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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   25689 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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Back when I was a smug liberal, I used to make fun of FOX News for saying there was a war on Christmas. And in my defense, FOX and Conservatives did a terrible job of making their case (which will become clear later why). I was recently shocked to learn that Hanukkah isn't even an important Jewish holiday. From WaPo :

It's easy to get the impression that Hanukkah is a marquee event of the Jewish year, falling as it coincidentally does right around the time of that other blockbuster December occasion and likewise seeming to revolve around presents, parties and recollections of a miracle long ago. The sense of Hanukkah's importance is further stoked by lively decorations, beautiful menorahs, delectable feasts and even, nowadays, kitschy sweaters and tongue-in-cheek competitions.

But as any rabbi would be quick to explain, Hanukkah is one of the least important occasions on the Hebrew calendar. Unlike major holidays such as Passover, Sukkot and the weekly Sabbath — all of which include extensive ritual requirements as well as prohibitions against work — Hanukkah is categorized as a minor festival whose only real decree is to light candles for eight nights. Everything else is custom or adaptation.

It seems pretty clear that the only reason Hanukkah is even celebrated like an important holiday in Christian countries is because it is close on the calendar to Christmas. From that same article:

That's not to say, however, that all the hubbub around Hanukkah is accidental. Its elevation to its current status in the United States goes back to the 19th century, when rabbis concerned about Jewish children feeling envious of their Christian neighbors realized that Hanukkah could let kids indulge in a joyous occasion around the same time of year. As Jewish historian Dianne Ashton recounts in her book "Hanukkah in America," the holiday's "timing in the midst of the Christmas season offered a way [for people] to perform their Jewish commitment through the holiday's rite and, for a moment, to resolve the ambiguity of being an American Jew."

The of course there is Kwanzaa, which is a made up holiday by Black Activists and the New Left in the 1960's. It literally wasn't even celebrated until 1966. It is a straight up made up holiday that shouldn't even be mentioned alongside Christmas and Hanukkah. I know this is not charitable but to me this is trivially true. I have never seen a single person celebrate Kwanzaa in my entire life and I am in my early 30's and have lived in cities with large black populations. So we can throw out Kwanzaa without any consideration.

That brings us back to Hanukkah, which again, is not an important Jewish holiday. This would be like if Christians in Israel started demanding if a minor random Christian holiday near Passover be given equal standing to their most important holiday. Obviously this is absurd on its face and would never be taken seriously.

I don't want to blame this on "da Jews" because secular gentiles played a role in this as well. In fact, they were probably the biggest drivers of this because I actually know many Jews who celebrate Christmas (more on this later). The argument that they would make is that they want to say "Happy Holidays" is because if you make Christmas a big deal it makes non-Christians uncomfortable. This would be one thing if it was still a very Christian holiday, but the bottom line is that Christmas is pretty much a secular holiday at this point that anyone can celebrate. To give some context for this. the Bay Area town I grew up in had a street that was famous for having an amazing Christmas lights celebration. People would come from all over to see the cool Christmas lights people on this street put up. This area also had a huge Indian population and about a third of the street was Indian by the time I moved. Instead of getting butt hurt about it, they kept up the tradition. Some even incorporated some Indian culture into theirs to make it look pretty cool and unique. Plus, a lot of Jews I know celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday and don't seem to have any problem with it. So I don't see how anyone could make a credible argument that as long as it's just Santa and basic benign Christian decorations that it makes anyone feel uncomfortable. But this is all subjective.

The number one reason why it is ridiculous to say "Happy Holidays" though is that there are literally no other holidays that are important during that time period for any major ethnic or religious group in the US. If it wasn't for Christmas, it would literally not be the "holiday season". It would just be a time close to New Years. There is no reason to say "Happy Holidays" other than to diminish the role of Christianity, even in its most benign and secular form, in the United States. In my opinion, Left wing activists used identity politics (Kwanzaa), "inclusivity", and guilt about the Holocaust and Jews (Hanukkah) to make up a fake "holiday season" so it wouldn't be the Christmas Season anymore. I'd love to see someone counter this, because I really don't see how this isn't more or less 100% true.

And I actually have a much better post I'm working on now about how academia and first wave feminism conspired to create the fake Wicca religion and the modern idea of witches. And if you want a taste, here is a good summary that inspired me: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7tz-PBkF720&ab_channel=GreshamCollege

This would be like if Christians in Israel started demanding if a minor random Christian holiday near Passover be given equal standing to their most important holiday.

So? How Christians have celebrated Christmas has changed dramatically over the last 2k years, and easter and christmas have sort traded places as most important holidays. It's entirely possible that easter will again become the bigger holiday than christmas

I would like Christmas to be banned for the sole reason that I'd rather die than hear ASDA's speakers belt out Santa Baby again.

That brings us back to Hanukkah, which again, is not an important Jewish holiday. This would be like if Christians in Israel started demanding if a minor random Christian holiday near Passover be given equal standing to their most important holiday. Obviously this is absurd on its face and would never be taken seriously.

The single most important Christian holy day is near Passover.

It's a bit amusing to me that you story you tell about Hanukkah not being that important actually also applies to Christmas, to an extent? Christmas is important, but it isn't and has never been the most important Christian holy day, which is definitely Easter. I'd argue that Christmas is probably around equal to Pentecost in terms of importance?

But the summit of the Christian year is the Easter triduum - nothing surmounts the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

Holidays ebb and flow in popularity.

Easter is theoretically the most important Christian holiday, and there have been times when banning Christmas was a popular opinion among certain populations. (Especially some of the Founding Fathers.)

The OG "banning Christmas" meme was never about removing Christmas from the Christian calendar of holidays, or even downgrading it in importance. It was about secular governments with established Puritan churches (including Cromwell's England and colonial Massachusetts) banning the traditional secular celebrations around Christmas in order to force people to take the religious aspect more seriously.

The unpopularity of Cromwell's "War on Christmas" is a large part of why the UK still has a monarchy. There is a reason why the British secular left's approach to Christmas is to flood the zone with trees and Santas, rather than talking about a "Holiday Season" (which any Brit would assume referred to August).

The OG "banning Christmas" meme was never about removing Christmas from the Christian calendar of holidays, or even downgrading it in importance. It was about secular governments with established Puritan churches (including Cromwell's England and colonial Massachusetts) banning the traditional secular celebrations around Christmas in order to force people to take the religious aspect more seriously.

Actually, I'm fairly confident that it was about removing it from the calendar. The Directory of Publick Worship (see the last section), passed at the time, abolished "holy-days," with the exception of the Lord's Day (Sunday). It did allow for days of thanksgiving, but only on special occasions, not as part of a church calendar.

Re: Kwanzaa, I finally met someone who celebrates it instead of Christmas last year. Otherwise, my only exposure was Nickelodeon ads for the Rugrats Kwanzaa special (which I somehow never managed to catch), and TFS throwing in a mention into one of their holiday videos.

Speaking of Rugrats, that's also the majority of my education on Hanukkah. Never did get the origin of the potato pancakes thing, since potatos are not a crop I'd generally associate with Iron Age Israel. Something to do with a prohibition on leavened bread?

But the Rugrats Hanukkah special did make Hanukkah out to be a bigger deal than Passover, which in hindsight is kinda clearly coming from the present, given that the Passover special focused primarily on the Exodus story, while the Hanukkah special spent more time on the characters, while the backstory got like two short scenes. (But Grandpa Boris's narration on the finale was oddly intense and sincere for a NickToon, IIRC.)

Oh, and in college one year, a Jewish student taught his friend group how to play Dreidel, and we also watched the original Godzilla Vs Mothra, so that was fun I guess.

Speaking of Rugrats, that's also the majority of my education on Hanukkah. Never did get the origin of the potato pancakes thing, since potatos are not a crop I'd generally associate with Iron Age Israel. Something to do with a prohibition on leavened bread?

