Holidays

By the time you read this, you will, I hope, have just spent a joyous holiday season. You can tell from the fact that I use the term “holiday season” that I am a member of the vast leftwing conspiracy that has declared war on Christmas.

For the past several years, rightwing commentators like Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson (author of the pithily-titled The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought ) have been scaring up support for their theory that this sweet, simple holiday is under attack.

But if there is a War on Christmas, I see no evidence that it managed to gain any ground since its inception, whenever that was (I'm not clear on the details). Indeed, during every winter solstice of my entire life, i.e., for quite some years now, I have felt completely inundated by Christmosity.

Having committed the faux pas of being more or less Jewish, I did not grow up celebrating Christmas per se . We did, however, have our own Christmas rituals: on Christmas Eve, we would go to a cocktail party at the home of my parents' friends, and then out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Note to Bill O'Reilly: Jews used to have to eat Christmas Eve dinner at Chinese restaurants because they were the only places that were open. Now, however, thanks to the success of our War on Christmas, we can eat anywhere we want!

The next night, we would go to dinner at the apartment of our other friends, the Goldbergs.* Mrs. Goldberg, who was French, would cook a divine Christmas meal, often served at exotically late hours, and we would drink eggnog and gorge ourselves. A few years ago, at Mr. Goldberg's memorial service, his son pointed out that while we always had wonderful Christmas celebrations at their house, most of the participants were Jewish, which I had never actually noticed.

I adored the Goldbergs, and the magic of going to their home, where candelabras blazed and the air was filled with Gregorian chant, jazz, and Tom Lehrer, so every year at this time, Goldberg-less now, I get kind of morose. I think this is probably Bill O'Reilly's problem, too. He gets depressed because he remembers the wonderful Christmases of his childhood, the joyful celebrations of the O'Reilly clan, and he wonders why it's just not working for him any more.

So he blames us.

My solution to the holiday blues has been to do Christmas myself, and do it right. I buy a Christmas tree, which I place next to my menorah. My husband and I decorate the house with modest holiday lighting and a few Santa-oriented trinkets to which he is attached. On Christmas Eve, my husband makes a delicious oyster stew that he says is a family tradition. On Christmas morning, we exchange presents. Then on the afternoon of Christmas Day, I cook a goose, as well as a number of Europeanesque holiday foods that are influenced both by Mrs. Goldberg and by the Dickensian Christmases I spent in England.

That is my war on Christmas.

Is this what Bill O'Reilly would call “liberal hypocrisy”? Perhaps—but the fact is, I like holidays, and I'll basically celebrate whatever you've got going. I'd celebrate Kwanzaa, too, if I knew how, not to mention Yule, Kartikai Deepam, Oshogatsu, and the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

While in my opinion, the War on Christmas doesn't seem to be going particularly well, the War on the War on Christmas has made great strides this year. As everyone who shops at Walmart (presumably not Voice readers) knows, Walmart employees were given permission this year to say “Merry Christmas” to shoppers instead of the namby-pamby, liberal-conspiracy-induced “Happy holidays.” I had heard about this, but since I wouldn't set foot in a Walmart even if desperate for a madras shirt for under ten bucks, I thought I could make it through the Holiday Season unscathed.

However, last week, at a bookshop in BWI airport, I bought a magazine, a generic one—not, say, The National Review , which might have signaled sympathy with the O'Reilly brigade—and when the cashier handed me my change, she said, “Merry Christmas.” I walked away scratching my head and wondering if this was some new security clearance procedure meant to inflame non-Christians who would then reveal their sinister hijacking plans.

The more I thought about it—by that time, I was in the air somewhere over Ohio—the more annoyed I got. Last time I checked, Christmas was a religious holiday, not a national one, although it has blown up into a mega-industry on whose shopping dollars the American economy sinks or swims.

My family and I have always been good sports about Christmas. We've understood that it was important to other people, and we've shared in their joy. I've spent the past twenty-five years collecting tree ornaments and teaching my children that Christmas was a time of celebration, not merely a time to hide out at the Far East Kitchen till it all blows over.

But this year, I have to say that if they made ten-foot inflatable menorahs—and maybe they do; maybe you can get them at Walmart—I would have been tempted to put one on my lawn. Not just to celebrate Chanukah, which as far as I'm concerned is a minor festival, though a friend of mine who has returned to the Torah recently tells me there is more to it than any of us knew—but to celebrate the fact that this is America, a country in which you and I, and Bill O'Reilly, and that college student from Virginia who was videotaping George Allen, we all have a right to our own holidays, our own cultures, our own differences.

So whatever you did to celebrate, I hope you had a joyous holiday season, and as they say in Japan, kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu.

* Not their real name.

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