Christmas for Jews
The holiday season is upon
us. Not the "Christmas season" but the "holiday season"--a euphemism for
"Christmas with Hanukkah (and, perhaps, Kwanzaa) thrown in." If you place a
tree in the town square, you need a menorah as well. We festoon offices with
blue and silver Hanukkah decorations alongside Christmas trimmings, and on the
Sesame Street Christmas special, Big Bird wishes Mr. Hooper a Happy
Hanukkah. The only meaning of the phrase "Judeo-Christian," it seems, is the
fusion of these two otherwise unrelated holidays into one big seasonal
spree.
The
problem, as any rabbi will tell you, is that Hanukkah has traditionally been a
minor Jewish festival. It commemorates the successful Israelite revolt in the
second century B.C. against their Syrian oppressors, and their refusal to
assimilate into the prevailing Hellenistic culture. Specifically, it celebrates
the miracle in which, according to lore, a day's worth of oil fueled the
candelabra of the Jews' rededicated temple for eight days. Until recently, this
observance paled next to the High Holy Days, Passover, even Purim. So how did
it become "the Jewish Christmas"? And is this good for the Jews?
First, Christmas had to become Christmas, which originally
wasn't a big deal in America. The Puritans who settled Massachusetts made it a
crime to celebrate the holiday (punishment: five shillings). Only with the
arrival of German immigrants after the Civil War did it emerge as the major
American feast. With the revolution in retailing--marked by the rise of
department stores and advertising--celebrations focused on throwing parties,
buying and giving gifts, and sending greeting cards (first sold in 1874, they
became a million dollar business within a few years). The Coca-Cola Co. adopted
as its logo a jolly bearded man in a red and white suit, and Santa bypassed
Jesus as Christmas' main icon.
Enter the
Jews. Around 1900, millions of eastern European Jews came to the United States,
congregating in urban enclaves such as New York's Lower East Side. Most adopted
American traditions, including the newly secularized Christmas. "Santa Claus
visited the East Side last night," the New York Tribune noted on
Christmas Day, 1904, "and hardly missed a tenement house." Jews installed
Christmas trees in their homes and thought nothing of the carols their children
sang in the public schools.
The second generation of American Jews
challenged this embrace of a festival that, despite its secular trappings, was
fundamentally Christian. But parents couldn't very well deprive their kids of
gifts or seasonal merriment, and Hanukkah benefited from convenient timing.
Instead of giving the traditional "gelt," or money, Jews celebrated with
presents, so as not to fall short of their Christian neighbors. Prominent
religious leaders, more secure with maintaining a Jewish identity in America,
now urged schools to let Jews abstain from yuletide celebrations or to provide
all-purpose holiday parties instead. Lighting the menorah proved a satisfying
alternative to adorning a tree with colorful lights.
Zionism,
which gathered converts in the years before World War II, also boosted
Hanukkah's stock. The holiday's emphasis on self-reliance and military strength
in the face of persecution dovetailed with the themes of nationalists seeking
to establish a Jewish state. The warrior-hero Judah Maccabee, leader of an
ancient revolt, morphed into a proto-Zionist pioneer. At first, Zionist
organizations used the holiday as an excuse to prod individuals to donate coins
to the cause. In later years they packed Madison Square Garden for Hanukkah
fund-raising galas, featuring such keynoters as Albert Einstein and New York
Gov. Herbert Lehman.
After World War II, as Jews moved with other Americans to
suburbia, Hanukkah shored up its place as their No. 1 holiday. In the early
'50s, in a famous Middletown -style study of a Chicago suburb referred to
as "Lakeville," sociologist Marshall Sklare found that lighting the Hanukkah
candles ranked as the most popular "mitzvah," above hosting a Passover Seder
and observing the Sabbath. Sklare attributed the holiday's popularity to its
easy accommodation to Christmas rituals as well as to its ability to be
redefined for modern times. The Hanukkah lesson being taught, Sklare noted, was
no longer reverence to God for performing a miracle but rather the triumph over
religious intolerance--a perfect message for liberal America in the age of the
civil rights movement.
These
Ozzie and Harriet Jews also modified their observances for the 1950s home. As
one historian has written, a Jewish guidebook from the era included recipes for
" 'Maccabean sandwiches' composed of either tuna fish or egg salad and shaped
to resemble a bite-sized Maccabee warrior, or the 'Menorah fruit salad,' a
composition of cream cheese and fruit that, when molded, resembled a menorah."
By the late '50s, "Chanukah's accoutrements had grown to include paper
decorations, greeting cards, napkins, wrapping paper, ribbons, chocolates,
games and phonograph records." Like Gentiles, Jews extended gift-giving to
adults; the Hadassah Newsletter pointed out that "Mah-jong sets make
appreciated Chanukah gifts." Parents could now assure children that Hanukkah
wasn't a poor man's Christmas but was, in fact, a "better" holiday because it
meant presents for eight days straight.
Since then, Jews have become more integrated
into American life, and Hanukkah has embedded itself in television, office
parties, Hallmark stores, Barnes & Nobles, and other leading American
cultural institutions. Except among the Orthodox, it has been thoroughly
transformed into a major festival. Accordingly, religious leaders lament this
development as another instance of the Jews' perilous assimilation--if not into
a Christian society then into a secular, commercial one.
Yet the recent evolution of
Hanukkah represents not a capitulation to the forces of Christmas but an
assertion of Jewishness amid a multicultural society. Just as Kwanzaa, created
in 1966, has returned many black Americans to their African heritage, so
Hanukkah has helped tether Jews to their heritage and in some cases has brought
them back to the fold. In a 1985 study, journalist Charles Silberman recounted
how the writer Anne Roiphe, besieged with angry letters after she wrote an
article about celebrating Christmas as a Jew, switched to observing Hanukkah
and found it far more meaningful. Likewise, Silberman noted, more American Jews
than ever preferred Hanukkah to Christmas. Three out of four lighted the
menorah, an increase even over the 68 percent in Sklare's 1950s study. In 1998,
the adherence to a modest Jewish ritual such as celebrating Hanukkah follows in
the tradition of the ancient Israelites, who spurned the pressures to adopt
Hellenism. Indeed, in acculturating to America while maintaining a Jewish
identity, observers of Hanukkah may well be doing Judah Maccabee proud.
( Copy editor's
note:
Slate
defers to The Associated Press Stylebook and
Libel Manual on all matters secular and spiritual. Hence our use of
"Hanukkah" rather than "Chanukah.")
