Posted on 12/07/2006 1:01:42 AM PST by goldstategop
You may find the title confusing. After all, religious Jews don’t celebrate Christmas. So why should a Jew care if a store clerk says “Merry Christmas?” Why should the public disappearance of Christmas matter to the Jewish people?
Patience. All will be explained in due course.
In the meantime, ‘tis the season to be politically correct – a coast-to-coast harkening-free zone and the tyranny of hyper-sensitivity.
The increasingly successful effort to purge Christmas from our culture (correctly called the War on Christmas) proceeds apace – municipal Christmas trees are re-christened (no pun intended) “holiday trees,” schools ban Christmas decorations and the singing of Christmas carols during holiday programs. Christmas – excuse me -- holiday parades are excluding Santa Claus, and, everywhere, stores (which derive 20% of their annual revenue from Christmas sales) are in Grinch overdrive.
This year, Lowe’s employees are permitted to say “Merry Christmas,” but only in response to a customer initiating the greeting. On its website, Barnes & Noble offers a “Gift Guide” which includes “Holiday gift baskets,” “holiday sleds” and “holiday delivery.” FYI, the “holiday” celebrated by 95% of the American people at this time of the year is called Christmas.
The Best Buy website offers “unique gifts for the season.” According to Liberty Counsel (a Christian legal action group), a company spokesman claims the use of the word “Christmas” is disrespectful. Disrespectful to who? The 5% of the American people who don’t celebrate Christmas? But how many of them actually care? (For years, people said “Merry Christmas” to me, without inflicting severe emotional harm.) Would it be disrespectful for a clerk in Tel Aviv to wish someone a “Happy Hanukkah”?
Eddie Bauer’s customer service department doesn’t acknowledge Christmas because, says a spokesman, the retailer doesn’t “want to offend Jews, those who celebrate Kwanza, and those who have no religious preference.” And what about the Christians whose holiday is intentionally ignored? The retail giant isn’t concerned about offending them.
The no-religious-preference crowd, who nonetheless are into decking the halls, will be relieved to learn that, once again this year, K-Mart is selling “Holiday trees” – under which “holiday presents” may be placed and around which the family can gather on holiday eve to sing “um-um-um, um-um, um-um-um um” – until that too is banned as somehow disrespectful.
The refusal of retailers to wish 95% of the American people a “Merry Christmas,” is but a seasonal manifestation of the secularist jihad.
But the unholy war is most apparent at this time of the year:
The City of Chicago pressured organizers of the annual Cristkindlmarket (literally: Christ candle market) to drop New Line Cinema as a co-sponsor. The studio was going to show clips from its just-released film “The Nativity Story,” at its booth. A city official determined it would be terribly “insensitive to the many people of the many faiths who come to enjoy the market for its good and unique gifts” to encounter a booth showing clips from a movie about Jesus – at a Christmas fair. Might spoil their shopping experience, don’t you know. (And if someone went to a Hanukah party they might – oh no! – see a menorah. And wouldn’t that be just too awful for words.) By the by, Chicago always gives a warm municipal welcome to the annual Gay Pride Week (including “Mr. Leather"). Again, religious people apparently have no sensibilities. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review a lower court ruling that New York public schools can refuse to display crèches at Christmas, while putting up menorahs at Hanukah and crescents at Ramadan. Celebrating minority religions is cool, multicultural and sensitive. Acknowledging the religion of the overwhelming majority is callous, not inclusive – hence, un-cool. There’s an ongoing game of pc one-upsmanship. Employee “holiday parties” are no longer permitted at the University of Colorado. (Christmas parties were ditched last year.) Obsessive administrators decided that during a holiday party someone might be thinking about that holiday which is the focus of the season. Henceforth, the school will have “staff appreciation parties” or “good-will functions” -- as long as the good will referenced in no way relates to (you, know) peace on earth, good will toward men.
The War on Christmas is one front in the War on Christianity -- which itself is part of the War on Religion and religious-based values.
The same ideologues who want to take Christmas out of Christmas, also want to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance, “In God We Trust” off our currency and bibles out of presidential inaugurations. They want to pretend that the Ten Commandments had no more to do with the founding of this country than the Koran, The Humanist Manifesto II or “The Earth In Balance.”
The foregoing should matter to Jews principally for two reasons:
The religious Jew's mission is to spread God-based morality.
This has been true since the time of Abraham. God expects Jews to spread knowledge of Him and his commandments. We are told to stand against a morality of convenience. (We are expected not to change with the times, but to change the times – as we did in the ancient Near East.) Judaism was the first religion to embrace a universal moral code – one for all people, at all times, in all places.
Just as in the 19th century most American Jews opposed slavery and in the early 20th century, Jewish reformers supported child-labor laws, today, morality-from-Sinai requires us to support the family and oppose sexual license and the destruction of innocent human life (including abortion-on-demand, cloning to kill and euthanasia).
Serious Christians – whose morality comes from our Bible – recognize the same ethical injunctions. That’s why they’re under relentless attack by the cultural elite. The secular Left wants to extinguish God-based morality. The only way to do that is to drive Christianity underground. Hence, the War on Christianity. Hence, the War on Christmas.