That's because potato pancakes are not an Iron Age Israel thing. The only significance to potato pancakes is that they're fried in copious amounts of oil. Jews are basically willing to eat anything fried for Hanukah in order to celebrate, because the Hanukah miracle was that supposedly the oil necessary for keeping the lamps lit to purify their temple lasted for 8 days when there was only enough for one day. Potato pancakes came out of eastern European traditions, from countries like Poland and Germany where potato pancakes were already consumed as a local food, and the local Jews there adopted it as their Hanukah tradition. But Jews elsewhere eat donuts, fritters of all types, fried cheese cakes, fried pumpkin cakes etc. Indian Jews even eat gulab jamun to celebrate.

The prohibition on leavened bread is an entirely separate holiday, Passover (which as OP notes is actually a much more important holiday to Jews than Hanukah). Leavened bread is fine for Jews to eat at Hanukah.

I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but it kind of feels like it's ignoring how culture happens in a way that's hard to describe.

Like, yeah, Hanukah wasn't previously a major Jewish Holiday? And now it is.

How do we know it's a major Jewish holiday? Because of how much people talk about it and celebrate it and make a big deal about it and etc. Because of how much Hannukah paraphenilia is sold in stores.

The exact same way we know that Christmas is a major Christian holiday. Because Christians treat it as such.

It's not like Christmas has been what it is in modern America since 0AD. The date wasn't even known as Jesus's birthday until they made that up in the 200s. The holiday is descended from winter solstice festivals. In the 900s it was just celebrated by reading a special liturgy, and had nowhere near the importance of Easter or Good Friday. Gifts weren't exchanged until the latter half of the 19th century, most of what we recognize as the cultural event of 'Christmas' is a capitalist invention over the past century.

Christmas became 'important' for various reasons at various times, which is exactly what happened to Hannukah. Now they're both important and people treat them as such appropriately.

There are hundreds of holidays I've never even heard of celebrated all over the world - why are all these people talking about and celebrating and making a big deal about hanukah etc

Are you a jew?

The date wasn't even known as Jesus's birthday until they made that up in the 200s.

That part isn’t true, Jesus’ birthday is on December 25 because it’s 9 months after March 25, which was assumed to be the date of the annunciation based on the belief that Jesus was conceived the same day as he died. Saturnalia, the winter solstice festival that would have been most familiar to early Christians, takes place before Christmas and it’s not unreasonable to trace a few customs from saturnalia to Christmas(certain decorations, for example), but they were thought to be different holidays even at the time.

This explanation is often repeated but it's a lot less certain than people would have you believe. The theory goes "it was a widespread belief among ancient jews that prophets lived perfect lives and died in the same day they were born", also known as the "integral age theory".

There's two problems with this, the first one is that it is almost completely unsourced. The only source that exists is in the Rosh Hashanah and states that only Moses was born and died on the same day (for rather contrived reasons). Now, that text is about right in terms of dates for the establishment of Christmas and Jesus was supposed to be better than Moses, so it makes sense. However there is another problem: Jesus didn't die on the day of his birthday.

So the entire argument is moot, someone placed Jesus birthday on the 25th for some reason, that reason has been deleted from history. It is plausible that the integral age was used as a contrived excuse to place it there, but we don't know for sure. It can not be the real reason (because a straightforward application would just tell you that he was also born on easter). The real reason has likely been deleted from history.

Sources:

Like, yeah, Hanukah wasn't previously a major Jewish Holiday? And now it is.

It's not though. And considering that Jews comprise only about 1.8% of the US population and live in only a few parts of the country, Hanukkah’s presence in America’s public square is clearly astroturfed. From a quick google search, only 38% of Israeli Jews think Hanukkah is one of the three most important Jewish holidays. And I'm willing to bet that number there is also inorganic due to American influence. If you asked that question 50 years ago, it would probably be significantly lower. Hanukkah isn’t even mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. It along with Kwanzaa (fake holiday) were memed into reality so "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" could become "Happy Holidays".

Who cares about what Israeli Jews think?

Please write as though everyone is reading and you would like them to be involved in the conversation. "Who cares what $GROUP thinks" is not permissible rhetoric here.

I didn't mean it in a disparaging way towards Israeli Jews, my point was more like "why is it important that Israeli Jews don't care about Hanukkah" - but I could have been clearer.

It's a control group to compare with Jews who live in Christian majority countries showing that Jews only care about Hanukkah if they live in a place where Christmas is culturally dominant.

Halloween was much bigger in the US than other countries, and still is. Different countries are...different. Suffice to say I don't think the presence of difference WRT holiday celebration/importance means much. There is no "true" Judaism from which all other Judaism must be compared.

That doesn't mean that Hanukkah isn't a major Jewish holiday in America, which is what the guy was saying. Cultures are different in different places.

Let's review. We have Kwanzaa (fake holiday made up in the 1960's), Hanukkah (a non-important holiday in Judaism celebrated by an ethnic group that is less than 2% of the population in the US), and Christmas, which according to polls approximately 85% of Americans celebrate. Furthermore, it was the Christmas Season until very recently, and Christianity is the religion of the vast majority of Americans now and historically. Yet now it is "The Holidays". Let's take this down to Sesame Street level logic here. One of these things is not like the other. It's really that simple. And the only reason it's even considered important is because it happens around the same time as Christmas, and some Jews wanted to have a holiday near Christmas and because it's useful as a narrative tool to make the cultural change to Holidays instead of Christmas.

It's frankly absurd it has as much cultural cache in the US as it does considering all those factors. There's almost as many Indian Americans as Jews. Diwali should be considered just as important as Hanukkah by this logic. It only makes sense since it happens during the holiday season. Diwali is the most important festival of the year in India after all.

I wonder if you live in one of the few areas with a high % of Jewish residents, because I grew up in one and Hannukah was fairly high profile but now I live in a place without many/any Jews and there's no Hannukah presence which makes me feel as though there was no "astro turfing" but rather a natural reflection of the population of a place.

Yeah, American Jews wanted a holiday for their kids to celebrate around the time their Christian friends were celebrating Christmas and so Hanukkah rose in importance. It's quite clearly a major Jewish holiday in America.

Which one of these is not like the other?

  1. Hanukkah - an objectively non-important holiday in Judaism celebrated by an ethnic group that is less than 2% of the population in the US

  2. Kwanzaa - fake holiday made up in the 1960's

  3. Christmas, which according to polls approximately 85% of Americans celebrate. Furthermore, it was the "Christmas Season" until very recently, and Christianity is the religion of the vast majority of Americans now and historically.

If you need more evidence, there literally wasn't a "Happy Holidays" until after WW2: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22happy+holidays%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3

It really didn't even start being a major thing until the New Left and proto-SJWs started showing up in academia and pushing for inclusiveness and PC shit in the 1980's.

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Yet now it is "The Holidays".

Don't Christians celebrate New Year's right around Christmas as well? I always assumed "the Holidays" started as a Christian thing and not an inclusive thing.

A little bit, but also St Nicholas Day, Epiphany/Theophany, and Three Kings Day.

New Year's is an important holiday in the Catholic Church but not Christianity more broadly, and it's not really that important of a secular holiday- just a day off work.

Where I live it is always happy holidays since mid December if you don't expect to see the person till the next year. But on 24-25 it is Merry Christmas and on 31-1st it is happy new year. And if you are fossil enough to send a postcard it is We wish you merry christmas and happy new year.

To culturally appropriate sjw slang - the one is the lingo of inclusion, the other of erasure. Holidays shouldn't be thought of as replacement for christmas, but as a complementary catch all.

It doesn't start until after world war 2: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22happy+holidays%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3

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Yeah, I've never heard of Jews getting offended about acknowledging Christmas. It seems like most of them celebrate it, albeit by eating Chinese food.

a minor random Christian holiday near Passover be given equal standing to their most important holiday.

The most important holiday on the Christian calendar is reasonably close to Passover, as in the event it commemorates took place at the same time. If Israel made any pretense for caring about political correctness(which it does not) it would be reasonable to expect a "secular passover season" set of decorations in Tel Aviv or whatever to include some Easter eggs or whatever.

A better metaphor would be demanding Roodmas get equal standing to Yom Kippur in Israel. This is obviously stupid; roodmas is not a particularly major holiday, and it's only celebrated by a small percentage of the population in Israel.

