Three Precious Things
Jordana Willner
Originally published San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, December 17, 2000
They ask every year -- the same curious question with the same underlying message: "What do Jewish kids get for Christmas?" An innocent query that belies the ethnocentric assumption that everyone, regardless of religious beliefs or traditions, celebrates the most dominant of holidays.
It's an easy mistake to make. Not only does Christmas paralyze our piece of the earth every year, but plenty of Jews do get plenty of stuff for Christmas. Some decorate Hanukkah trees, others exchange gifts on Dec. 25, and I can name more than a few who've been spotted sucking down eggnog and sugar cookies with the skill of a true Santa Claus disciple.
I don’t fault them. It's an annual challenge to participate in American culture, respect the festive moods of friends and co-workers, yet avoid the simultaneously attractive and offensive consumer frenzy of the Yuletide season. Plus, with relaxed work schedules, paid days off, and a brief national campaign for goodwill unto others, it makes sense to seize the opportunity for some special family time of our own.
But aside from those assimilators who give in to a puzzling, though mercifully brief, yearly love affair with red and green, I believe I speak for the remainder of Jewish Americans when I say that there are several responses to the question of what Jewish kids get for Christmas.
The first and most obvious answer is: nothing. Most Jews do not celebrate Christmas because it is not a Jewish holiday. Nor is it an American holiday, as several devotees try to tell me each year. Christmas is a Christian holiday. It may also be a federal holiday, but this does not change the fact that, if you sift through tales of reindeer, toy factories, and fat men in chimneys, you find the birth of Jesus Christ at the root of all the commotion. Secular celebrators who argue that Christmas is not about religion may have forgotten its origins; I, sensitive to a history of religious division and persecution, have not.
This news that Jews don't get anything for Christmas often meets with pity and disbelief. But throughout my years of lighting the Hanukkah candles for the requisite eight days and then hitting the movie theater when everyone else opens presents under their trees, I can honestly report that I never experienced Christmas envy.
It's not because I had great parents, which I did, or because they always made us feel special inside the novelty of our own minority status, which they did. The holiday was simply no big deal to me or most of my Jewish friends because of the second precious thing we got for Christmas: answers.
We Jewish kids got to be in the know. We got the inside scoop on Christmas, Santa Claus, elves, the whole deal. It was like being in on the big lie. While gullible friends participated in an elaborate deception of imaginary roof- dwellers and muppetlike characters, we Jewish kids understood the whole Christmas mechanism from the top down. Our friends naively worshipped an intermediary gift-giver, while we knew our presents came from the people who loved us best. Our parents dealt with us honestly as adults; our friends' parents, in contrast, made up stories for them.
We saw that while Christmas might have had some appeal, it held no monopoly on family tradition or fun. Instead, most of us grew up honoring our own sturdy identities, reveling in the right to practice and not practice as we choose.
And now, at a time when congressmen still try to draw religion into classrooms, after a presidential campaign filled with religious innuendoes from overtly Christian candidates, it is this constitutional gift that I treasure most. Indeed, the third thing Jewish kids get for Christmas is the most valuable present of all: Every year, we get the freedom to get nothing for Christmas.
--Jordana Willner wrote a monthly "Next Generation" column for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999, 2000, and 2001
*******************************************************
Letters to the Editor
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Sunday, December 24, 0
Christmas Traditions in Jewish Eyes
Editor -- Jordana Willner's rant about being Jewish during the holiday season raised my hackles ("Three Precious Things Jewish Kids Get for Christmas," Chronicle Sunday, Dec. 17). She might find Christmas less annoying if she did some research and disassociated Christmas, the religious holiday, from the commercial shopping phenomenon.
Many traditions associated with Christmas are based on folklore and on pagan observances of agricultural and solar events. For example, Willner's euphemistic "love affair with red and green" refers to the early Europeans' use of evergreens to celebrate the triumph of the unconquerable sun during the winter solstice.
Willner describes Santa Claus as part of "an elaborate deception of imaginary roof-dwellers" and a figure of worship. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, he's an imaginary folk character based on legends about St. Nicholas, fourth century bishop of Myra (Turkey) and a magician in Nordic folklore who punished naughty children and rewarded good ones with presents. He "lives" at the North Pole, not on roofs.
American advertisers use the figure to promote their wares during the holidays. The "root of all the commotion" at Christmas time is commercialism, not the birth of Jesus.
After she has done her homework, I hope Willner sees that she doesn't need to disparage other people's customs and religious beliefs in order to show pride in her own. Commercialism is the real problem. Plenty of gentiles are sick of it, too.
CATHERINE SHEPARD-HAIER
Berkeley
_____________________________________________________
PULITZER FOR 'OBVIOUS'
Editor -- I suggest a Pulitzer Prize nomination for Jordana Willner. In a very articulate way, she has pointed out the obvious to the oblivious.
Not every one in this great country considers Christmas the greatest thing that ever happened.
