For all the years I have been with my wife, who is Jewish, we have had to manage the mixed marriage thing of holidays. Passover/Easter, Christmas/ Chanukah how to commemorate and celebrate while giving each tradition their due.
The C/C conundrum is especially tricky. Jews will tell you that their holiday is no big thing while Christians honor the birth of Christ with solemn songs, lights, family, and recently Black Friday sales. This year Black Friday morphed into Thanksgiving night. As Jon Stewart said, Christmas is so big it has eaten Thanksgiving, and he is right. Perhaps the essence of the moment was captured by a you tube video of a guy telling fellow midnight madness revelers to "Step the F*%# back or I'll kill you M*^&#$ F@$%^&!"
The other day we were in an art supply store that realized it cannot exist on art supplies alone, so they have gone into all kinds of related and unrelated stuff to make ends meet. In this large store named after the Jewish owner were all kinds of Christmas supplies and stuff no one needs. Candles, reindeer, wreaths, green ones, gold ones, large and small ones. Plastic flowers of the season, stockings hung on the fake mantle stuffed with other stuff. Chocolates, cards, wrapping paper, fat Santas reminiscing a time long ago, reindeer antlers for people. Just a storehouse of stuff that has very little if anything to do with the true meaning of Christmas. We needed to purchase a dreidel for our granddaughter who is fascinated by the one we have in the house. What better place to find one than at the store owned by the Jew. We asked about Chanukah supplies and were directed to the front corner of the store. And there it was a card table with a sorry looking display of some things Chanukah, mostly paper goods, napkins and notes, but no dreidels or menorahs. It was obvious that in the Christian world of the U.S. where from Thanksgiving to December 24, we honor Kors, Coach, Apple, XBox, Juicy and Victoria Secret, Jews have give into the mantra, if you can't beat them, join 'em.
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