Yeah, I've never heard of Jews getting offended about acknowledging Christmas

I kinda disagree. I, for example, used to date a Jewish girl who kinda hated Christmas and objected to institutions she was in from doing things like putting up Christmas trees. It's not every Jew, but a lot of them do seem to have a stick up their ass about Christmas, as if it were some personal offense to them.

A Jewish American manager just forbade our European office from doing a Secret Santa precisely because Christianity might offend people who don’t celebrate Christmas.

Here in America an acquaintance of mine found himself in charge of his social group's Christmas party this year, and some attending nonobservant Jew insisted it be called a holiday party in the name of inclusiveness.

Maybe this doesn't rise to "being offended," but clearly there are people who have no qualms about using whatever fashionable terminology there is available at the time to issue a veto-by-empathy. For whatever reason, probably just because earnest Christians gross some people out for tribal reasons we talk about every day on here.

That is a much better example.

I think the line, "Everything else is custom or adaptation." is carrying a lot of your argument. The Rabbi claiming the holiday isn't important does little to make the day seem less special to the kids getting a bunch of presents. I would argue holidays are almost entirely born of "custom", and whether or not their origin story is still relevant or meaningful in a cultural or religious sense has little to do with how much modern participants value them.

I've also never heard anyone actually get upset by "Merry Christmas" in real life. I've a pretty large sample size of generally liberal folks and literally nobody has ever had a problem with the phrase. Anecdotal of course, but are we sure we're not just confusing Twitter with real life here?

I don't disagree on your point that modern "holidays" are largely promoted or manufactured, but many traditional societies have midwinter celebrations around that time: the Roman Saturnalia, or the Germanic Yule are historically relevant and also both heavily influenced the way in which Christmas is celebrated. The Bible has perilously little to say about decorated evergreen trees or reindeer.

Even among Christian nations, there is some difference in celebrations: Saint Nicholas Day is largely ignored in the US, but is popular elsewhere, and the entire Orthodox branch of Christianity celebrates most holidays at different times.

and the entire Orthodox branch of Christianity celebrates most holidays at different times.

That isn't actually technically true. Orthodox churches in majority Orthodox countries use the Julian calendar for religious purposes, which delays most holidays, but the calendar date is technically the same, and in the west most Orthodox churches use the Julian calendar only for Easter.

The Bible has perilously little to say about decorated evergreen trees

I'd say Christmas trees are banned according to Jeremiah 10:3-4. Don't be doing that pagan tree decorating thing.

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

Colossians 2:16-17 - you are pharisaic - you are not saved.

Wow, I forgot how utterly terrible many translations of that passage are. Huge oof when you look at the Greek, then back to this translation, then back to the Greek. Just amazingly atrocious attempts to squeeze in the translators' preferred beliefs.

Where do you think it's gone wrong? The original is:

Μὴ οὖν τις ὑμᾶς κρινέτω ἐν βρώσει καὶ ἐν πόσει ἢ ἐν μέρει ἑορτῆς ἢ νεομηνίας ἢ σαββάτων, ἅ ἐστιν σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ.

My rough translation would be something like, "Therefore do not let anyone judge you concerning food or drink, or in respect of a feast or a New Moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of the things coming; the body, however, is Christ."

The NIV... mostly sticks to this? It does mess around a bit with plurals (it's definitely feast singular, New Moon singular, Sabbaths plural, but the NIV has made them all singular), and translating σῶμα as 'reality' is certainly an odd move, but the substance of the verse is intact?

That said I think its applicability as a proof-text here is a bit weak. Jeremiah 10 is clearly talking about idols in the classical sense - the point is not that decorated trees are somehow evil, no more than the Golden Calf proves that goldsmithing is inherently evil, but rather that you should not create idols to worship. It's the same argument as Isaiah 44:9-20. "Shall I fall down before a block of wood?" Do not worship your own creation! But a Christmas tree is not an object of worship by any means, so it's not the target of the critique.

Colossians 2, however, is an argument against rigorism - the mention of Sabbaths means that the Judaizers are probably in Paul's sights there, but it's possible he's also thinking of the same controversy as in 1 Corinthians 8, regarding food sacrificed to idols. Paul's perspective, I think, is that excessively policing the likes of food or festival observance is itself a sign of lack of faith - a dependence on what is seen, rather than faith in what is unseen. It's striking that Paul advances this argument from both directions, in different places - neither the Jews (with the law and the sabbaths) nor the Greeks (with feasts and sacrifices) are permitted to place stumbling blocks before the saints.

At any rate, declaring that people are unsaved Pharisees is pretty evidently contrary to the spirit of Christianity. When you think a person is making a mistake, the correct approach is to explain the truth in a spirit of gentleness and charity (cf. Acts 18:24-28, 1 Peter 3:15-16). Better to be not swift in leaping to condemnation.

translating σῶμα as 'reality' is certainly an odd move

This is the glaring odd move. You translate σῶμα as 'body', which is in agreement with more literal translations as well as how the NIV translates it throughout Colossians (and elsewhere). It's especially glaringly messed up when you look at other uses of σῶμα from the author of Colossians. [Emphasis added for the location of σῶμα.]

1:18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

1:22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—

1:24 Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.

2:11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ,

2:19 They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

2:23 Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

3:15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.

It's clear that σῶμα is used in two senses in this letter, either referring to a physical body of an individual or referring to a 'body of Christians'. So when you say:

Colossians 2, however, is an argument against rigorism

That seems somewhat reasonable. So, if we were to look at something like a more literal KJV translation (pulling out the the 'is', which, uh, isn't there), we see something like:

Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days (which are a shadow of things to come) but the body of Christ.

It's pretty easy to read this as saying, "Just don't pay attention to what non-Christians are saying. Just stick with what the Christians are doing." This still allows the group of Christians to accept/reject different days/foods/etc., but that they need to look internally within the group rather than what the Jews/Greeks are saying. It takes a lot of stretching to pull on what is basically one inelegantly constructed sentence here to get to the pretty sweeping conclusions that I think @Hawaii98 wants to make.

The 'hey honey, come look, I've discovered something all the world's top experts missed' meme except unironically and it's you

Nah. There are some good translations. The world's top experts do those. Just some of the world's top experts really strain to put their interpretation in there. To be flippant like you, it's the 'hey honey, come look, I found a few experts who say that caloric intake has nothing to do with weight loss' meme except unironically it's you.

This is actually interesting. What would you propose is a reasonable translation?

See the discussion here.

Influenced via Victorians with history books who wanted to turn Christmas from a St. Patrick's esque drinking holiday to something more family friendly rather than via converting pagans.

In my opinion, Left wing activists used identity politics (Kwanzaa), "inclusivity", and guilt about the Holocaust and Jews (Hanukkah) to make up a fake "holiday season" so it wouldn't be the Christmas Season anymore.

The "Holiday Season" is Thanksgiving to New Years Day; no need for Hanukkah, though it's in there. It's certainly true Hanukkah got jumped up in importance, but that happened long before the push against "Merry Christmas"; I suspect it was mostly done by Jews to make Jewish children feel better. It was later used mostly against athiest activists basically as an excuse to allow state-supported Christmas celebrations "see, we've got a menorah too".

It is no real surprise Hindu Indians would go right along with putting up lights either; like Jews, they have a holiday associated with lights in the winter.

It was later used mostly against athiest activists basically as an excuse to allow state-supported Christmas celebrations "see, we've got a menorah too".

I don't disagree with anything you wrote, but I would suggest that this problem didn't exist until modern atheists created it.

This reminds me of the video game localization done by Cygames (a Japanese company notable for mobile game Granblue Fantasy). In every localization that they've ever done, "Merry Christmas" becomes "Happy Holidays", and all references to the word "Christmas" get removed.

However, they generally don't dub their games, so you can read "Happy Holidays" in the text while hearing the voice actors say "Merry Christmas" in heavily accented English.

That brings us back to Hanukkah, which again, is not an important Jewish holiday. This would be like if Christians in Israel started demanding if a minor random Christian holiday near Passover be given equal standing to their most important holiday

In Israel, Christians have the right to paid days off on several Christuan holy days. AFAIK, Jewish employees in the US are not entitled to paid leave on Hanukkah, nor on any other Jewish holy day.