How well the Left has done its work of deconstructing marriage, the American family and traditional morality may be seen in three statistics. In the 1930s, married couples comprised 84% all households. Today, the figure is just under 50%. Since 2000, the number of cohabitating couples increased by 14%.
That’s why, Jews -- as Jews -- must oppose revisionist efforts to deny our nation’s Christian heritage, must stand against the drive to decouple our laws from Judeo-Christian ethics and must counter attacks on public expressions of the religion of most Americans – Christianity.
Jews are safer in a Christian America than in a secular America (or Europe).
Look at the fate of Jews in post-Christian Europe.
Stephen Steinlight, former director of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, says there are an average of 12 assaults a day on Parisian Jews – comparable to Nazi attacks on Jews in the dying days of the Weimar Republic. In recent years, synagogues, Jewish day schools and kosher restaurants have been targeted by Europeans of the jihad persuasion.
In a commentary in the October 17th Jerusalem Post, David Meyer (a French-born rabbi serving a synagogue in Brussels) writes: “I am frightened not just by the anti-Semitism (resurgent in Europe) but by the collective European response of indifference and appeasement. Today, Europe worships compromise. It is ‘fanatical’ in its non-violence. It is a Europe that, in the face of Islamist fanaticism, is ready to stay silent.”
Nature abhors a spiritual vacuum. In a Europe where churches are empty, mosques are filling and new ones are being built every day.
Muslims are having children, while child-like Europeans embrace childless lifestyles. If Christianity fails on the Continent, it won’t be replaced by secular nothingness, but by a creed that both Jews and Christians should fear.
It’s no surprise that the nation with the highest church attendance in the industrialized world (30% to 40%) is the strongest in its support for Israel. In general, support for Israel in the U.S. population can be predicted by frequency of church attendance, with Evangelicals, -- whose faith is deep-rooted -- most devoted to the Jewish state.
And, please don’t tell me about the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsions of 1492. That was half a millennium ago. The principal threats to Jews in the mid-20th century were creeds which which sought to replace God with secular ideologies, based on evolutionary race theory or a maniacal class consciousness.
While Christmas isn’t part of my religion, I’m all for public acknowledgements of a religious holiday celebrated by 95% of the American people.
What’s the alternative -- an America dominated by the twisted theories of Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, Michael Moore and George Clooney? Instead of the red and green of Christmas, how about an America where burka black is the dominant color?
So, what do you prefer to say: “Merry Christmas”? “Workers of the world unite?” Or “Allah Akbar”?
We used it as a warm-up piece a lot of times. Sometimes, when things just weren't working, the director would call a time out, and we'd sing it, to get back together. When we went to contest my senior year, we got to warm up on stage because we performed right after lunch. After we sang it, there was nary a dry eye there. I was profoundly moved. We proceded to sing Charles Ives' "67th Psalm", (eight part "harmony" in 2 simultaneous keys a-capella) and that was one of three times we sang it that we began and ended on pitch. The Lord was watching over us at contest that year.
We just did Ives' piece Psalm 90 in concert (Houston Chorale Society). Extremely difficult. One of the attendees came up to me afterword and asked me how we were able to sing the dissonances. I replied "I am not entirely sure, we just sing it."
Lovely music, unforgettable.....
Personally, coming from a Jew
"Merry Christmas to all and may you all have a Happy New Year"
America was founded on Judeo-Christian values and Merry Christmas is part of America.
Again this comes from a Jew. Please do stop and talk with him and discuss this. As Jews we believe we are to honor the traditions of the nation which host's us. The nation which has become our home.
I believe if you will point out your thoughts the shop keeper would appreciate it and wish you a Merry Christmas
Absolutely unforgettable.
The first day we saw the 67th Psalm was the day before Christmas break. Our director gave us the music, and we built each note, one at a time. It was really weird to hear, and extraordinarily hard to hold a note when someone else is singing just a half a step above yours. The sweat we put into the song was worth it though.
As far as these retailers go, why not add some Hanukkah rather than subtracting the Christmas? If the PC types were truly interested in diversity and avoiding excludedness, that would seem like the better route. It wouldn't bother me a bit to hear the occasional Hanukkah song and see a menorah in a shop window. In fact, that seems kind of nice. As for the atheists, their religion would be represented by the empty spaces between the Christmas trees and the Stars of David. So everyone's happy.
"sweat we put into the song was worth it though."
Seems to be true for all of Ives' music. Do you sing in a choir now?
I sing for Second Baptist of Houston and Houston Choral Society (a top notch chorale of mostly professional singers and musicians).
No, but we've seriously considered taking it up again. It's something my wife and I could work on together that would be fun.
I never was as good at reading music as I'd like to have been though.
I sing for Second Baptist of Houston and Houston Choral Society (a top notch chorale of mostly professional singers and musicians).
That rocks. Zgirl and I both were raised in the Clear Lake area. Wonder if we know anyone in your group?
You probably do.
Your wife sings too? My wife and I sing together frequently, in various venues, with and without other choir members.
Being married to a woman who can sing and is willing to is a particularly beautiful gift from God. You need to take advantage of it.
Ya. Guess I should have been more clear earlier. We went to high school together and met in choir. :-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.