Holiday Music

[robert wiener <wiener...>]

I hate going into record stores this time of year.  Even before
Thanksgiving, Tower has a display of "Holiday Music".  The label offends me.
Maybe it is an attempt to be multi-cultural, acknowledge diversity, and not
offend non-Christians.  But I don't think so, and that is not the effect on
me.

In fact, "Holiday Music" is simply the politically correct term for
"Christmas Music".  Enter the emporium, look at the CDs on the wall(even on
Manhattan's Upper West Side), and count how many Hanukah (or Kwanzaa)
recordings there are.

This is no competition (and as our discussion of Hanukah recordings shows,
general record stores carry only a tiny portion of what is available), but
these displays (and the way Hanukah is depicted in the media) makes it seem
that we're all in this holiday season together, that it is something that we
have in common.

Perhaps some Jews feel left out of the seasonal festivities.  If so, I think
that's a good thing.  Hanukah is not the Jewish Christmas.  Even to display
Hanukah recordings prominently in a Holiday Music section elevates it above
the many more important Jewish holidays and thus demeans them.   I hope that
we as Jews don't feel the need to mimic Christian practices to feel proud of
our own heritage.  (One of my students was shocked when I asserted that
giving a present each night of Hanukah is about as Jewish as a Hanukah
bush.)

Appreciate the aesthetic beauty of Christmas music, but be mindful that even
something as apparently innocuous as the red stripe of the candy cane
symbolizes the blood of Jesus.  Even if Christians claim that they are the
"new Israel" that doesn't make us the "old Israel".  I believe that there is
a Jewish tradition and a Christian tradition, but no Judeo-Christian
tradition.  That is the message of Hanukah to me.

Bob Wiener