This is not remotely the same thing. We're not just talking about days off, but the culture at large. This is iconoclasm.

I assume they intended this to mean a reciprocal situation to the US, so, in the hypothetical the Christians are demanding that nobody talk about Passover in anything that could be considered general/public communications specifically and just refer to the time around Passover as "Holiday Time" because Saint Mark's Day falls around the same time.

Also the paid leave system in Israel is fundamentally different and more religiously based than the US model. From reading your link, it is just that all people get 9 paid holidays for holy days, and which days you are expected to take is broken down by religion (four religions listed, not sure what they do with atheists). In the US, Christmas day, just the one day, is the mandatory federal holiday. The vast majority of holiday time is private policy specific to an organization. I think this reflects a fundamental difference between how these counties view religious holidays that is almost totally orthogonal to the social engineering point the OP is trying to grapple with.

Nevertheless, OP's factual claim (which s/he apparently deemed relevant to their social engineering point, or they would not have mentioned it) was factually incorrect.

AFAIK, Jewish employees in the US are not entitled to paid leave on Hanukkah, nor on any other Jewish holy day.

This is obviously going to vary by state and local jurisdiction, but my (red state) public schools growing up always had a holiday (at least kids didn't have to go to school) for Rosh Hashanah and frequently also Yom Kippur. It looks like at least Texas recognizes it as a state holiday (but that doesn't mean even state employees get the day off necessarily.) Florida seems to allow, but not require, courts to be closed on those days. Your mileage may vary.

Which state, and which district? NYC public schools close on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur for practical reasons: the number of Jewish teachers and students is so high that absentees will be extremely high on those days anyhow.

Yeah, the school district was probably a similar situation, but I don't remember any similar dates of convenience for, say, Eid, Diwali, or Lunar New Year even though those probably had at least as many practitioners as there were Jews in the district.

Which district was that?

Christian (or other) employees in the US are not entitled to paid leave on Christmas or any other Christian holy day either.

In the US, most people indeed get Xmas as a paid holiday. For example, it, and all other federal holidays, is a paid holiday for federal employees, and I believe all state and local govt employees.

Yes, most people in the US with full-time jobs get Christmas as a paid holiday. But they are not entitled to it by labor law.

AFAIK, Jewish employees in the US are not entitled to paid leave on Hanukkah, nor on any other Jewish holy day.

If Hanukkah is during Christmas, don't they get that off as part of ordinary holidays? Passover would be different as it doesn't coincide with Easter all the time, but if Easter is a secular holiday (Spring Break?) then everybody gets that as well.

And then there are the purely American secular holidays, like Thanksgiving.

EDIT: Okay, I looked it up, and Hanukkah is a moveable feast because it depends on the lunisolar calendar, and follows the moon to determine when months start. So it's not a fixed date like Christmas.

So while it would be good to give other faiths days off for their holy days, it might be awkward if some of your staff were taking the first week of December off, when the official shut-down is for the third/fourth week (how long are the Christmas holidays in the USA?) If the custom has long been established that "This date is the date when we have holidays" then that's the compromise to follow so that you're not having people taking time off all over the calendar and trying to work out "Should Bill be working today because he took the twelfth of February off but we're shutting down for the seventeenth of March so it's not worth opening the entire factory just for one guy to be in, on the other hand the rest of the staff will complain that Bill gets extra days off when they have to work".

how long are the Christmas holidays in the USA?

Christmas day itself, but most offices are closed from Christmas-New Years, inclusive, and have a half day on Christmas eve. Schools usually let out sometime in the week before Christmas and start back up again in the week following New Years, blue collar workers generally work every day except Christmas and New Years. You're not entitled to any of this by law but only gas stations, waffle house, and (very ethnic)Chinese restaurants are open on Christmas.

Don't forget movie theaters, many other restaurants, and the major drug store chains

If Hanukkah is during Christmas, don't they get that off as part of ordinary holidays?

As you found out, Christmas does not always coincide with one of the eight days of Hanukkah. But, suppose it did? Why does that matter? You were complaining about supposed special dispensation given to Jewish people. If I happen to be born on Dec 25, would you complaint that I am getting special dispensation because I get a paid day off on my birthday, and others don't? I assume not.

And then there are the purely American secular holidays, like Thanksgiving.

Yes, and Presidents' Day, and the Fourth of July, etc. I don't understand what secular holidays have to do with anything.

So while it would be good to give other faiths days off for their holy days, it might be awkward if some of your staff were taking the first week of December off, when the official shut-down is for the third/fourth week (how long are the Christmas holidays in the USA?)

  1. I am not advocating that the US or anyone else adopt Israeli law. I was simply pointing out that your assumption about how minority religions are treated in Israel was incorrect
  2. Schools are usually closed for two weeks, but otherwise the only official holiday is Xmas day itself, and most businesses are open on the day before and the day after Xmas

I'm not complaining about a special dispensation; if it were decided that a particular major Jewish religious holiday was now a public holiday, or that Jewish workers could take the day off as paid leave, I'd be fine with that.

I'm saying that most places shut down for Christmas holidays on a fixed date, so trying to work out a different date each year for when a sub-set of your workers want time off is inconvenient. Now, if it's an all-Jewish or majority-Jewish workplace, I'd have no problem with them deciding "we shut down for Hanukkah, we're open for Christmas", and any non-Jewish workers there would need to talk about their own plans with the boss.

If you're living in a majority Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist nation, and they have their own public holidays and times they close down, you deal with that. You don't get to demand "I want my particular event to be publicly marked even if there are only 0.1% of the population of this faith!", though I think you should have the right to negotiate with your boss about taking time off for X or Y if it's a big day in your religion. But if your boss says "No, we don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day" then tough, you gotta come in to work.

though I think you should have the right to negotiate with your boss about taking time off for X or Y if it's a big day in your religion. But if your boss says "No, we don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day" then tough, you gotta come in to work.

US labor law mandates that employees with a de facto religious holiday are entitled to take time off for it, although the boss doesn't have to pay you. Employers can't ask for evidence of regularly practicing the religion in question(although I've had employers ask for evidence that the holiday in question is a big deal in my religion, they always took a wiki article).

I'm saying that most places shut down for Christmas holidays on a fixed date, so trying to work out a different date each year for when a sub-set of your workers want time off is inconvenient.

I was referring to your initial post. As I specifically said: "I am not advocating that the US or anyone else adopt Israeli law."

You don't get to demand "I want my particular event to be publicly marked even if there are only 0.1% of the population of this faith!",

No one has "demanded" that. It has happened because it is good PR for businesses to make all their customers feel welcome (and in a mood to spend, in general and at at their establishment). Moreover, why not acknowledge the holidays of minority religions? Who does it hurt?

The main problem is not "let everyone have a turn celebrating their own festivals that are all roughly around this time of year". The more, the merrier; Diwali seems to be celebrated around November which very handily links up with the American Thanksgiving.

So a string of bright events through the winter months is not a bad thing.

The problem comes in when it's "let's celebrate all these diverse events - except the main one. Your one. In this country where the majority culture was based around such main holidays." If you can have every holiday except Christmas, then it's not really "Happy Holidays", it's "Happy Not Talking About That One".

And I never said anything specifically about Israel, I'm delighted to find out that Christians there can have Easter off (though since it often coincides with Passover, is that the same thing?) I'm in agreement with the person who said the equivalent here would be somebody demanding that Israel institute "Happy Holidays" because St. Mark's Day is around the same time. I want Israel to have its own national holidays, even religious ones! I just want Over Here to have the same ability too, without people taking lawsuits over "they had a NATIVITY SCENE out in public where everyone could see it, I demand that be taken down because this country is not 100% Christian!" Yeah well the country isn't 100% Jewish either, but that's no reason for a human face-ache to go around demanding that any menorahs be taken down if they're out there on public land. Ditto with Kwanzaa symbolism, whatever that might be, and if the Taoists and Buddhists and Zoroastrians have any festivals for this period, let them have a shot at putting them out on display too!

