(no subject)

[seekingferret]

This week is Thanksgivukkah. I must admit, my most significant feelings about this momentous collision of holidays is that I really enjoy the portmanteau name and the growing unanimity about it.

In a lot of ways Thanksgiving and Chanukah are not very congruent holidays: The creators of Thanksgiving, whoever they were, took much greater inspiration in the Jewish holiday of Sukkot than in the minor festival of lights that Jews observed in the winter. Thanksgiving is, broadly speaking, a commemoration of a peaceful victory, an agricultural triumph; Chanukah is the celebration of a martial victory. Thanksgiving offers a broad, universalist (if not universal) message about gratitude for America's bounty; Chanukah is an insular clan's celebration of unity in opposition to an existentially threatening Other.

The main congruence is food: My family already ate latkes on Thanksgiving, because we like latkes and they go well with turkey. Both holidays place symbolic foods at the center of the ritual focus. So that's kinda something, I guess.

But what has been very revealing about the placement of Chanukah so early in the season, I think, is what it has shown about the claims some of my secular friends have been making for years about the universal and secular nature of modern American Christmas. jaiwithani has been perhaps the most vocal defender of a secular Christmas, but there are others among you. You know who you are!

And here's why I say it's been revealing. thefieldsbeyond posted on facebook about a local holiday gifts fair scheduled after Chanukah ends, and the day after, I noticed that my own town is also having a holiday gift fair scheduled for the week after Chanukah. It's funny, the War on Christmas types have been raging about that change from talking about Christmas to talking about the Holiday Season, but I've kept insisting that it's not worth getting angry about since the change is completely insincere and fake, and this is why. The so-called holiday fair is just a rebranded Christmas fair, with no more attention given to the Jews than when it was called a Christmas fair. If they had actually wanted Jews to buy gifts for their gift-giving holiday, they would have held the fair before our holiday.

CHRISTMAS IS NOT SECULAR. It is a Christian institution and this time of year is always full of this kind of nonsense, squeezed in allusions to Chanukah that show how little the squeezers care about Chanukah..

And, look, whatever. I love Judaism. I love Chanukah. I love lighting the neros, I love latkes and sufganios (:P to roga), I love terrible Chanukah music and the constant, never ending and ultimately fruitless quest for non-terrible Chanukah music, I love arguing about the meaning of my terrible ethnocentric, proto-zionist warmongering holiday, and I'm not jealous of Christmas. It's ultimately not really all that big a deal that America pretends to care about Chanukah and goes right on celebrating Christmas.

But just, sometimes it would be nice to feel like we belonged, you know? Like you cared about our feelings? That's all.

Comments

[thirdblindmouse]

Thanksgivukkah is a great portmanteau name. Food holidays are the best holidays, in my book.

It's funny, the War on Christmas types have been raging about that change from talking about Christmas to talking about the Holiday Season, but I've kept insisting that it's not worth getting angry about since the change is completely insincere and fake, and this is why.

Definitely. It's a symbolic change, but a fairly empty one.

[seekingferret]

I dunno, Yom Kippur is a pretty excellent holiday, too, despite its lack of food. But food holidays are generally pretty awesome.

[zandperl]

Growing up, we had Thanksgiving with my mother's family, which meant the stuffing was rice based, and that's what I do in my own turkeys (this year will be the third I've made ever).

I've only ever celebrated the commercial and family aspects of Hanukkah, Christmas, and Chinese/Lunar New Year's - which is a secular holiday anyway, but it fits in this list because of not only the timing but b/c it had no more and no less religion for me than the other two. I pretty much always say "Happy Holidays" to people b/c I don't always know what they actually celebrate, and for those whom I do know it's easier for me to be in the habit of saying the same thing to everyone than risk saying the wrong thing. There's very few people for whom I actually substitute in a specific holiday (and usually only for people I know are strongly religious), though if I see someone on the date of a specific holiday I'll generally use that holiday for everyone.

[seekingferret]

I guess my point is that I don't celebrate the commercial and family aspects of Christmas at all. If you remember when I posted about the Kagan confirmation hearings, there was this exchange that I snarked on:

Graham: So you were with your family in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas?
Kagan: That's right.
Graham: That's great. That's what Chanukah and Christmas are all about.

My Snark: No, Senator Graham. Chanukah is not about being with your family on Christmas.

I'm trying to argue, in this vein, that a lot of the time when people talk about the Holiday season it is simply a thinly veiled way of talking about Christmas season while pretending to include Chanukah. But this game of pretend is revealed anytime including Chanukah is remotely inconvenient, such as this year with a particularly early Chanukah.

I am obviously not accusing you of this game of pretend. There are legitimate reasons to use the ambiguous "Happy Holidays" when you don't want to guess what holidays a person observes, and I see nothing wrong with what you describe.

[roga]

What are you do-os

[seekingferret]

:P again.

[calledtovienna]

I sort of want to quibble that one can claim that Christmas as a secular holiday (in that government is closed, there are trees everywhere and so on) without including other religious holidays into it. Secular means, roughly, 'not of religion', and does not mean 'of all religions'. (Nor would it be of all religions anyway, even all Abrahamic ones). So, I don't think that this invalidates the idea that 'Christmas in America is a secular holiday where many people do secular things like 'get gifts' and 'skip work' and a few people go to a place of worship'. (But obviously it has its roots in a religious holiday, so it is sort of a weirdly problematic assertion, since for most people celebrating Christmas it is still about a religion, or, at least, a heritage that isn't shared by many Americans and is rooted in religion.)

[seekingferret]

I'm not sure I follow all of this. I'm not sure if you are arguing with me or not.

Jai claims that there are two simultaneous, separate holidays, the religious observance of Christmas and the secular holiday of American Christmas with the work skipping and gift giving and whatever. My claim is that there is significant overlap between the two holidays. While they may not both be religious observances, they are both Christian observances. And my further claim is that any attempt to pretend otherwise is just pretend, and that pretend is revealed anytime the Christian roots of the holiday come into conflict with more inclusive aims and the Christian roots win.

[calledtovienna]

My claim is that there is significant overlap between the two holidays. While they may not both be religious observances, they are both Christian observances.

I don't deny that there is overlap, just that the timing of Chanukah (and the holiday celebrations that happen after that) don't prove this overlap at all.