The pressure to buy as a way of showing that you really care about others puts many people into the position of spending more than they have, putting themselves into further debt, and then feeling depressed about that. Still others have no way to buy "enough" on credit, and then their children, saturated by a media specially attuned to the best ways to market to toddlers and everyone older through their teen years, make their parents or others feel inadequate because they have not bought what the media portrays as the standard for what a "normal family" buys for the holidays. Jews, seeking to fit into American society, grabbed onto this path of the holidays "not really being religious but only a time to celebrate," and thus many embraced Christmas in the one way they could-"buying presents for their non-Jewish friends and neighbors and celebrating Christmas as a "non-sectarian, American holiday." But this well-intentioned move to fit into American society only helped the capitalist secularists, and unintentionally further undermined the ability of Christians to hold on to the religious and spiritual intent of their holiday. This is why spiritual progressives of the Christian faith have urged Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives to NOT celebrate the holiday as one undifferentiated "holiday season," but to celebrate them as religious and spiritual holidays and to affirm the specific religious message of each one depending on which fits your particular faith.
Yet we also want to affirm the goodness in what secularists have tried to do with these holidays in removing them from their religious specificity.There has been far too much anger and killing in the name of religions in the history of humanity. We at the Network of Spiritual Progressives do not believe that most of that killing was actually motivated by religious differences so much as by power struggles that were given religious justifications and appearances. And we are all too well aware that in the twentieth century over 150 million people were slaughtered in the name of secular belief systems and secular powers (WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Stalinist gulag, Maoist gulag, colonial and anti-colonial wars, etc.), so we are not going to buy any notion that says that eliminating religion will increase world peace (though we wouldn't shed any tears if the fundamentalist and ultra-nationalist forms of religion disappeared into the dustbins of history).
Many of those who have sought to secularize the holiday season do so from the fear that without that kind of secularization it will be harder for people to express caring and mutual support if they have to do so through the frameworks of religions of which they are not apart. Certainly, when it comes to interfaith marriages and families, the need for this kind of smooth path to affirming both traditions is really much needed. And yet, as a Jew, I want to recognize the particular importance to Christians of having Christmas be about Christ, not about gifts and drinking and merry making but about the meaning of the Christ for Christian belief. In this respect, there is a fundamental asymmetry here. Christmas and Easter are the main Christian holidays, while Chanukah is only a minor holiday that has become major only because some(mostly assimilating) Jews in the West felt the need to provide their children with something that could compensate them for not having Christmas with its attractive glitz and lights and toys. But our major holidays are Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur and Passover (and of course, weekly Shabbat), and so when Chanukah gets secularized we Jews don't lose as much as Christians do when Christmas is secularized.
As we enter this holiday season, let us stay conscious on all these levels, resist the allure and the seductive charm of the capitalist marketplace and its capacity to reduce all reality and all loving to the consumption of "things," and instead return to the deep spiritual messages of our own traditions, while lovingly supporting each other to stay true to our own deepest truths.
The ambiguities of hope were well illustrated in the past two years by the Obama administration. Brought to power by a movement that believed we had elected a president committed to peace, social justice, human rights, and environmental sanity, the Obama administration quickly pulled away from its progressive base and became, on many (NOT ALL) issues, hard to distinguish from many presidential administrations that came before. Tied to serving the interests of Wall Street and the elites of wealth and power, unwilling to articulate a progressive worldview that could contend with the selfishness and materialism and fear of the other which has always been the central psychological core of global capitalism, self-disempowering so that it would not fight even for the ideals it was willing to articulate,fearful to challenge the war-makers who run the military-industrial complex, enamored by the idea of compromise to his Right but not to his Left, Obama has turned many previously hopeful people into cynical or apathetic citizens. In the process he has generated emotional and spiritual depression, despair, and humiliation among those who had momentarily overcome their doubts and recommitted themselves to engaging in social change work. In that respect, Obama may have done more to weaken the forces of hope than even right-wingers might have been able to accomplish.
The victory of the Maccabees and the triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire starting with Constantine may have had the same kind of impact as Obama. The Maccabees were in some respects like the Taliban -- completely ruthless in their religious fanaticism, willing to impose it by force on fellow Jews, and their Hashmonean kingdom that they created became as corrupt as the Hellenists they replaced. The Christianity imposed on Europe through force with its hateful anti-Semitism, misogyny, and ruthless determination to burn as witches or torture those who would not accept its rule, played a major role in discrediting the love-oriented message of the Jewish prophet and wisdom teacher Jesus of Nazareth. So there is a certain downside to these victories that is necessary to acknowledge and talk about on these holidays.
But history is always ambiguous, because we ourselves as human beings have not yet evolved to the point where we fully embody our highest ideals. It makes sense to celebrate these holidays even so, and to allow ourselves to rejoice in the partial victories that humans have achieved through our history, even as we reaffirm the need to go much further than the consciousness that has surrounded these holidays in the past or among some of our co-religionists in the present (including for Jews the way that Chanukah is now appropriated into the right-wing versions of Zionism in Israel). But lets not forget:it was Christian ideals that led Americans to embrace the civil rights movement, and it was the preservation of Jewish consciousness by the victory of the Maccabees that made possible the Jewish contribution to subsequent history and culture, philosophy and social theory, not to mention involvement in shaping revolutionary and utopian thinking and practice.
So the limitations of Judaism and Christianity should not overshadow the valuable contributions that some aspects of these religions still inspire.
For Jews celebrating Chanukah as a wonderful moment of national liberation, we must not put out of our minds the national liberation still being struggled for by the Palestinian people, but instead use this holiday to commit to supporting them while protecting Israel as well. Christians who, had they voted like Jews in the 2010 midterm elections (68% of whom voted for the more liberal candidates in U.S. Congressional elections), would have given us a Congress with a strong liberal bent, might use this Christmas to popularize in their families, neighbors, friends, and churches the Network of Spiritual Progressives' campaign for a Global Marshall Plan and our call for an Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Both communities might use the holiday season to combat growing Islamophobia in the United States and challenge those who are showing a willingness to let the Right set the public agenda in the coming years. And both might rejoice in each other's particularity, while maintaining their own traditions in a joyful and generous spirit.
If you happen to be in the SF Bay Area on Dec. 3rd, you are invited to our Chanukah party (at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Friday night, Dec. 3, 7 p.m., but give yourself fifteen minutes to park), NW corner of Channing and Dana. Candle-lighting at 7:20 p.m. Dancing to the music of Achi Ben Shalom, Jan Padover, and Julie Walcer, plus latkes and sour cream and other yummies!!!! Entrance fee: $15-$25 sliding fee scale depending on ability to pay to help us defray the cost of the evening.Followed at 8:45 p.m. with our innovative, but also traditional, Shabbat service.
Chag urim sameyach-happy holiday of lights.
Chag Chanukah sameyach-happy Chanukah.
Merry Christmas.
Happy Kwanzaa.
Mubarack Eid.
Many blessings to you!
Rabbi Michael Lerner
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