Even the stupid Satanist crap, though I wish they'd be a little bit more original than just slapping Eliphas Lévi's Baphomet on everything. Though if they wanted to do the "radical socialist" version, I'd be intrigued 😁

If you can have every holiday except Christmas,

If you think that Christmas is not celebrated in the US, you are mistaken. My local Starbucks is playing nothing but Xmas music.

they had a NATIVITY SCENE out in public where everyone could see it, I demand that be taken down because this country is not 100% Christian!"

You are missing the point re that issue. If the nativity scene is meant to be govt celebration of the birth of Christ*, then it would be a First Amendment violation even if the country indeed was 100% Christian.

*As opposed to a holiday celebration.

In Britain, which is more secular and much less Christian than the US, people still say “Merry Christmas” and movie trailers still say “coming this Christmas” and TV ads still talk about about Christmas. The same is true in Germany. It doesn’t appear to have made much of a cultural difference, and the US is still by far the most religiously Christian of those three countries.

So I’m skeptical that the “war on Christmas” by calling it “the holiday season” in the US makes a particular difference. If anything, Christmas in the US is still, even in its current state, a little more religious than it is in the UK, at least in my impression. British Jews are generally more religiously conservative than American Jews, but seem much more likely (in my experience) to have a Christmas tree or even to open presents on the 25th, precisely because the customs are now essentially fully divorced from religion.

British primary schools/kindergartens still put on (as Love Actually appreciators will know) nativity plays every year, and this too - despite literally being about Jesus - has been essentially divorced from religion. Christians should pick their poison. It might be better to keep their customs as particular ones than to fully secularize even the religious elements the way the Brits have.

The "war on Christmas" narrative flies in the face of the fact that Christmas is the biggest it's ever been in history and is growing every year.

Yeah, I love Christmas, but even I'm tired of seeing it creep ever earlier in the year, swallowing up other holidays like Thanksgiving. I hate that I've had Thanksgiving dinner immediately followed by my mom and sister taking off for a "Black Friday" sale on Thursday that they went to in order to buy presents for Christmas. Frankly, Halloween seems like it is the only thing stopping Christmas from seeping even earlier into the year.

This is such a commonly expressed idea that is so alien to me I would love to get more details on it.

I don't even particularly love Christmas, I have spent more than a couple of them alone, but the only part of Christmas Creep that I find even slightly objectionable is the music. I enjoy Christmas decorations, I think they are cozy and festive, and often well done. It takes a lot of time and effort to put up good Christmas decorations, and it seems crazy to me to go through all that trouble and only put them up a hand full of days in advance and take them down immediately. Enjoy the atmosphere. Light a fire in the fire place. Drink more hot coco and mulled wine.

Thinking about my own preference here, it reminds me of Diamond Age, and the phyles/claves which I absolutely loved. I guess to try and name this nebulous concept I am feeling, it might be something like Aesthetic Intentionality. Anything that pushes against the dead aesthetics of 'universal culture' is at least interesting if not strictly preferable to me.

Then bring Christmas forward into January, not backwards into Autumn.

The traditional pattern was a fast before Christmas, then a 12 day feast encompassing New Years and Theophany, after feast of Theophany, then a break before Lent. This is, of course, less convenient for shopping, so public venues won’t do it, but I do think it’s an overall more satisfying structure.

I agree completely. January is miserable, let Thanksgiving breathe a bit more and keep the pretty lights up into the worst month of the year.

I'm trying to convince my parents (who have decorated their house with huge numbers of lights since I was a kid) to keep the lights up into January. I'm hopeful they'll actually do it this year, that always makes me joyful to go to their house and see the pretty lights.

I hate January.

You lot make me feel so much better. It's not that I'm a lazy bum who can't muster the will power to take down the Christmas decorations, it's that I'm doing a public service to make January less depressing!

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When I was a Christian, I was annoyed about the commercialism growing and the Christ declining. So secular Xmas can continue to grow and the religious types will still bemoan the decline of religious Xmas. A kind of cultural approbation, perhaps.

The biggest attack on Christmas happens because of capitalism not any particular group. It’s really strange to think about but Christmas wasn’t destroyed by people saying happy holidays, as it was already moribund before that. It was killed by having Santa and reindeer and presents, thus as the marketing took over, any aspect of the holiday that doesn’t revolve around parties (which means buying fancy food) and decorating (buying stuff that matches the season) and media (wherein they sell ads) and of course presents (do I even need to say it) was stripped out and replaced with saccrine sweet smalls about peace, love, joy, and wonder — with no reason for those emotions. The reason is that for big companies, obviously don’t want people to see the holidays as primarily religious, as about Jesus, because going to church interferes with the buying of crap.

I have less hate of the phrase happy holidays because Christmas is already secular, and there are other holidays like Hanukkah and New Year’s Day. And at this point, the horse is twenty miles up the road. Closing the barn door now doesn’t matter. I think for those who want a religious Christmas, the best you could do is pick another date (orthodox Christmas is January 6) and ignore the marketeers.

Except when you strip all that stuff away, what do you have left? A liturgical festival that no one cares to much about except the extremely religious. If you're looking for holidays like this there's no shortage of them—Pentecost, The Ascension, The Immaculate Conception, The Annunciation, All Souls Day, Ash Wednesday, etc. Maybe there are some traditions associated with these that aren't strictly religious in some places, but I'm not aware of any. They also aren't very fun, since the most exciting thing that happens is maybe a special liturgy, and some of them don't even have that. I'm no fan of the excessive commercialization of Christmas, but if the alternative is dealing with religious prudes telling me that I can't have any fun, I'll deal with it. If I didn't want to celebrate holidays I'd become a Jehovah's Witness.

I wouldn't object so much to "Happy Holidays" if it hadn't been made explicitly anti-religious. I agree that the commercialisation has destroyed a lot of past traditions (and jumbled up time so that this year the Hallowe'en and Christmas branded confectionery were on shop shelves at the same time, and as soon as the new year comes the Easter eggs will be out on the shelves, then by the end of summer the Hallowe'en stuff starts).

But when it was pushed that "oh we must say holidays because Christmas is religious and we can't be prioritising one religion over others and lots of people aren't Christian, you know", that brought the religious element roaring in.

It's possible to have both; we have a local 'celebration' (more a desperate marketing event to get shoppers/consumers into the city centre at the start of the 'shopping season') called "Winterval" (God help us) but it certainly hasn't replaced Christmas as a greeting or celebration.

If you let people have both "Happy Holidays" and "Merry Christmas", without getting offended (on behalf of others, which is where the real objection comes in) about wishing people either, then it isn't a culture war event.

If a Jewish person says "Hey, I don't celebrate Christmas, so while I appreciate your good intentions, please don't wish me a Merry Christmas", that's okay. It's when somebody who isn't Jewish or anything but white secular liberal from a formerly Christian background goes "Well this is offensive to non-Christians and I'm speaking up on their behalf" that you want to throw a snowball at their nose.

I've never been wished "Happy Diwali" or "Happy Eid" or the likes, but if I were, I wouldn't get bent out of shape about it, despite being a Catholic. Unless the person doing it were very ostentatiously doing it to show off how they were being a good ally using their white privilege to centre the marginalised.

I’ll agree that the white knighting around such things are annoying. It’s just that I find it hard to understand how Christmas is still considered religious when almost everyone celebrates 90% of it, and the religious message of the holiday — specifically that Jesus was born to bring salvation to humanity. It’s barely religious and only religious if you make a special effort to make it religious. So when people try to claim that modern Christmas celebrations outside of churches and religious homes is somehow a religious thing, I ask them which part. I sometimes jokingly refer to the largely secular tradition as “giftmas” simply because that’s what most people are actually doing.

So when people try to claim that modern Christmas celebrations outside of churches and religious homes is somehow a religious thing, I ask them which part.

I do think that's what they're trying to do with "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", to expunge the last lingering link with the original religious roots. Like new Puritanism, the way Cromwell did away with Christmas because it was too secular a merry-making holiday. But the Calvinist-inclined didn't make Christmas Day a church holiday, either, they enforced that it was just an ordinary day (presumably because even keeping that much of the roots was too Roman Catholic for them), and I think that's what always happens with Christmas: if you try to shape it to your preferred new model, you have to end up eliminating it completely because there are too many echoes. So yeah - Giftmas or Festival or 'the Holidays' because "Christmas" is still a term radioactive with its religious meaning.

