December 16, 2008 6:25 PM
Ben Stein: on Jewishness and Christmas
Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:
I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.
Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.
Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.
I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?
Y'all remember Ben Stein? Of Ferris Bueller's Day Off fame, but so much more than an actor (writer, economist, lawyer), who recently produced the expose Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which details the evils of Darwinism and the efforts to suppress alternative theories/points of view on campuses throughout the country.
A brilliant and multi-talented man, now the subject of fear and loathing by the "intellectual" elites. But that's what you get these days for dumping political correctness for the truth.
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Comments
I remember visiting a friend at a Jewish fraternity house late one December. In the middle of the lobby stood a beautiful, fully and elaborately bedecked Christmas tree. I asked what a Christmas tree was doing in a Jewish frat house. Neil looked at it as if seeing it for the first time, then shrugged. "I never thought about it. It's just something that goes up in December and comes down in January."
I lived most of the past five years in Korea -- a country that's about 1/3 Christian, 1/3 Buddhist, and the remaining third a mix of the country's ancient ancestor worship and other religions or lack of religion. And come December, Christmas trees are everywhere.
I've never heard or the Buddhists or the irreligious or the ancestor-worshippers complaining. I never heard of any complaints about the strings of beautiful lanterns that go up all over the place around Buddha's Birthday, either.
In fact, some non-Buddhists love the lanterns so much they hang them purely as decorations, just as the Jews in that fraternity house put up a Christmas tree.
Now, you can lament that the religious symbols were losing their meaning. Or you can celebrate that there is a spirit of multicultural tolerance that allows people to live side by side and see the beauty in each other's celebrations. But it takes a special kind of troll to want to destroy all evidence of the other culture's celebrations.
Posted by: Christina | December 17, 2008 7:33 AM
Good points by both Ben Stein and Christina. We need more Ben Steins in the world. Thanks Barbara!
Posted by: Imajackson | December 17, 2008 9:54 AM
Many of the stores that benefit enormously from Christmas are owned by Jewish folks and those of other non Christian religions. They benefit greatly from the largesse of Christmas as does our entire economy. It is hypocritical to limit its celebration even as it benefits all groups. I even have problems with having to place a Menorah if a Christmas tree is displayed. Hannukkah is not a major holiday. Better to do a bit more with Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah which are more important. I have no problem with my kids learning about other holidays.
As for Nick and Jenn and all the others, I don't keep up with them either, but enough others do and pay the almighty buck to do so which is why they get the press.
Posted by: Cath Young | December 17, 2008 2:30 PM
