A Christmas spirit that all can enjoy

When I was in elementary school, I was vehemently in favor of the separation of church and state. Religion always seemed to come into the public school system in the form of Christianity, making me an oppressed but vocal minority. Keep your Christmas away from me, I said, glowering at the decorative cardboard Santas in the cafeteria and refusing to open my mouth when the music teacher taught us Christmas songs.

Clearly the spirit of righteous indignation never left me as I grew up. I have been stomping around campus all semester gathering injuries about which to complain in this space. I had collected a few smart options for this week: what's up with the new isolationist trend of replacing public bulletin boards with locked display cases in the residential colleges? Why doesn't the administration give more attention and funding to traditional core departments like classics, math, art history, and philosophy? Why can't I pick up my paycheck, even if it's an old paycheck, on Wednesday?

But this week, I'd rather think happy thoughts. Partly to keep my fragile academic and emotional life from tumbling down in ruins, and partly because I kinda can't help it. The JE courtyard is twinkling with green and white lights, and my Solstice Fairy (the politically correct "Secret Santa") has been filling my mailbox with chocolate and toys. Christmas is here! Hooray!

Christmas as we celebrate it in America may be the best bastardization our culture has ever performed on a beautiful foreign tradition. Jesus advocates probably don't dig the commercialization and secularization too much, but those are my favorite parts. Without them, Christmas could be just a night and a day on which a certain large segment of the population attends church, sings praise, and pulls anise-flavored candy out of its stocking. Instead, it's become an inclusive month-and-a-half long season of giving, indulgence, beauty, and togetherness.

New Haven could simply be cold and gray this month, but thanks to Christmas, it's cold and gray and also green and red and sparkly and bustling. There are horse-drawn buggies driving visitors around the Green. There's the Holly and Ivy Market in the old Co-op space, full of beautiful local crafts. There's a light-up snowflake hanging over the intersection of College and Chapel. There are Christmas sales in the stores, Christmas shows in the theaters, and concert halls and Christmas lights all over the darn place. Downtown looks like if it were any more thriving it would develop a tumor.

The commercialism of Christmas does, I willingly admit, spawn some fairly hideous creations. Witness the Time-Life collection of claymation childrens' movies for the holiday. Puke. Witness Christmas muzak oozing out of department store speakers. More pukey, perhaps, than regular muzak. Witness the traffic in fruitcake. Incomprehensibly vomitous. And yet for every singing Play-Doh Frosty there's The Gingerbread Man, for every flute-and-synth rendition of "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen" there's "Let it Snow", for every fruitcake there are cutout cookies sprinkled with colored sugar. For every tight-packed, airless mall there's a quaint Main Street hung with fir wreaths.

And then there's the huge vacation from school. (Amen!) Families gathering together. Friends exchanging gifts, cards, party invites, cookies. The cookies and cookies and cookies. Probably one of the strongest forces that overcame my resistance to Christmas was the annual invitation from my Italian Catholic friend to help decorate and eat her family's cookies. I found my most basic needs being satisfied: the need to be creative—which also gets a lot of expression in the gift-buying process—and the need to eat tasty treats.

Hanukkah has become a similarly indulgent occasion, but it would be a different story if it weren't for Christmas' influence. As a grumpy Jewish child I never understood the benefit I derived from Christmas' normative domination. I didn't realize that if American Jews hadn't adapted the Hanukkah celebration to abate their children's jealousy of Christian kids, I wouldn't be getting eight nights of presents plus and two family Hanukkah parties every December. Listen to the old Hanukkah songs about lighting the menorah and playing dreidle for pennies. These are quiet pleasures. Then listen to something like "Sleigh Bells." Party!

Defenders of American Jewry, lay down your torches and pitchforks—I'm not out to evacuate the synagogues and send everyone over to Midnight Mass. I'm down with sustaining family tradition. But I'm also up for taking on American traditions, particularly if they're fun and entail large quantities of good food. American culture has universalized the celebration of Christmas without forcing adherence to Christianity, and it's so nice and friendly I don't want to resist. This is to The Man, if he's listening: Merry Christmas.

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