I think it would be better all round if everyone agreed "Yeah, it's Christmas and not 'the Holidays' and yeah, it's all about Santa and gifts and big traditional meal and boozing and having fun, not prayers and commemoration, nowadays for most people".

Agree, but I don't think it's entirely correct to just blame capitalism, although obviously the profit motive and marketing play a big role - capitalism or not, modern technology would produce an abundance of consumer goods and enjoyable experiences, and also drain away the practical function of communal rituals about seasons and harvests and group purpose.

This would be like if Christians in Israel started demanding if a minor random Christian holiday near Passover be given equal standing to their most important holiday. Obviously this is absurd on its face and would never be taken seriously.

There are two minor random Christian holidays around Passover. The one is Palm Sunday the other Easter.

TIL Easter is a minor holiday.

Well we are not going to make a big deal for a guy finding his way out of a cave after all.

Let's go. In n out. 3 day adventure.

Literally the second most important Holiday for the Christian goys

Edit: I should have said second most widely celebrated

Easter is the most important Christian holiday. The secular perception that Christmas is more important than Easter is an artifact of secular society widely celebrating (a secular and commericalised version of) Christmas.

For some Christians, sure.

But as a former American Christian it’s definitely Christmas among most American Christians in terms of both religious and secular celebration and emphasis. Revealed preferences and all that.

I am an elderly one legged korean midget woman

Source: trust me, I say so.

Do I really need to somehow demonstrate evidence that I was raised a devout Christian in America?

Anymore than anyone else in this thread, for you to consider my views not simply made up, for some reason?

I’m not exactly making a significant claim here, and elsewhere in the thread there is discussion on how different flavors of Christianity celebrate and emphasize in diverse ways.

The whole of Easter involves the passion of Christ, His crucifixion, His redemption of mankind's sin, and His death, ressurection and eventual assumption. It's literally the point of Christianity, and the core holy-day. In this case I would just say the American Christians who think Christmas is more important than Easter from a Christian point of view are just wrong and have been unduly influenced by the secular popularity of Christmas.

I'm arguing empirical reality, not doctrine; I agreed above that it's almost certainly because of the dang holy men bringing gifts, which meshes nicely with secular Santa and consumerism.

Perhaps my personal experience doesn't generalize, but Christmas also involved more religious emphasis than Easter as well, in my childhood, with special programs and celebrations.

You may be right about most Baptists and non-denominational evangelicals, but I’d say you’re wrong about most Catholics and lectionary-following Protestants. Christmas is preceded by four weeks of preparation and followed by twelve days of celebration (and accompanied by a secular gift-giving celebration that happens at the same time). Easter is preceded by 40 days of preparation and followed by 40 days of celebration. There’s fasting, extra services, “giving up something for Lent….” The difference is that these are much less visible to the outside world, including to the aforementioned Baptists and evangelicals.

Raised Catholic in America, it feels kind of like an apples to oranges comparison. I remember way more church stuff going on around Easter for sure, but I feel like there was more 'energy' around Christmas. Obviously a child's perspective might be skewed what with the gifts but Christmas was the bigger deal for me.

Well, as a Puritan Atheist, I don't consider those Papists and quasi-papists real Christians anyway. /s

Also, I don't know that the length of "preparation" and "celebration" is the best way to compare the relative level of celebration between the two holidays, but the admixture of the secular bits definitely muddies the waters a lot. In a slightly different universe, perhaps the Christian West managed to make Easter a major commercial holiday (beyond mere candy) and so it became far more significant culturally than Christmas across the board.

It's interesting that in the West our winter celebration is so much bigger than our spring/fall/summer ones. The Chinese New Year is on the tail end of winter celebrating the coming of spring, "Greater Iran" has Nowruz in the spring, the Islamic world has Ramadan on a rotating basis, Rosh Hashanah is fall, as is Diwali.

Is it? I think many Christians would say otherwise. Christianity isn't like Judaism where Rabbis can make these decisions for people, especially Protestants.

Christianity isn't like Judaism where Rabbis can make these decisions for people, especially Protestants.

Judaism doesn't have a church hierarchy like Catholicism. Jews famously don't agree on the interpretations of their religious commandments.

According to the Catholic Church, Eaater and Good Friday are #1 and #2. We worship Christ because of his passion, execution, and resurrection. He died and came back so that those who believe shall live.

Any Christian that celebrates Christmas over Easter has missed the point.

I know that but does the average Christian? I'd be willing to bet church attendance is higher on Christmas.

You can take the redditor out of reddit, but you can't the reddit out of the redditor.

You think the average Christian knows anything about Christianity? I can assure you that they don't.

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Easter is generally a bigger religious holiday than Christmas, yes. Of course Christmas is a bigger deal to Christians who don't actually go to church.

Literally the most important and most ancient, in fact.

This would be like if Christians in Israel started demanding if a minor random Christian holiday near Passover be given equal standing to their most important holiday. Obviously this is absurd on its face and would never be taken seriously.

Christians could never accomplish such a feat, because the Meek will Inherit the Earth. Fortunately for Jews, they don't believe that tripe so they get their Menorah on the White House lawn with no Nativity or Cross in sight.

As Nietzsche said, the command 'love your enemies' had to have been invented by the best haters there have ever been. You can say "I don't want to blame this on 'da Jews'", but yeah, the cultural dynamic is the accomplishment of a concerted effort by da Jews.

This is valid about plenty in modern Christianity but historical Christianity wasn't like this. If you study the history of Christianity and many of the Church's fathers although not as tribal for their own group and hostile to outsiders as the Jews, they were pro Christian and against non Christians. They saw as Christians the new chosen ones. And had plenty of negatives to say about the Jews both related to religious dogma and in general condemning what they saw as a bad character and behavior in the Jews. Especially against Christians.

It is no accident that this Christianity that is more like this exists is in a more progressive, secular age and in addition to the progressive ideology, we also had the influence of Jewish organizations playing a part too.

Its like quoting the passages in the old testament that are extremely pro Jewish, or even Jewish supremacist, but not the parts in the new testament that are negative towards the Jews.

Scofield bible is also a part of modernity and not part of historical Christianity.

It is a choice to focus on such quotes, while Christianity has other quotes and history one can focus upon. So, there is something that can be found in Christianity to promote such narratives, but it is a choice to focus upon this exclusively. And no accident that often non Christians did this.

To be fair, it matters more what is the current Christianity, or what calls itself that than historical. It still would be wrong to write off all modern Christians as self-flaggelating or pushovers towards the Jews. We should try to separate the faction that are with those that aren't. It is also true that the later can claim more authenticity.

That's really interesting, what would be some anti-Jewish stuff in the New Testament?

And actually, do any of the books of the New Testament ever go after other groups (ie Roman pagans, Persian Zoroastrian monotheists?)

In addition to the two passages cited by Belisarius below, I would add Matthew 27, which IMO is even worse than those given the context:

22 Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” 23 And he said, “Why? What evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!” 24 So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves.” 25 And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

It is very strongly implied that "all the people" are the Jews.

As a counterpoint, during Palm Sunday, the (Christian) congregation explicitly takes personal responsibility for the death of Christ. As humans, we all have the capacity for getting carried away as part of a mob, and so we all have to confront the fact that we innately have more in common with the jeering crowd than with Jesus. "All the people" is therefore understood in those terms.

My theology and history isn't good enough to guarantee that this has always been the case everywhere since 0 AD so caveat emptor, but I think it's the usual interpretation.

That's true, but Christians were originally the Jews who supported Jesus. Modern Judaism is descended intellectually from the Pharisees who were explicitly the enemies of Christ and the ones who condemned him. The idea that the struggle is racial is a Nazi contrivance, but the idea it is ideological is just history.

