Holidazed

You know, I've begun to think that it's very difficult to be a Jew in this culture (I could probably just stop there) without getting a bit of a chip on your shoulder (there, too) about holidays (oh, so that's what this is about).

One the one hand, there's the fact that Jews have easily five times as many religious holidays as Christians do, in addition to being "allowed" to celebrate any American holidays that can be considered "secular" either in origin or in current observance. You can measure your passage through a year in a manner that comes pretty close to "what holiday are we preparing for or celebrating this week?" It's a lot for a new Jew to learn, and I feel like I haven't gotten any holiday but Chanukkah "right" yet. Just this weekend, we have our kids each a small gift for Purim, partly in lieu of the "Easter bunny" gifts they would have gotten this time of year, but partly because we heard somewhere that Purim was a gift-giving occasion. I've now heard from a few sources that Purim is a time for gifts of *food*, not toys or gaming cards or whatnot, and that the big spring gifting occasion is supposed to be after the finding of the afikomen at Passover. Also, the kids thought my hamentashen were bland. So we have to try again next year, I suppose. What's a new-Jew to do?!?

On the other hand, there are the vast number of non-Jews who think we only celebrate Passover and Chanukkah, because those are the only two times of the year that Jewish paraphernalia shows up in the big-box stores and the supermarkets. At the same time that everybody and their agnostic dog knows when Easter will be, nobody outside the Tribe has ever even heard of Purim. If America really were a Christian country, it would make more sense. But when the majority of Americans no longer claim any religion, according to recent studies, why is it that Christian holidays still have such pride-of-place that even people who know I'm Jewish will offhandedly wish me a "Happy Easter" and expect that I will do the same? Maybe it's just that if I reply "Purim Sameach to you, as well" I'm asking to spend the next ten minutes explaining what I said...

But I don't actually get worked up (except when blog-writing) over greetings and salutations. When I think about it the "right" way, even if I don't intend to celebrate Easter, I would still like to be happy on that day. So, go ahead: wish me a happy Easter, and you have one as well!

No, what gets the chip on my shoulder is the ways in which our supposedly secular institutions force us to celebrate, at least superficially, the two big Christian holidays that are the ones Jews are really supposed to not celebrate. My wife had to go out and buy literally dozens of plastic eggs to send to our kids' schools, for example, so they could celebrate a secularized version of the christianized version of the age-old pagan spring ritual of hiding and hunting eggs. Is there anything wrong with that? According to halakhah, there is: our kids are, depending on which history you accept for Easter eggs, celebrating either the rebirth of Christianity's God-figure, or the rebirth of some pagan people's God-figure. Either way, it's decidedly not in line with our religion. We could opt out, probably, but not without making our kids feel like total pariahs. So we do it, and hope it doesn't hurt us. 

And in the end, it doesn't. Easter, when all is said and done, is a pretty harmless holiday. It is a celebration of life, of renewal and rebirth. Our prayer book, Mishkan T'filah, reminds us that "giving life to the dead" was a pretty popular motif and favorite metaphor of the sages and rabbis of old, as well as their Christian contemporaries. It seems everybody feels a little dead now and then, and Easter is not a bad pick-me-up. We Jews may not agree with Christians one bit about the symbolism they assign to any part of their Holy Week, but we can all agree that feeling more alive is a good thing. 

And really, isn't it kinda the blessing of living in a multicultural world that you get to enjoy the joys, the celebrations, the simchas, of others? If I just look at Easter as being the birthday party of some other family, it doesn't feel so shoulder-chippy anymore. Now if I can just keep the chip off when Pesach rolls around...

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