlock like “jingle-bell rock” and soaring music from Handel’s “Messiah” with “I Have a Little Dreidle” thrown in for good measure. Like the menorah on the Christmas tree, or the image of a Ham for sale labeled “Delicious for Hannukah” (thank you Walmart), or Ms. Burns, my first grade teacher, giving me a note from David, Santa’s Jewish elf, these attempts at inclusiveness were truly painful to experience; as if Chanukah were Christmas’ red-headed, slightly awkward cousin, and needed help meeting girls at the school dance.

It’s for that reason that, God help me, I’m going to sound like a right-winger on this one, or at least Garrison Keeler: it’s time to put the Christ back in Christmas.

Specifically, it’s time to stop trying to equate Chanukah with Christmas, and let it stand on its own two feet; and it’s time to stop using inclusion as a form of coercion. What do I mean? Well, let’s take it a piece at a time.

First, let’s start with Chanukah: it’s not Christmas. It’s not even one of our high holidays. Oh, we’ve tried to make it like Christmas—gift giving and all. But the reality is, it was never meant to be a high holiday, the way Christmas—Christ’s Mass—is. The better comparison would be Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world, just as Christmas is, for Christians, the birthday of Jesus (that is, God Incarnate) and the beginning of a New World of Faith. Chanukah is July 4th, only swap out fireworks and barbecue for fried food and gambling. This is why Chanukah songs always sound so clunky compared to Christmas music, but put Handel’s Messiah against Sulzer or Levandowski’s arrangements for the high holidays, and it’s a totally different story. If local government is amenable to celebrating Chanukah in the public sphere—and I think they ought to be—then let’s celebrate it on its own terms: as a holiday that celebrates liberty and freedom from religious persecution, and the overthrow of distant tyrants by patriots. What could be more American than that? Freeing Chanukah from the tethers of Christmas would allow us to share ourselves and our faith tradition, teaching our non-Jewish neighbors not only something about ourselves and our commonalities, but our differences as well.

And that leads me to the second point: inclusion as a form of coercion. For years, the Anti-Defamation League put out materials that claimed we were ‘just like everyone else’, and our Christian neighbors have bought into that notion to such a degree that they do themselves, and us, a disservice by it. Christmas is a Christian Holiday; it is by default, exclusive. It celebrates a narrative that is not a Jewish story: the coming of a God-made-flesh who would die to relieve the world of the burden of sin. There is nothing Jewish about that story--our sins are our own responsibility as individuals, and we specifically forbid any such act of martyrdom. And yet we as a society would gloss over those differences, for what? To avoid uncomfortable conversations? To smooth over any roughness of difference? It is our dissimilarities that give us the opportunity to see the world differently and share our true selves with one another--why would we want to minimize that? More than shopping trips, carols and slaughtered evergreens, it is our refusal to acknowledge these differences and our attempts at assimilation--making everything the same--that strains our relationships. That is, after all, what the Maccabees were fighting against.

So let’s be intellectually honest with ourselves. Let’s celebrate Chanukah for what it is: a time for Jews to cherish our freedom from religious and cultural tyranny. And let’s celebrate Christmas for what it is: a time for Christians to rejoice. And most of all, let’s celebrate our diversity and our full cacophony of voices--we may sing from different hymnals, but what harmony we make together!