I consider it negative on Jews but not Anti-Jewish because the term has been abused to an extreme degree by one sided complaining and excessive complaining where it isn't warranted without any sense of proportion. Of course if you search for the Talmud and the Torah you can find far worse. Including against non Jews in general. One of various examples: https://www.sefaria.org/Jerusalem_Talmud_Kiddushin.4.11.7?lang=bi

See 257 reference which says:

Rebbi Simeon ben Ioḥai stated: Kill the best of Gentiles

Also, Christian Zionist Judeo-Christian interpretation of Christianity and the general movement is anti-Christian and promotes a mentality servile to the Jews so a version of Christianity if one takes it as Christianity has anti-Christian elements. The Bible includes the Old Testament which does have some extremely racist passages favoring genocide and mistreatment of non Jews and Jews lording over others as God's chosen people.

For the bellow passage and the quote one could interpret it as meaning perhaps the Jews of this incident. A pro Christian interpretation would be that it is about the Jews but precisely because Christ's Godly way is more moral than how the Jews interpret their tradition. Frankly as a Christian who isn't very literalist about everything in the old testament, nor very religious (I have a complicated relationship with faith) but it is still my culture and religion, and my people, especially a subset of them I can't but see a difference between the New Testament and Old Testament, with the first advocating a more merciful morality than the later. In general, it is better if certain passages of the old testament especially are not taken too seriously by anyone through interpretation. While there are quotes in the old testament too that are wise like Thou shalt not kill.

But no reason for Christians to allow themselves to be psyopped in letting others dominating them and mistreating them which is different than the historical Christianity. Of course, while I want Christians to stand up for themselves and not tolerate Anti-Christian hatred and haters, if Christians go full Old Testament, that wouldn't be ideal from a more universalist ethical point of view and not my preference.

So here it is one, see especially John 8:44:

You can read it from the beginning in the bellow link.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%208&version=KJV

19 Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.

20 These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the temple: and no man laid hands on him; for his hour was not yet come.

21 Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come.

22 Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come.

23 And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.

24 I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.

25 Then said they unto him, Who art thou? And Jesus saith unto them, Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning.

26 I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him.

27 They understood not that he spake to them of the Father.

28 Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.

29 And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.

30 As he spake these words, many believed on him.

31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;

32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

33 They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?

34 Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.

35 And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever.

36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

37 I know that ye are Abraham's seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you.

38 I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.

39 They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.

40 But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.

41 Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.

42 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.

43 Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.

44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

45 And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.

46 Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?

47 He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.

48 Then answered the Jews, and said unto him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?

49 Jesus answered, I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me.

50 And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth.

51 Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

There is also the bellow quote from revelation 2:9.

I know thy works and tribulation and poverty (but thou art rich), and I know the blasphemy of them that say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.

These are examples that I recalled. This isn't necessarily a list of everything that might qualify.

Super interesting, and you're quite correct: relatively mild criticism as it goes

Christians could never accomplish such a feat, because the Meek will Inherit the Earth. Fortunately for Jews, they don't believe that tripe so they get their Menorah on the White House lawn with no Nativity or Cross in sight.

What do you mean? Christians have done this over and over again in every country they have gained power in. They took axes to the sacred groves. They toppled pagan statues. They expelled Muslims from Jerusalem. There are still blasphemy laws in many Christian countries.

I feel like there's some tension here.

Is Christmas a particularly Christian holiday, so that attacks on the prominence of Christmas are attacks on Christianity? Or is Christmas so secularized as to have not much association with Christianity, and so non-Christians should have no objection to celebrating it?

I feel like this comment is trying to have it both ways. Whenever Christianity is under attack its a distinctly Christian affair so that attacks on Christmas are attacks on Christianity. Whenever Christmas is being celebrated, though, it's merely a secular holiday with no particular religious associations that no one should feel uncomfortable celebrating! This might be rhetorically convenient for Christians but seems like there's some tension here too me.

There is definitely tension. The Santa Claus version of Christmas with the reindeer and the elves and the North Pole is the new, secular, version of the festival. And even that is being improved upon with Mrs. Santa Claus, black Santa Claus, you name it (I think I'm still waiting for mainstream gay Santa, why no Mr. and Mr. Claus yet? No "I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus"?*). The popular notion of Christmas is increasingly separate from the original Christian feast day. And yet they are still tangled together at the roots.

It's when those secular symbols get objected to, and insistence that you have to have the 'randomly chosen symbol from other faith or tradition' displayed alongside them or instead of them, that the murkiness sets in. Is Christmas a religious feast or a secular festival? Both? If we emphasise the secular festival, have we done away with the sectarian religious element?

If you're objecting to Santa because he's still Christian, then secular Christmas is not standing on its own, and claiming that this particular holiday is not uniquely Christian and so should be packed in with a grab-bag of "Happy Holidays" doesn't work. You can only have "Happy Holidays" if the festival being celebrated is, in effect, Yule (and long divorced from its original roots, and I don't count Wiccan/Pagan Yule as traditional) so it can be packaged alongside Kwanzaa and Hanukkah and any other scraped-together 'at the same date' festival from other traditions.

*Looks like the Norwegian postal service got there in 2021!

Whenever Christianity is under attack its a distinctly Christian affair so that attacks on Christmas are attacks on Christianity.

It helps when the attackers clarify that they are, in fact, targeting Christians with their statements. For example, see this excerpt from the Canadian Human Rights Commission:

Only through better understanding of how religious intolerance takes place in Canada can our legislation, policies and programs be crafted to address the causes and consequences of this intolerance.

Discrimination against religious minorities in Canada is grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism. This history manifests itself in present-day systemic religious discrimination. An obvious example is statutory holidays in Canada. Statutory holidays related to Christianity, including Christmas and Easter, are the only Canadian statutory holidays linked to religious holy days. As a result, non-Christians may need to request special accommodations to observe their holy days and other times of the year where their religion requires them to abstain from work.Footnote 4

Canada’s history with religious intolerance is deeply rooted in our identity as a settler colonial state.

(Any non religious attacks on Christmas are so utterly banal that they've slipped my mind. Something something commercialization? Something something bad family dynamics? Snow is cold?)

Whenever Christmas is being celebrated, though, it's merely a secular holiday with no particular religious associations that no one should feel uncomfortable celebrating!

When's the last time that you saw a Christmas movie that included mass? How about the last time you've seen a government agency or an official (not a politician) celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour? Heck, I can't remember the last time I've heard a "Bethlehem and Jesus" style song on the radio instead of a "Presents and Reindeer" one.

The religious connotations haven't been entirely removed, but it's not far off.

I can't remember the last time I've heard a "Bethlehem and Jesus" style song on the radio instead of a "Presents and Reindeer" one.

Really? Joy to the World, Mary did you Know, Oh Come all ye Faithful, etc. are all pretty commonly played on the radio in late December where I am. What they don't play is actual religious hymns, but did you really expect them to?

I'll start counting from now on, and (if I remember) I'll post the results in a month. Currently, I'm at 3 secular, 0 religious Christmas songs.

EDIT: 24-0

Heck, I can't remember the last time I've heard a "Bethlehem and Jesus" style song on the radio instead of a "Presents and Reindeer" one.

A point that rankles my American other half, year after year, is that the "Christmas Music" played publicly here in Ireland is a completely different canon to what she grew up with back home. And, unusually, there is just a total failure of Americanisation in the domain of Christmas music - her canon seems ancient (many tunes from the 1950s versus a tilt towards the 1980s here, because of different population pyramids - we don't have a bulge of 60-70 year olds monopolising all the cultural memory space) and painfully schmaltzy to most Irish ears, including my own.

For example, the universally-acknowledged GOAT of Christmas music in Ireland is The Pogues' Fairytale of New York, a thoroughly secular 1980s ballad that consistently rankles schoolmarmish woke types not because of overt Christofascism, but because the word "faggot", in the pejorative sense, is a key lyric. This song gives rise to the only occassion in modern Ireland where a person can drunkenly chant the word "faggot" at a stuffy office (Christmas) party and recieve no censure.

Overtly religious stuff is also played publicly (a fine example is Mary's Boy Child by Boney M, a jaunty German-calypso tune) because it's a religious holiday. The modal Irish person under 35 sounds like a Q-Anon believer when discussing Catholicism (it's a giant conspiracy run by paedos to amass wealth & get a go of children), yet will still tolerate religious music at Christmas because, come on. I don't know how American culture has managed to get away from this. Maybe it really is semitic sour grapes from the pullers of American cultural levers.

