The Other Christmas

^[1]813 words

German translation here ^[2]

No, not Kwanzaa.

Hanukkah.

It’s that time of year again: politicians around the country—city, state, and federal, Democrat and Republican, left, right, and center—congregate to display fealty to Judaism, the Jews, and Israel.

In the White House, President Barack Hussein Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden, whose son is married to a Jew and whose daughter is engaged to one (Jewish grandchildren!), convened a Hanukkah celebration in early December.

Fox News informs us ^[3] that

Prior to 1979, Christmas was the primary winter holiday celebrated in the White House. [That year] President Carter was the first to officially recognize the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, delivering remarks in Lafayette Park while lighting the new National Menorah, a tradition that lives on today. In 1993, President Clinton hosted the first official menorah lighting inside the White House. . . .

Twenty-two years after the first lighting of the National Menorah, President [George W.] Bush [in 2001] hosted the first Hanukkah party, with an 100-year old menorah on loan from the Jewish Museum in New York City. And with more than 600 guests attending his last party while in office, it was no small affair.

At the State House in Boston this week, Massachusetts’ Negro governor Deval Patrick, House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, and Senate President Therese Murray lit the center and first candles on the official menorah ^[4] while leading bigwigs looked on.

That’s the official menorah in the State House—brought to you courtesy of those fiercely uncompromising “separation of church and state” folks. Ah, “principle”!

In 1989 the US Supreme Court laid down a law that government “may not observe [Christmas] as a Christian holy day by suggesting that people praise God for the birth of Jesus.”

As a result, the simple display of a crèche (a three-dimensional Nativity scene) inside the County Courthouse in Pittsburgh was deemed to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because it celebrated Christmas in a way that had “the effect of endorsing a patently Christian message: Glory to God for the birth of Jesus Christ.”

But — a Hanukkah miracle! — the very same decision held that the annual county-city display of an 18-foot Hanukkah menorah was not a violation of the Constitution.

Although the menorah was owned by Chabad, Pittsburgh’s Lubavitch Center, it was generously stored, erected, and removed each year by the city—presumably at taxpayer expense.

What It’s All About

Hanukkah celebrates a Jewish victory over the Hellenistic Greeks of Syria 160 years before the birth of Christ. During the course of the 8-day celebration a candle is lit daily until eight have been lighted in a special candelabrum with nine branches (an extra light in the ninth branch is used to kindle the others) known as a menorah.

The reason why the Hanukkah menorah has two additional branches instead of the traditional seven is that the Talmud prohibits the use of a seven-branched menorah outside the Temple.

Both variants, however, are symbols of Judaism and the state of Israel.

Despite being one of the most celebrated Jewish holidays in the US, Hanukkah is only a minor holiday in Judaism and in Israel.

Judaism’s major religious holidays are Rosh Hashanah and the nine succeeding days culminating in Yom Kippur (the so-called High Holy Days), and Passover, celebrating the slaughter of the firstborn Gentile children of Egypt (all of them), around Eastertide.

Three Jewish eggheads (economists) noted, “This stark difference between Israel and the US in the relative importance of Hanukkah as a Jewish holiday is witnessed by each Israeli immigrant to the US including ourselves.” (Yes, they are immigrating here.)

In the US, Hanukkah has become the Jewish alternative to Christmas. Its artificial importance has been used to counterbalance, delegitimize, and trash the religious essence of the primary Christian holiday.

White Christians are left with little more than a desacralized and Judaized “Holiday Season” centered primarily on shopping and gift giving. Even the traditional “Merry Christmas” greeting has been successfully stigmatized as anti-Jewish.

The localized stress upon Hanukkah is part and parcel of a larger war against Christmas ^[5] in particular and Christianity in general. Jewish hatred of Christianity is at least as intense as their hatred of whites.

Although typically not perceived as such, Jews are a population isolate. The reproductive barriers that preserve their genetic uniqueness as an identifiable breeding population are primarily social and cultural rather than territorial.

One method of maintaining Jewish identity is cultivating hatred of others. Hatred almost certainly exceeds love as an ethnically binding force. At least Jewish experience suggests so.

Even among ourselves the admonition to “love your race” is virtually impossible to live up to. So imagine how hard it would be for Jews.

The artificial elevation of Hanukkah, combined with the spectacularly successful attack on the celebration of Christmas as somehow illegitimate, and an assault upon Jews, successfully dissolved a major cultural bond uniting European-Americans, while simultaneously cementing Jewish identity.