too much "christmas"?

Imagine you’re a Christian

Each year, about this time, it seems someone will want to defend crèches on library lawns, santa at the steps of City Hall, and write, “What is not easy to understand is how someone can feel “oppressed” or “trod upon” by the Christmas holiday season,” (K.W., DHG 12/20/2007). Hope this helps:

Imagine you're a Christian, one of two in the fifth grade -- and the only thing you two have in common is you're both Christians in a class getting ready to celebrate the (unofficially) national holiday, Hanukkah. There’s a song your class is learning that you actually like to sing, because though it’s really a Hanukkah song, it does mention “Merry Christmas to all others.” Most Hanukkah songs just ignore any other holidays. And for weeks before the holiday begins, Hanukkah songs fill the supermarkets, the elevators, fill the malls completely, and everybody on the radio sings, “Hanukkah’s on its way.” What’s really sad is that so many Hanukkah songs are beautiful, if only the words weren’t so exclusively Jewish! And every Hanukkah season, your dad points out how many great Hanukkah songs were written by Christian song writers.
Sometimes the Hanukkah songs take over your brain and you just want to shake your head hard to shake them out. The same for the prayers you learned in school--.
Three years ago, after the Pledge to the Flag, in second grade everybody said “Shma y’israel, adonoy ellohaynu, adonoy ehud,” except you and the other kid, but now no one says “The Shma,” to further the separation of synagogue and state. Even so, the words still come unbidden and circle through your head for no reason. Your father says he still knows the words, even though it’s twenty years since he learned them at your age.

Imagine that everybody on your street--except you and a couple of houses with no lights at all--everybody else has blue and white Hanukkah lights, and giant, inflatable Judahs on their lawn. City Hall shows the blue and white lights, but removed the giant stone menorah two years ago: it had been there out front since your grampa was a boy. You have a little teeny waist-high Christmas Tree outside, with yellow and green and red lights, and a star on top; a five-pointed star that says yours is different from all the other houses, with their windows frosted with big six-pointed Mogen Duvids. You have a big, decorated tree, a real one, in the backroom of your house, unseen from the road. You get it from the special Christmas Tree Nursery, a long drive away, because you don’t want people to think you just cut one down in the woods. Your older brother says sometimes at Hanukkah the older kids call him a tree-killer.

What’s really worse, actually, is how some people offer sympathy at Christmas.
Sometimes, at the mall, or on the bus, you wonder if people can tell you’re different, know right off you’re one of those poor little kids who celebrate the Christian Hanukkah. (“Sad, isn’t it—only one day to open presents!”).
Sometimes you wish Christmas could be more about a great victory by a small army of dedicated resistance against overwhelming military odds, with an eight-day miracle at the end, instead of Christmas being about a baby.


Your grampa remembers when he was a kid that he’d hear about rumors that Christmas candy canes were striped with the blood of little Jewish children. He remembers some Christian kids he knew got beat up for that when he was a little older than you.

Imagine you’re in church, and, all the Christians around from neighboring towns come here, or go to the other church thirty miles away; it seems you can’t go a mile without passing another synagogue. The synagogues are all different, too, because each one is a different kind. Your mom says that some of the people at church aren’t really the same as you, some Protestants, some Catholics, but it doesn’t really matter because you’re all Christians.

And it’s kind of sad, sometimes, when the snow doesn’t fall for Christmas, even though nobody else in your class cares, unless it’s enough for a snow-day. Everybody gets the First and Last Days of Hanukkah off, but most everybody goes to school on Christmas, that last week before New Year’s vacation.

Imagine you’re beginning to see all the fake cheeriness: you know somehow it transforms into real cheer once the holiday’s begun, but in the weeks before it seems nobody else in the world can see how Hanukkah’s just being used to sell stuff. Everybody wishes you a ‘Happy Hanukkah, Happy Hanukkah,’ and you know they only mean to be nice, but it’s not your holiday, reminds you you’re not really a part of society this time of year. No one says ‘Merry Christmas’ except friends who know you, or at church. You’re grateful when somebody wishes you just, ‘Happy Holidays!’
You’re glad when Hanukkah’s over, everyone’s back together to celebrate New Year’s, and winter’s returned to common feeling.

Imagine you’re in fifth grade, and non-Christian, and it’s Christmas time. Now imagine fifth grade is 45 years ago, and you’re still grateful for songs like “Winter Wonderland” which doesn’t mention Hanukkah, or Christmas, at all.
Happy Holidays..!