In stores and malls, I haven't heard any religious Christmas music since sometime in the 1990s. It's just one billion repetitions of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", "Chestnuts Rosting on an Open Fire", and various pop abominations.

My two local malls (Tysons Corner Center and Tysons Galleria) and the stores in them, in fact, have really been skimping on Christmas decorations in the past few years. In the 1980s, the whole place used to get transformed: tinsel and colored lights everywhere, decorated trees in every shop window. Seeing this used to be one of the things I most looked forward to about the Christmas season.

Nowadays, there are just a few anemic strings of white lights hanging from the ceiling (colored lights seem to be permanently out of fashion for some reason) and almost no stores have any decorations put up at all!

I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the area now has a sizable Muslim population (when I go there now, maybe a quarter to a third of the women are wearing headscarves or hijab) who'd rather not see a Christian holiday celebrated, although I doubt anyone would admit publically that that's the reason.

there are just a few anemic strings of white lights hanging from the ceiling (colored lights seem to be permanently out of fashion for some reason)

I think this is part of a wider aesthetic shift towards being sleek/minimalistic that has been happening for a long time. I distinctly remember noticing as a kid in the early 2000s that there was a trend with upper-class people more likely to do white lights and lower-class being more likely to do colored lights. I tried to get my folks to put up colored lights instead of white lights, but the compromise ended up being all one color (I chose blue, which led to people asking if we had converted to Judaism).

Colours can be tasteful if they're used with care but generally less is more. Our neighbours use multicoloured lights but it's offset by each bulb being very small. The bigger the display the more the colours will clash. Red and white could be a suitable combination for the season but monochrome white makes an effective Schelling point for a whole neighbourhood to converge on and create a semi-coordinated appearance.

For me blue lights don't say Christmas (or Judaism), they say either "blue LEDs hit the market and everyone began using them in order to look more futuristic... twenty years ago" or "emergency vehicle". The one positive is that it's not as eerie and unearthly as green. Blue is cold and eye-catching and that's why it's such a confusing choice to have a big bright one on the front of so many TVs, but again: "futuristic". Christmas lights should be warm and festive, like a log fire reflected on a brass coal scuttle or candlelight shining through stained-glass. White lights are bland but at least they're reminiscent of frost and snow and fit a wintertime palette.

I've noticed a lot of people don't distinguish between warm and cold white though and end up using the bluish white lights indoors where a warmer tone would be much cosier and more inviting, leaving their sitting room with a similar lighting ambience to a commercial kitchen.

I guess that now LED ropes are getting cheaper soon everything will look like Tron. "Bloop bloop bloop! Merry twelve slash twenty five."

I've definitely heard "Silent Night" recently. And the vastly overplayed Trans-Siberian Orchestra compilation includes religious songs.

Skimping on Christmas decorations is probably a result of the general decline of in-store shopping.

general decline of in-store shopping.

YMMV - malls in my area are absolutely packed right now. There seems to be a kind of resurgence going on now that the recession is cancelled.

I think acknowledging the Christian roots of these holidays and wanting acknowledgements of other religious holidays is distinct from being an attack on Christianity. The obvious reason why holidays like Good Friday and Christmas are holidays acknowledged by the federal government is religious, specifically Christian, influence. This is distinct from other non-religious holidays (like Canada Day or Thanksgiving). The question is whether the elevation of those specific holidays comport with our present values. What's the justification for having a federal holiday for Christian holidays but not Jewish ones? Or Muslim ones? Or any other religion? Having your nation's federal government have specific holidays that correspond to Christian holidays, but no other religion's, certainly feels like religious bigotry to me!

Oppressing the majority and being intolerant to their culture and religion for the sake of accommodating minorities is not a good idea if one wants to combat religious bigotry. It actually what you do if you want to enforce it, and that is why conquering religions did just that on majorities they conquered.

What you suggest is not the end of bigotry but the elevation of it by an oppression of the majority by an alliance of minorities. AKA progressive stack religious edition the anti-Christian version.

In the case of an atheist allying with religious minorities against the majority then you still got bigotry of the atheist and the religious minorities. Not only are atheists not exempt from bigotry, but in the modern world have been some of the worst participants in it, with Christians being often the victims.

And if someone has the goal of an atheistic state oppressing all religions, you got an oppression there too. Both that and nor not allowing the majority the right to celebrate their religion are a case of a worse value system and not a better one.

Moreover, like non Christians have their own countries and there is no agitation of this nature, so do Christians have theirs. In fact there is no agitation of this extend about avoiding actual mistreatment of Christians neither in Israel nor in Muslims countries the two examples you mentioned. There is some by the Christian community in Israel but not much attention by those eager to complain about religious bigotry. Albeit, the worst state about mistreating Christians is one of the Muslim ones and not the Jewish one. Maybe Pakistan.

I guess a final point to be made is that experience with the progressive movement and identitarians who align with it tells us that even one-sided multi-culturalism has not been the end point. In fact we see some double standards even now and it is rather plausible that once Christian religion has been even further delegitimized, this will be enforced savagely with the tactic of associating Christianity with evil oppression and hatred, while there will be more tolerance towards other religions like the Jewish and Muslim ones you mentioned. This fits with the general pattern of an alliance of minorities against the majority. So if Christians want to avoid bigotry, the last thing they ought to do is listen to the Anti-Christians.

It seems to me there is a trade off between inclusivity and tolerance. Tolerance permits the majority to arrange society as they like while permitting effectively opt out whereas inclusivity encourages society to either be neutral or even adopt according to the minority.

When's the last time that you saw a Christmas movie that included mass? How about the last time you've seen a government agency or an official (not a politician) celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour? Heck, I can't remember the last time I've heard a "Bethlehem and Jesus" style song on the radio instead of a "Presents and Reindeer" one.

Good observation. Lately I've been feeling like Christmastime begins and ends on the 24th, when I go to church for once in a year. And I'm not even religious. The Advent season, which in my childhood spanned late November to early January, used to be festive and distinctly Christian - but over the last thirty years, the Christian connotations indeed seem to have been lost, and it cheapened the whole affair to the point where it really is all about chocolate and presents and seemingly random themes like reindeer and jolly santa clauses.

Something's been lost. I guess I could still get the original Advent feeling if I actively sought it out, but it's no longer "in the air", as they say.

I'm an agnostic so I'm not particularly concerned with Christianity. I'll put it simply. There is no such thing as "the holidays". So any direct call to name it "the holidays" is a direct attack on Christianity by its definition. Christmas is more or less a secular holiday at this point, so attacking Christmas underlies an anti-Christian worldview since the average non-Christian is fine celebrating Christmas. The only person that would care about this from the anti-Christmas perspective is one who is against Christianity having any public rituals or any role in society.

I mean, I'm an atheist for whatever that's worth.

For my part I think of the "holiday season" as encompassing all the holidays from Thanksgiving to New Years. Christmas is the biggest of those but not the only one. I'm also unconvinced that because Hanukkah is not that big in Judaism it deserves to be ignored.

I'm also unclear on how attacks on Christmas can be anti-Christian if Christmas is not particularly Christian. Are people opposed to Christmas because of its celebration of consumerism anti-Christian?

I'm also unclear on how attacks on Christmas can be anti-Christian if Christmas is not particularly Christian. Are people opposed to Christmas because of its celebration of consumerism anti-Christian?

I'm not convinced that you're describing people who exist. The main critics of toyotathon and Christmas sales are religious Christians who see it as taking away from the true meaning of the holiday. The main criticism of public Christmas celebrations is Christianity.

This is looking for a loophole and a gotcha to justify attacks on Christians which are anti-Christian.

Christmas is particularly Christian and to the extend it has been de-Christianized it is still attacked on the basis of Christian origin and being too Christian.

Are people opposed to Christmas because of its celebration of consumerism anti-Christian?

But that isn't the primary argument you have used against Christmas but that it is Christian and it is religious bigotry for not equal space to be given to other religions and not undermining the Christian one. So it isn't correct that opposition to Christmas is mainly about anti-consumerism.

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