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Sunday, December 19, 2004

The evil all-powerful Jews who are trying to stamp out Christmas, and other myths of the right
Posted by Jill | 9:19 AM

I'm old enough that I was required to say the Lord's Prayer in school as a six-year-old and sing Christmas carols in the choir in 6th grade. I saw the kind of ugliness that emerged when the high school in the town in which I grew up decided to end its long-standing Christmas tableau, which consisted of students enacting the nativity onstage, with the choir singing Christmas songs below. There was an organized boycott of Jewish-owned stores, and swastikas were spray-painted on the windows of many of them.

Now, I never had a strong religious framework of any kind to work with, and perhaps that's why having to sing "oh come let us adore him, Christ the Lord" really didn't bother me. It was just words to a song, much the way saying the pledge of allegiance didn't cause me to think anything other than to wonder what "widget stands" were, why we were a republic of them, and what was so special about them that we had to pledge allegiance to them.

I'm also not sure that Christmas is the issue upon which us church/state separationists want to be expending a whole lot of political capital, because it gives Christians, who despite all the talk about all-powerful Jews, REALLY run everything in this country, yet another way to paint themselves as the real victims in this culture.

Yes, there's that snarky, contrarian part of me that says, "Yes, by all means let's put the Christ back in Christmas, but then, we pagans want ALL our symbols back. So no more gifts, holly, trees, mistletoe, chocolate Yule logs, or any of that stuff for you. And we want December back, too, so go put your celebration of the birth of your Messiah back into the month of March where it belongs!" Most people would, however, let you keep the fruitcake, even though it descends from the Twelfth Night cake of Saturnalia celebrations. I, however, like a good fruitcake (A&P's Jane Parker fruitcake still being the ne plus ultra of fruitcakes), so I want that back as well.

But ultimately, are kids today, even if they're observantly Jewish, staunchly atheist, Muslim, Buddhist, or whatever, going to be significantly more harmed by mouthing words in a song that don't have any meaning to them than I was in the early 1960's?

On the other hand, there's this: Will the Christian theocrats (and I'm not talking about the mainstream Christians, who have been, alas, curiously silent on the subject of their more stridently political counterparts) be content with returning Christmas pageants and choirs singing "O Come All Ye Faithful" in public schools? Alas, the answer is no. For all that the theocrats have been a potent political force, they haven't been tutored well enough by Karl Rove, and they have shown their hand far too early in this game. Therefore, no, you can't give them an inch, or else George W. Bush will be anointed a kind of king/pope for life, and anyone not willing to convert will be burnt as a heretic -- just like the good old days, when people really FEARED the almighty Church.

Jazz Shaw at Running Scared sets the record straight:

This holy day that everyone is fighting over doesn't even have that much of a base in reality, so why not let everyone celebrate it (or not) as they please? The fact is that Christmas is an arbitrary date that was settled on by early PR men for the new religion so that it would line up with pagan holidays. (As was done with most celebrations.) It was easier to get people to join up with your religion if you could co-opt their existing celebrations.

Christmas was pasted over the top of Yule. (Which had a number of other names.) Whatever the label, they were all focused on the arrival of the winter solstice... the shortest day and longest night of the year. Remnants of these early Western European pagan festivals remain to this day. Surely you recall singing songs about "Yule tide carols" and "burning the Yule log." Do you recall anything about "Yule" in the bible? No... because it's not there. It was a bunch of people praying like hell that the sun would come back and endless night wouldn't swallow the land. Some of them tossed in human sacrifices to sweeten the deal. In any event, most good estimates which I've read indicate that Christ was probably born some time in the early spring.

At least with Christmas they managed to attach a new name that sounded Christian. The second most holy holiday of the year is probably Easter. Stop and think about your celebration of Easter throughout your life. Now ask yourself the following: do you remember the touching Bible story about how St. Easter tried to talk Jesus out of meeting the Romans at the Last Supper? How about the heartwarming tale of the young apostle who tried to bribe one of the guards with a rabbit and some eggs so they could get Christ down off the crucifix? No? You don't remember those? That's because they aren't there either.

Easter is a modernized spelling for the festival of Esther. (There are several spellings, but that one will do.) It was celebrated at the Vernal Equinox and welcomed the new planting season. And yes, as you probably guessed, she was another druidic era pagan goddess who controlled the regrowth of the spring and fertility. Her symbols were a rabbit and an egg. Christians came along and simply glued another holiday on top of theirs and taught them the story of the crucifixion and the resurrection.


Now, I happen to find fascinating all this historical stuff about how the way we celebrate these festivals came to be. Both Time and Newsweek ran long articles on what scholars of the history of the nativity story have come up with. I took a course in Biblical Hebrew in college, and a relative gave me a Hebrew/English Bible (Old Testament, of course, we're Jewish). I had this idea that I would read it in the original Hebrew, with the English there as a "cheat sheet", and get the straight poop, devoid of the agenda of a bunch of old men. Of course, this ambitious project went by the wayside as real life took over, and now it sits out there, gazing at me reproachfully, along with my unfinished novel, about a half-dozen movie reviews I haven't written yet, and a garage full of kitchen cabinet doors and veneers waiting for me to install them. But when you look at how themes from the myths and legends of ancient cultures are repeated in much of what makes up Christian doctrine, it's hard for me to come up with anything other than Joshua of Nazareth as yet another highly charismatic rebel leader, who had devoted disciples of his work, and who fought the power of religious authorities and paid with his life -- an admirable, fascinating individual with great historical significance, but not the literal offspring of an invisible cloud being.

But hey...if you want to believe otherwise, that's your privilege. Whatever gets you through this bizarro world that is the plane of reality on which we live is a-OK in my book. Just don't expect everyone to buy it hook, line, and sinker, and we'll all be just fine.

Happy holidays to you all. I myself am celebrating the festival of Andersen Tilt-Wash Windows, Timberline 30 roof shingles, and Royal Woodland vinyl siding this year.
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