Merry
Christmas is NOT Offensive—Jews Should Protect Religious Freedom for
Everyone.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin
Toward Tradition
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 Chanukahs” 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 Chanukah 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 risqué
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 wiped 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 ACLU 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 okay 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 crèche 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 Chanukah menorah’s 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 Christian’s 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.
Rabbi
Daniel Lapin, an Orthodox Rabbi in Seattle,
Washington, is author of Thou Shall
Prosper, America's Real
War
and Buried Treasure ,is President of Toward Tradition
and hosts
his own
television and radio shows.
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