Posted on 11/23/2005 1:55:50 AM PST by goldstategop
Well, December is nearly here, which means the dreaded "C word" is upon us. Put politely, "the holiday season" is nearly here. We shall all hear those "Happy Hanukkahs" and "Happy holidays," but rarely a "Merry Christmas." Secular fundamentalism has successfully injected into American culture the notion that the word "Christmas" is deeply offensive. I think we Jews may be making a grievous mistake in allowing them to banish Christmas without challenge.
We see obsequious regard for faiths like Judaism and even Islam, while Christianity is treated with contempt. I don't want Judaism treated with less respect. I want Christianity to be treated with as much respect.
Step up to the greeting-card racks in your local drug store and see what I mean. Virtually every Hanukkah card is respectful. Similarly, every Kwanza card is a paper paean to this rootless, recent invention. You won't find many cards taking vulgar shots at those holidays.
You will, however, find tasteless cards that mock Christmas. You'll find off-color risque Christmas cards that you'd be embarrassed to be caught looking at. Few even mention Christmas, almost as if the word is so offensive that casual card browsers should be protected from accidental contamination. Secularism is saying, if we can't completely banish Christmas, let's at least turn it into a bad joke.
Our self-appointed "leaders" in the Jewish community do us no favor by denouncing every public expression of Christian faith as if it were a ham sandwich at a barmitzvah. Anti-Christianism is unhealthy for all Americans, but I warn my brethren that it will prove particularly destructive for Jews to be leading the extirpation of all signs of Christian fervor from the village square. Just look at France. Only a religion can stand up to another religion. Christianity could have defended France, but secularism pushed Christianity into retreat. Now, Islamic fundamentalism has its way because there is nobody with moral fervor to resist. Secularism promotes cowardice, not courage – and that is bad for everyone.
Nearer home, Palm Beach prohibited a Christian group from placing a Christian manger scene alongside a menorah on public property. One of the plaintiffs, a Christian woman named Maureen Donnell, told Fox News, "They've discriminated against us, they allow the menorahs, but they have absolutely no interest in these Nativity scenes."
Although Palm Beach didn't always welcome Jews, today it is a city with a large Jewish population. It would have done wonders for Jewish-Christian friendship if Palm Beach's Jews would have valiantly defended religious rights for everyone, not just for Jews. Too bad they missed this opportunity. Remember, friendship is a two-way street.
This I can promise all Jewish parents – trying to prevent your children from awareness of Christianity is not enough to fill them with a love for Judaism. That takes dedication. You should not allow your children to listen to rap music's obscene lyrics. But neither should you recoil in horror when your kids hear Christmas carols. It is invariably a local Reform rabbi who teams up with the American Civil Liberties Union to file a lawsuit against the school singing carols. Christianizing the culture is not the problem for Jews, secularizing it is.
A music teacher in a Washington school removed Christmas from the lyrics in Dale Wood's "Carol from an Irish Cabin" to read: "The harsh wind blows down from the mountains and blows a white winter to me."
Parent Darla Dowell, whose 7-year-old daughter sang the song, called the decision "absurd." "I think the most important thing that angers me is that they sent a message to my child that there's something wrong with Christmas and saying Christmas and celebrating it and performing it at her school with her peers," Dowell told Fox News. She couldn't understand why it's OK to exclude Christmas when her daughter was forced to sing Hanukkah tunes that included lyrics about the "mighty miracle" of Israel's ancient days. In that song, there were at least six mentions of the Jewish holiday.
Will Mrs. Dowell think better of Jews on account of their yanking Christmas? How exactly does this aggressively applied double standard help to maintain the mutual respect that used to characterize relations between American Jews and Christians?
A 1989 Supreme Court decision found a Nativity scene on city property to be unconstitutional. The court emphasized that the privately owned creche was indisputably religious. In the same case, however, a five-judge majority found that a nearby display, featuring an 18-foot Hanukkah menorah did not violate the Establishment Clause. In the interests of fairness and friendship, we Jews ought to protest the court's anti-Christian bias. Nationwide, Christmas Nativity scenes are banned from city halls and shopping malls but Hanukkah menorahs are frequently permitted.
I know the court's distinction, but I reject the legal fiction that a menorah – over which I say a blessing invoking God's name – is merely a cultural symbol. I think most Christians also find that distinction meaningless and offensive.
As an Orthodox rabbi with an unquenchable passion for teaching Torah and devoting myself to the long-term interests of Judaism and America's Jewish community, I believe we Jews must turn our backs on the secularism that will sink us all. An act of friendship would be welcome. Let us all go out of our way to wish our many wonderful Christian friends – a very merry Christmas. Just remember, America's Bible belt is our safety belt.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
In my opinion, it's best that Christians and Jews band together to protect our beliefs before the enemy has their way and destroys our freedom to celebrate either.
From reading the article you would never conclude that the overwhelming majority of people in this country are Christian.
Thomas Sowell, in his excellent Black Rednecks And White Liberals, made the following most excellent points:In all of history no one but Christians - not to put too fine a point on it, white Christians with rifles - has ever opposed the institution of slavery as a general proposition.
- slavery is a very ancient institution, and existed - nay, was taken for granted - all over the world, for millenia.
- although just about anyone opposed slavery imposed on himself or his own kin, for millenia no serious opposition was launched against the institution itself, in principle. That was true not only of midle Easterners and Asiatics and African, but peoples of the Americas and Europe - not only of Islamics and pagans but of Christians, over most of the history of Christianity.
- Christianity changed its attitude during the Enlightenment, and slavery was eliminated in Europe. The American South became the only place to develop a literature trying to justify slavery because the institution had never been under institutional attack anywhere else before.
To the extent that slavery has disappeared as a globally accepted institution, that is due to Europeans and (Unionist) Americans, especially the British (the latter having dominated 1/3 of the globe at the time, and having maintained a squadron of warships off the west coast of Africa for the sole purpose of stopping the slave trade). The British spent a lot of time and effort opposing slavery all over the world. Indeed, Lincoln promulgated the Emancipation Proclamation for the precise purpose of ending British diplomatic sympathy for the Confederacy. Precisely because of the danger of race war inherent in the persecution black had endured in the South, outright abolition was an extreme political position in America. But Lincoln did it because he knew that once the Civil War was officialy about slavery, the British government could no longer give any support to the South. Everyone else but Christians - notably, the muslims - thought those British Christians were crazy.
It takes a lot of selfrighteousness to take an attitude of moral superiority over white Christians as a class.
I am long past giving a crap what the Jews, Muslims, athiest and the ACLU think about saying Merry Christmas.
Well said goldstategop. A little tolerance is all that Christians ask...nothing more, nothing less.
My neice who is two years old, has a birthday coming and she told me that she wanted a "Hanukkah Mickey Mouse Stuffed Animal." She's not Jewish....she's a Catholic. Although she is not yet mature enough to know the difference between Christianity and the Jewish faith, she just appreciated that doll. It's comforting to know that both her parents are already teaching her tolerance and respect for other's.
Thank you for posting this article.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin is a good man!!
Bump.
BTTT.
An it’s-that-time-of-year-again BTTT.
Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and my you have a very enjoyable holiday season. Remember True Judaism and True Christianity are one in the same. Someday our Jewish brothers will also worship Messiah.
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