Don't give me the old 'anti-semitic' threat. I stated the simple fact that Hanukkah is not nearly as theologically important to the Jews as the Christian Holy Day and Holy Season of Christmas is to Christians. And the same goes for Kwaanza. You can twist those words to fit whatever shape you chose, but they are simple facts.
Chanukah has assumed increased attention in North America only since a certain element in our society has been trying to take the CHRIST out of Christmas. You know it, I know it, and so does everyone else, including the CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS, of whom openly admits to it.
By MORTON WEINFELD The holiday season has come and gone. I am referring to Christmas, New Year's and Chanukah. It is worth reflecting on how Jews react to all three, and indeed how Canadian society has changed its attitude to them.
Christmas is not a Jewish holiday. But I can remember distinctly as a young child having some red Christmas stockings filled with small gifts.
But never a tree, unlike the 20 percent of American homes with at least one Jew in them that nowadays do have a tree. I also recall sitting on Santa's knee in Eatons department store in Montreal, cleverly passing as a non-Jew in order to get one of the cheap gifts the store would hand out.
I once attended a late night Christmas Eve mass at St. Joseph's Oratory, though not to celebrate but to gawk. My father, a Holocaust survivor who worked as an office manager, first for the Yiddish paper the Kenader Adler and then for the Lubavitch yeshiva, loved singing along with Christmas carols, as much as he did with zmirot.
But nothing could change the fact that Christmas would always be alien. And in my own home today, there are no stockings and of course no trees, but rather a heightened celebration of Chanukah. Indeed Chanukah has increased its importance in Jewish religious life far beyond its theological significance, as a direct response to the seductive challenge of Christmas. It has all the important features for a successful Jewish holiday: It is child-centred, with latkes, dreidels, candles and gifts. It celebrates a struggle for freedom, which makes it universally appealing to and easily defended for non-Jews.
It comes only once a year, albeit for eight days. It does not involve restrictions or onerous duties. As a result, more Jews in both Canada (87 percent to 77 percent) and the United States (78 percent to 64 percent) claim to light Chanukah candles than to fast on Yom Kippur!
New Year's poses difficult challenges for Jews. It is not religious, but Jews already have their own Rosh Hashanah. I know I will wish other Jews a Happy New Year on occasion, but it never sounds just right. So I try to avoid it, which also makes me feel silly. But Jews attend and host New Year's parties without a thought.
The responses of non-Jews to these holidays have been as interesting as the Jewish responses. Political correctness now reigns, and Christmas is in full retreat. Office parties and holiday cards now resound with the neutral Happy Holidays and Seasons' Greetings, with nary a Merry Christmas to be heard or seen.
No one wants to give offense, and everyone wants to be culturally sensitive. Certainly many Christian colleagues go out of their way to wish me a Happy Chanukah. Day care centres and schools now give Chanukah ( and in the United States Kwanza) almost equal time with Christmas, lest any Jews or other minorities feel offended. My dilemma is that I am not anti-religious, or anti-Christian. I feel no antagonism, no slight, when I hear a Merry Christmas directed my way by someone who does not know me, but certainly means well. No one is threatening me with forced conversion. And I make a point of wishing Christian friends and colleagues a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year unless I know they are passionate atheists.
A Jewish colleague once told me some years ago how she took offence at Air Canada staff who would wish her, and all the passengers, a Merry Christmas as they deplaned. I wonder if Air Canada has now cleaned up its act? I would never find that offensive; maybe my skin is not thin enough.
What hurts more is to see how Christians themselves have expunged Christmas, and certainly Christ and his message, from their seasonal vocabulary. This is not surprising. Christians have also abandoned their churches in record numbers in recent decades. Weekly church attendance in Canada declined from 53 percent in 1957 to 23 percent in 1990, and church membership declined from 82 percent to 29 percent in the same period. These rates of decrease are much greater than anything facing Canadian Jewry.
First Christmas and now Chanukah face the danger of over-commercialization and of having the original message of the holidays lost in an avalanche of gifts and hype. The good news is that unlike many of their Christian neighbors, Jews are not yet too inhibited to wish each other Happy Chanukah!