Who really gives a damn what anyone says to you regarding holidays, other than close friends and family?

I would venture that most strangers, retail employees included, are just trying to be nice or polite, and the fact that they are ignorant or culturally isolated/insensitive is no reason to get upset and make what is usually meant to be a social nicety into bait for an argument.

If the motivation is anything other than being nice, does anyone think that an asshole is really going to change by our one verbal exchange with him/her.

I’m Jewish, but when ppl wish me a Merry xmas…I just say thanks, you too, and leave it at that…unless the person has a relationship to me that is important in some way. Then I let them know I don’t celebrate xmas when the time is right. Sometimes the right time is not during their good-wishes, sometimes it is.

I just don’t think putting any energy, negative or otherwise, into people I may never see again is really the best use of my energy. I probably would have done so when I was younger…but I’m nearing 50 and there are just so many more things that are more important to me than making a point with a stranger.

My very Christian elderly grandmother goes to a right-wing sort of church, mostly b/c that’s where my grandfather went during his lifetime (she didn’t go when he was alive haha.) And she is one of those ppl who will say we should not say “happy holidays’ or write Xmas instead of Christmas. But she is almost 90, she is a saintly person and really doesn’t understand all the ramifications of her views…so instead of making a point with her, I pretty much let it go too…altho a couple of times I did say, “grandma, not everyone celebrates xmas so it’s a more polite thing to say.” She didn’t say anything, but gave me an honestly puzzled look, like she couldn’t think of anyone who didn’t celebrate. And in her small town, where she cannot even drive anymore..she probably doesn’t know anyone who doesn’t celebrate.

I tell her story to illustrate a point…we do not know the background of anyone who gives us a holiday greeting–so instead of becoming instantly offended, we should just take it for what it seems to be–a gesture of human kindness.

Education about the issues involved should be saved for our children and for people in our lives who give a shit about what matters to us.

I’m in the camp that finds it weird to wish people happy anything though, I don’t think it’s ever occurred to me to say Happy Christmas to anyone, possibly I am a grinch.

On a side note though I was really embarrassed during last year’s pre-school tours with my daughter because it was during Hanukkah and every classroom we walked into she went ‘look birthday candles, where’s the cake’ at which point I thought I probably was failing to explain holidays of any kind properly.

Is Chanukah not getting to be a big deal in Israel too? I thought that was the case but I could be wrong.

Personally, I think that if Americans—and it’s really only Americans—want to overcommercialize Hanukkah or make it some kind of Jewish Christmas, it’s tacky and culturally problematic, but it’s not a violation of anything holy or theologically significant in our religion. And of all the things that have threatened or diminished our religion over the last five millenia, this is hardly a blip on the radar.

When people “liked” your post, if they were Jewish, they were likely falling victim to this problem, and if they were Christian, they were likely falling victim to conscious or unconscious diminishing the value of Judaism as its own entity as opposed to its value as the precursor of Christianity. Using someone else’s holiday to make a point about your own suggests a certain lack of respect, although again, I’m sure you didn’t mean it deliberately. It’s just the way Christians talk and think about Judaism, a sort of “well, it was okay as far as it went, but we’ll take over from here” attitude.

@rodriguez: more tomorrow when I’m not so tired, or you can email me (the Harpies will send you my address if you ask them); I’d like to continue the discussion!

@bellacoker: That link is the BEST EVER. I put it on my FB page. Thanks for sharing.

It’s the synthesis of two streams that I was referring to in my second comment on the phrase “Judeo-Christian”. You’ve convinced me that the phrase has some serious problems in the realm of theology and in some other cases too. But there’s not a term I know of to describe the part of our culture that stems from both religions.

You might not feel that Spinoza and Freud took their influences from both cultures, but as I mentioned, that’s where we disagree.

Of course Spinoza was clearly formed by Jewish culture. In his case we have to add the influence of his journey: Catholic Spain and Catholic Portugal expel his community, and they end up in Holland, where Spinoza meets the Reformation, and gets expelled from the synagogue too.

In the case of Freud, his thinking on religion is crystal clear in the Future of an Illusion. And it’s not Jewish, however Jewish his other influences may be. For that book his admitted influence is Feuerbach’s “The Essence of Christianity”. (again, angry at both religions.)

So that’s what I was getting at yesterday. There’s this synthesized middle space that has a name, I just don’t know what it is if it’s not Judeo-Christian. There are other examples that are more positive than these, I suspect.

PS: I hope that my borrowing the Channukah greeting isn’t offensive – please let me know if it is. I’m just trying to make the point that there are many holidays in December.