Seventh Bit of Media—Ho, ho, ho! Happy Holidays!

Upon searching "happy holidays" in Google Images, here are my results:

First of all, let's acknowledge the elephant in the room—Christmas. Never mind Diwali, Kwanzaa, and Chanukah, all of which happen around this time of year. So basically we Americans don't really mean "happy holidays" when we say the phrase. We just don't want to offend anyone by discounting theirs.

Chanukah—or Hanukkah or Chanukka or Hannukah or whatever—will end tomorrow night. I am sad to see it go, but I'm glad its passing got me thinking about how this holiday is portrayed in the American media, and how this reflects the American understanding of Judaism.

So, what is Chanukah? Chanukah began as the celebration of a military victory of a Jewish group called the Maccabees over the Greeks. Because the Maccabees were an extremist group which attacked assimilated Jews and generally wreaked havoc, rabbis decided not to put this story in the Torah, the main Jewish holy book, and discouraged Jews from celebrating the holiday. But the Jews wanted to celebrate one of the few Jewish military victories of the time. So the rabbis created the story about the miracle of the oil, from which originates the lighting of the chanukiah (Chanukah menorah) and the eating of latkes and jelly donuts.

Chanukah is not Christmas. As you can see from the above, the traditions surrounding the holiday are completely different than those surrounding Christmas. And yet we persist with this notion that it is one of the "holidays."Chanukah has been celebrated, and treated by the media, like a Jewish Christmas for decades now.

Jews' answer to Santa Claus

But why? Chanukah is a minor Jewish holiday whose story was not even included in the Torah. To be fair, this is partly because of the original extremism that took place at the time of the "miracle" of Chanukah. But it is worth note that even if this holiday was not based on the celebration of an extremist victory, it would still not come anywhere close to our  main holiday, Yom Kippur. Its only connection to Christmas is the time of year.

As stereotypical as this sounds, I think the answer lies in the fact that the Jews control the media. Not all of it. But a disproportionate share nonetheless. And before Chanukah was made to seem like Christmas, Jews must have felt alienated not having a Christmas of their own. I'm lucky enough to have Christian relatives and to have celebrated Christmas for as long as I can remember, but those who do not share my situation must feel terribly alienated. So they have taken Christmas traditions and Chanukah-ized them to fulfill their need for affiliation. Why else do we see Chanukah Harry of Chanukah bushes appear?

A Chanukah bush is
definitely not a Christmas tree.

Amazingly, this tactic has worked. Jews everywhere can feel like they belong to the atmosphere of holiday cheer. Chanukah has been accepted into the mainstream as Jews' answer to Christmas. But maybe this has worked too well. Chanukah seems to be the only area of Judaism non-Jews know about. Let's be clear: I mean no disrespect to anyone. I mean only to point out how the American understanding of Judaism is based largely on its understanding of Christianity.

So what does this say about our culture? It says that we are lazy and ignorant. Our understanding of the world is really just a jumble of reality assumptions with some past experience thrown in for good measure. I'm not insulting non-Jews—I was only saved from ignorance in this case because of my ancestry—I'm saying that as a society we tend to buy into whatever the media tells us, and that's just lazy. I'm saying that the only way we can think to sell new ideas is to package them like the old ones and hope no one will know the difference. That's lazy too. I'm saying happy holidays to you all, and I mean it.