dagblog - Comments for "The End of the Jewish Left"

This whole friggin' thing is

Bruce Levine — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:30:19 +0000

In reply to True, but... It would appear

This whole friggin' thing is just so stupid, it really is. Just catching up from yesterday. I happen to love x-mas carols, share with my wife a passion for cheesy x-mas specials in claymation, and these days love nothing more than spending x-mas day up at the in-laws place in the Berkshire, cozying up by the fire and listening to Handel's Messiah. And I am hardly alone among the peeps.

Who are these people, on the right and apparently even on our so-called left, who think Jewish Americans are trying to play Grinch and steal X-mas from the masses -- by the way yet another excellent special I look forward to each and every day?

I mean, Rabbi Peter, my talmudic scholar, as you say, where the F. . . is the friggin' beef?????

P.S. One more funny little PERSONAL anecdote. One of my associates is an orthodox Jew who is married to a public school teacher. They scramble every X-mas break to arrange for childcare because the orthodox day school they send their kids to makes a point of staying open during the Christmas holidays. And it drives him totally bats@@t. You really have to laugh at all of this--if you can, and I'm honestly trying to.

Bruce

Christmas holidays as I knew

EmmaZahn — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:23:40 +0000

In reply to In my hometown, heavily

Christmas holidays as I knew them were a much simpler than today's marketing frenzies.

Sure the stores stocked up for after Thanksgiving purchasing but the holidays did not officially begin until Christmas Eve although we only had 1/2 day of school the day before. We returned to school the day after New Year's. Names were drawn and gifts exchanged at both day school and Sunday School.

There was one Christmas pageant the Sunday evening before Christmas. The story from Luke 2 was read and acted out. The choir sang carols and there was always a solo of O Holy Night of variable quality.

The tree, a much more modest thing then, went up the week before and came down New Year's Eve. Gifts were simple and fun until Santa Claus was discovered to be Dad. That was when underwear other clothing began to show up instead of toys.

Over and done with with as little fuss as possible.

The lessons of it were Peace on Earth and Good will to Men.

Like I said, the happiest of religious holidays -- except for a couple when an uncle drank too much, started feeling sorry for himself and ruined the party for everyone.

In my hometown, heavily

artappraiser — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:56:58 +0000

In reply to Modern day Santa Claus is an

In my hometown, heavily German Milwaukee, that whole thing got real screwed up, at least in the area I grew up in. As children, we put out stockings on Dec. 5 to receive candy from St. Nicholas overnight, and on the morning of Dec. 25 we received toys and clothes from Santa Claus under the tree. St. Nicholas and Santa Claus became two different people: one a candy giver and a Saint, and one a jolly non-religious toy maker and giver with elves concerned about improving the ways of naughty children.

My mother was the child of Polish immigrants and my father's grandparents were 1/2 German and Alsace and 1/2 Polish; I don't know where they got this, but many kids in my parochial school, (which was heavily Polish heritage,) had the same practices.

PS The art history world generally agrees that the fat white-haired & bearded Santa Claus we know today is a genuine American, invented by the cartoonist/illustrator Thomas Nast in 1862 on the cover of Harper's Weekly.

No idea. Just some lines

EmmaZahn — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:15:55 +0000

In reply to Beautiful poem. The trinity?

No idea. Just some lines stored in my brain connected to the name.

I don't know but all this

Elusive Trope — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:57:42 +0000

In reply to Seems I got a fair amount of

I don't know but all this makes me think of Sedaris' essay "Jesus Shaves," in which he details his time in a French lesson class explaining Easter to the non-Christians in the class, and how he learns in France it is a bell that comes in from Rome to give candy, not a rabbit.

At the end he writes:

In communicating any religious belief, the operative word is faith, a concept illustrated by our very presence in that classroom. Why bother struggling with the grammar lessons of a six year-old if each of us didn't believe that, against all reason, we might eventually improve? If I could hope to one day carry on a fluent conversation, it was a relatively short leap to believing that a rabbit might visit my home in the middle of the night, leaving behind a handful of chocolate kisses and a carton of menthol cigarettes. So why stop there? If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt? I accepted the idea that an omniscient God had cast me in his own image and that he watched over me and guided me from one place to the next. The virgin birth, the resurrection, and the countless miracles -my heart expanded to encompass all the wonders and possibilities of the universe.

