No Christmas, No Holidays
Newsweek writer Kenneth Woodward astutely points out in an editorial on MSNBC - 'Neutering Santa': "I can understand why a retail store or a civic celebration might want to be as inclusive as possible during 'the holidays.' But without the tradition of Christmas, as both a religious and a secular celebration, there would be no 'holidays' associated with late December - and no after-Christmas sales either. Chanukah, after all, is a minor festival on the Jewish calendar and Kwanzaa, created in 1966, is not religious at all. Why, after centuries of 'Merry Christmas,' should public recognition of Christmas at Christmastime be treated as toxic?"
"Public schools have long been ground zero for the 'December battles' over religious symbolism in the classroom. As a Christian, I was delighted when my own kids sang Chanukah songs in school. But now in several school districts in California, Florida and Illinois, student choirs have been ordered to delete all Christmas music from their programs—even, in some cases, the harmless 'Jingle Bells.' A similar edict by school officials in Maplewood, N. J., that disallowed even instrumental music like Handle’s 'Messiah,' prompted Mayor Steve Lonegan to schedule an evening of 'illegal' religious singing this week outside a local high school. In New York, a court ruling that permits the display of menorahs in public schools during Chanukah, and of the star and crescent during Ramadan, is under legal challenge because, in the court’s opinion, Nativity scenes at Christmas should be banned as 'overly religious.' That’s a slur on Jews and Muslims, as well as an insult to Christians.
"We have been through this kind of nonsense before. A quarter century ago there was an uproar in New Jersey after a local school board forbade a Jewish student from wearing a yarmulke to class. His display of religious identity, it was argued, was socially divisive. Clearly there is something wrong when the cult of inclusiveness demands—as it did in Afghanistan under the Taliban—exclusion of religious expression. This isn’t secularist France, either: we don’t forbid female Muslim students to wear religious head coverings.
"Rather than ban in the name of inclusion we should celebrate in the name of pluralism. My friend, the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, always insisted that what Jews want most from Christians is that they be good Christians. From this holy man, the descendent of a long line of Hasidic rabbis, I learned what it meant to be a good Jew. And every year at this time Heschel always called to wish me a 'Merry Christmas.'"
