[HANASHIR:7803] Re: Christmas is NOT an American Holiday

[LSalvay <LSalvay...>]

Sharon,
It's interesting how Christian America can be so seemingly naive about the 
fact that Christmas is indeed NOT an American holiday, but a religious one 
(Santa and his elves aside -- and, Santa is after all a "saint" -- how 
"secular" is that? ).

In the "putting the shoe on the other foot" department -- I was asked to 
present a Chanukah program to a group of home-schoolers and their parents at 
a public library in a predominantly Christian area of Kansas City. The 
program was well attended and went extremely well -- I began with a bit of 
history about why Jews celebrate Chanukah, and then told about the candles 
(and had a child from the audience come up to light them), talked about 
latkes and dreidels, and finished with the idea that Chanukah is not about 
winning a war so much as wanting to win peace and tolerance among diverse 
ethnicities and religions. Of course, the program included songs relating to 
each element I covered, and ended with Debbie Friedman's  "Not By Might." A 
photographer from the metropolitan newspaper (The Kansas City Star) came to 
shoot photos of the program -- and the next morning, we were on the FRONT 
PAGE. For the Star, the photo and caption were a timely way to announce that 
Chanukah was to begin that night. However, within a day, I heard feedback 
that someone interpreted the photo, and the Chanukah program at the public 
library, as PROSELYTIZING -- that I had been there trying to convert 
Christians to Judaism. (Anyone who actually attended the program knows that 
that certainly was NOT the case.)

Funny, when "mainstream" Christian Americans insist that Christmas plays be 
part of the curriculum in public schools, they can't see the overbearing 
religiosity of it -- yet when a Jew makes a small attempt to remove the 
"mystery" of Chanukah in a benign, educational presentation (where attendence 
is voluntary), it is met with radical accusations. 

We have a long way to go before diversity is fully functional in this country!

Shabbat Shalom to all,
Linda Salvay

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