RICHARD HEWETSON
San Francisco
Originally published San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, December 17, 2000
They ask every year -- the same curious question with the same underlying message: "What do Jewish kids get for Christmas?" An innocent query that belies the ethnocentric assumption that everyone, regardless of religious beliefs or traditions, celebrates the most dominant of holidays.
It's an easy mistake to make. Not only does Christmas paralyze our piece of the earth every year, but plenty of Jews do get plenty of stuff for Christmas. Some decorate Hanukkah trees, others exchange gifts on Dec. 25, and I can name more than a few who've been spotted sucking down eggnog and sugar cookies with the skill of a true Santa Claus disciple.
I don’t fault them. It's an annual challenge to participate in American culture, respect the festive moods of friends and co-workers, yet avoid the simultaneously attractive and offensive consumer frenzy of the Yuletide season. Plus, with relaxed work schedules, paid days off, and a brief national campaign for goodwill unto others, it makes sense to seize the opportunity for some special family time of our own.
But aside from those assimilators who give in to a puzzling, though mercifully brief, yearly love affair with red and green, I believe I speak for the remainder of Jewish Americans when I say that there are several responses to the question of what Jewish kids get for Christmas.
The first and most obvious answer is: nothing. Most Jews do not celebrate Christmas because it is not a Jewish holiday. Nor is it an American holiday, as several devotees try to tell me each year. Christmas is a Christian holiday. It may also be a federal holiday, but this does not change the fact that, if you sift through tales of reindeer, toy factories, and fat men in chimneys, you find the birth of Jesus Christ at the root of all the commotion. Secular celebrators who argue that Christmas is not about religion may have forgotten its origins; I, sensitive to a history of religious division and persecution, have not.
This news that Jews don't get anything for Christmas often meets with pity and disbelief. But throughout my years of lighting the Hanukkah candles for the requisite eight days and then hitting the movie theater when everyone else opens presents under their trees, I can honestly report that I never experienced Christmas envy.
It's not because I had great parents, which I did, or because they always made us feel special inside the novelty of our own minority status, which they did. The holiday was simply no big deal to me or most of my Jewish friends because of the second precious thing we got for Christmas: answers.
We Jewish kids got to be in the know. We got the inside scoop on Christmas, Santa Claus, elves, the whole deal. It was like being in on the big lie. While gullible friends participated in an elaborate deception of imaginary roof- dwellers and muppetlike characters, we Jewish kids understood the whole Christmas mechanism from the top down. Our friends naively worshipped an intermediary gift-giver, while we knew our presents came from the people who loved us best. Our parents dealt with us honestly as adults; our friends' parents, in contrast, made up stories for them.
We saw that while Christmas might have had some appeal, it held no monopoly on family tradition or fun. Instead, most of us grew up honoring our own sturdy identities, reveling in the right to practice and not practice as we choose.
And now, at a time when congressmen still try to draw religion into classrooms, after a presidential campaign filled with religious innuendoes from overtly Christian candidates, it is this constitutional gift that I treasure most. Indeed, the third thing Jewish kids get for Christmas is the most valuable present of all: Every year, we get the freedom to get nothing for Christmas.
--Jordana Willner wrote a monthly "Next Generation" column for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999, 2000, and 2001
*******************************************************
Letters to the Editor
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Sunday, December 24, 0
Christmas Traditions in Jewish Eyes
Editor -- Jordana Willner's rant about being Jewish during the holiday season raised my hackles ("Three Precious Things Jewish Kids Get for Christmas," Chronicle Sunday, Dec. 17). She might find Christmas less annoying if she did some research and disassociated Christmas, the religious holiday, from the commercial shopping phenomenon.
Many traditions associated with Christmas are based on folklore and on pagan observances of agricultural and solar events. For example, Willner's euphemistic "love affair with red and green" refers to the early Europeans' use of evergreens to celebrate the triumph of the unconquerable sun during the winter solstice.
Willner describes Santa Claus as part of "an elaborate deception of imaginary roof-dwellers" and a figure of worship. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, he's an imaginary folk character based on legends about St. Nicholas, fourth century bishop of Myra (Turkey) and a magician in Nordic folklore who punished naughty children and rewarded good ones with presents. He "lives" at the North Pole, not on roofs.
American advertisers use the figure to promote their wares during the holidays. The "root of all the commotion" at Christmas time is commercialism, not the birth of Jesus.
After she has done her homework, I hope Willner sees that she doesn't need to disparage other people's customs and religious beliefs in order to show pride in her own. Commercialism is the real problem. Plenty of gentiles are sick of it, too.
CATHERINE SHEPARD-HAIER
Berkeley
_____________________________________________________
PULITZER FOR 'OBVIOUS'
Editor -- I suggest a Pulitzer Prize nomination for Jordana Willner. In a very articulate way, she has pointed out the obvious to the oblivious.
Not every one in this great country considers Christmas the greatest thing that ever happened.
RICHARD HEWETSON
San Francisco
posted by jmw at 10:31 PM
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