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From: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Barry Gold)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Christmas {report} card
Message-ID: <1632@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 30-Dec-84 16:24:10 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.1632
Posted: Sun Dec 30 16:24:10 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Jan-85 06:00:30 EST
References: <2028@nsc.UUCP> <2031@nsc.UUCP> <1014@aecom.UUCP> <4652@tektronix.UUCP>
Reply-To: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Barry Gold)
Distribution: net
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 41
Summary: 

I sent the following essay (mimeographed) to my friends one December several
years back.  None of them got offended.  And I now get remarkably fewer
"Merry Christmas" cards (and more "Seasons Greetings" ones).

	 On my hearth are over a dozen Christmas cards.  I don't send them
myself.  Partly because I'm Jewish.  Partly because I'm not an enthusiastic
supporter of the American Greeting Card Industry.
	The whole thing fills me with feelings of mingled nervousness and
annoyance -- with a dash of aesthetic pleasure at some of the pretty
pictures.  I wish there were a more appropriate time of year to get such
cards.  Couldn't there be a Friends Day?  Or couldn't friends send cards
for New Year's instead of for religious holidays?
	Christmas is for me a yearly reminder not of the fact that I live
in a land of people who believe in an alien religion, but of the fact
that I live in a land of people who place more emphasis on their reilgious
rituals than on their religious beliefs.  The essence of the American
Christmas is the ritual and its trappings; not prayer and piety.  No one
would ask me to participate in the latter:  it would seem too obviously
ludicrous.  But a people that observes ritual sees no reason why those of a
different belief shouldn't observe the same ritual.  So as a child I was
taught to sing Christmas carols in scool, and now I get Christmas cards.
	And people wish me "Merry Christmas" when I shop--and I never know
what to answer.  It's as bad as writing thank you ntoes for presents you
didn't want.  But then of course you could always say, "Thank you for thinking
of me."  What's a good, smooth way to thank a person for thinking of you
but  not enough to notice your religion?  What would Christians think if
Pagans wished them a Happy Samhain?
	As an outsider, I find Christmas a beautiful spectacle.  The carols
are lovely.  I used to wish my Jewish holidays had as many pretty songs.  One
day it occurred to me to wonder what sort of songs Jewish writers like Irving
Berlin and George Gershwin might have written if they'd lived in a culture
where you could make lots of money writing songs for Jewish holidays.  There
are some wonderful old mvoies too:  "The Bishop's Wife," "Miracle on 34th
Street," Menotti's opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors."   They're not derived
from my religion, but then neither are the cultures in a lot of science
books I read.  I love them anyway.
	Christmas is beautiful.  It's not my holiday, though, and I find it
becomes ugly only when people try to pretend that it is IS somehow my
holiday.  Lies are always ugly.

--Lee Gold