A bell, though, that's fucked up.

Modern day Santa Claus is an

Verified Atheist — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:49:37 +0000

In reply to I knew about Easter being

Modern day Santa Claus is an American hybridization of Dutch (not Deutsch) and British traditions. In Germany, Sankt Nikolaus Tag (Tag is German for day) is still held on December 6^th. He is still separate from "der Weihnachtsmann".

Then he got run over by a

Donal — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:47:19 +0000

In reply to Seems I got a fair amount of

Then he got run over by a reindeer.

Seems I got a fair amount of

Peter Schwartz — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:34:18 +0000

In reply to Okay, so he wasn't rotten. He

Seems I got a fair amount of this wrong:

Santa Claus is generally depicted as a portly, joyous, white-bearded man wearing a red coat with white collar and cuffs, white-cuffed red trousers, and black leather belt and boots (images of him rarely have a beard with no moustache). This image became popular in the United States and Canada in the 19th century due to the significant influence of Clement Clarke Moore's 1823 poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" and of caricaturist and political cartoonist Thomas Nast.^[3]^[4]^[5] This image has been maintained and reinforced through song, radio, television, children's books and films. The North American depiction of Santa Claus as it developed in the 19th and 20th century in turn influenced the modern perceptions of Father Christmas, Sinterklaas and Saint Nicholas in European culture^{[citation needed]}.

According to a tradition which can be traced to the 1820s, Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, with a large number of magical elves, and nine (originally eight) flying reindeer. Since the 20th century, in an idea popularized by the 1934 song "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town", Santa Claus has been believed to make a list of children throughout the world, categorizing them according to their behavior ("naughty" or "nice") and to deliver presents, including toys, and candy to all of the well-behaved children in the world, and sometimes coal to the naughty children, on the single night of Christmas Eve. He accomplishes this feat with the aid of the elves who make the toys in the workshop and the reindeer who pull his sleigh.^[6]^[7]

Okay, so he wasn't rotten. He

Peter Schwartz — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:31:50 +0000

In reply to I knew about Easter being

Okay, so he wasn't rotten. He was a good guy.

Saint Nicholas (Greek: Ἅγιος Νικόλαος, Hagios ["Saint", literally "Holy", Latin: Sanctus] Nicolaos ["victory of the people"]) (270 – 6 December 343),^[3]^[4] also called Nikolaos of Myra, was a historic 4th-century saint and Greek^[5] Bishop of Myra (Demre, part of modern-day Turkey) in Lycia. Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known as Nikolaos the Wonderworker (Νικόλαος ὁ Θαυματουργός, Nikolaos ho Thaumaturgos). He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him, and thus became the model for Santa Claus, whose modern name comes from the Dutch Sinterklaas, itself from a series of elisions and corruptions of the transliteration of "Saint Nikolaos". His reputation evolved among the faithful, as was common for early Christian saints.^[6] In 1087, part of the relics (about half of the bones) were furtively translated to Bari, in southeastern Italy; for this reason, he is also known as Nikolaos of Bari. The remaining bones were taken to Venice in 1100. His feastday is 6 December [O.S. 19 December].

I knew about Easter being

Peter Schwartz — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:29:14 +0000

In reply to Not only that but I believe

I knew about Easter being more important religiously than Christmas. And yes, Christmas is a paganb solstice borrow maybe from Germany or thereabouts.

WaPo once ran a long story on the history of Mr. Claus, most of which I don't remember.

Apparently St. Nicholas was a real person and lived in the first to second centuries and was known as a pretty rotten guy. Or maybe just an unhappy guy.

Somehow, much later, he got his Christmas duties, maybe in Germany where he was merged with Father Christmas.

The real Saint Nicholas was pretty scrawny, so the heavyweight we know today was, I believe, created in the 1800s--maybe here in America--first as an advertising figure.

The story about the North Pole may also have been made up as part of the advertising.

Anyway, all of this may be wrong, but I share it with you anyway.