That time is upon

us again. It lurks at the edge of consciousness in early

fall, as the frost chills the morning pumpkin.



It begins to fill

our days in late November, along with the creative recipes

for leftover turkey that stuff our pantries. And, just as

certain as weeks and weeks of days when you get up in the

dark and come home in the dark, it gusts through our lives

throughout December. At this season the Great American

Marketing Machine shifts into high gear and the world around

us is transformed from a more or less congenial habitat in

which we move with relative ease… into something alien and

confronting: the Holiday Season!



You know what I

mean. Three weeks of really dreadful music emanating from

every elevator and radio; billions of kilowatts of

electrical power sacrificed on each tree and storefront in

every downtown and suburban mall; shops glutted with

glassy-eyed shoppers, intoxicated in a feeding frenzy

normally seen only in sharks and other freakish creations

from antedeluvian pre-history; the ubiquitous image of the

jolly fat guy, looking for all the world like a Bobover

Chasid in an identity protection program. And there are the

parties: at the office, on the block, at the kids’ dance

class, when every diversity-sensitive neighbor throws a glad

arm around your shoulder, looks you warmly in your Semitic

eye, and shouts “Season’s Greetings and Happy Hanukkah!”



Yes. It’s that

time of year when many American Jews feel besieged — not, as

in times past, by hostility and hatred. But by something

even more threatening — the good-hearted assumption of our

Gentile friends and neighbors that we get some sort of

nakhes from all this mishugas as well. That’s why

this is also the time of year when every Jewish magazine and

newspaper runs the inevitable article on “How to Cope With

the Holiday Season.” No doubt the editor of JTNews,

whose taste is otherwise impeccable, will probably run one

within range of this very column!



“The Holiday

Season,” mind you — not the “Christmas Season!” The very

attempt to include us in the festivities drips of that

shallow, one-size-fits-all ecumenism that can in a flash

turn into resentment against anyone who “refuses to join the

party.”



Is it any wonder

that, this time of year, so many Jews complain about feeling

alienated, left out, marginalized, and so forth. So what do

we do? Why, we latch on to Hanukkah like a shipwrecked

sailor clutching a floating spar!



Historians of

American Jewish culture tell us that this has been going on

since at least the 1920s. In those days and at this season,

Hanukkah began its slow transformation. Originally, a humble

opportunity to recall the miracle of the Temple’s

purification, it was asked in America to become a

theological heavy hitter, charged with a sacred mission: to

inoculate Jewish children against the competing allures of

the birthday of the Christian savior.



Think of the

chutzpah: who but the people of Israel would ever put

eight days of burning olive oil into the ring against the

moment at which the Creator of Heaven and Earth contracted

His infinite being into the form of a human child in a

last-ditch effort to redeem humanity from death, suffering,

and sin? Talk about the Son of David and Goliath!



Let’s face it —

the theological over-inflation of Hanukkah was a mistake.

Jewish discomfort around Christmastime never had much to do

with religion anyway. It was about being socially exposed as

“other” and foreign at the very moment we felt ourselves

becoming part of the whole American thing in a way none of

our ancestors could ever have imagined. Hanukkah wasn’t

designed to carry the burden of Jewish religious identity,

and it is today no magic bullet against Christmas, no matter

how often we tell our kids “they get one day of presents,

but you get eight!”



Well, what’s done

is done. What do we do about it? First thing: enough of this

Hanukkah being the Jewish Christmas. Second, and just as

important: ditch the anachronistic “we-too-ism” of painting

Judah Maccabee’s victory in the red-white-and blue of the

American Revolution. Read the sources: Hasmonean descendants

of Judah, such as the despotic Alexander Janneus, ate

religious libertarians (the Talmudic sages of his day) for

breakfast! Well, okay, he merely executed them in huge

public spectacles for questioning his genealogy (see the

Talmud, Kiddushin 66a). This is definitely an

undemocratic yetzer we may not want to trumpet as we

read in our papers about kabbalistically inspired death

sentences passed against Israeli heads of state!



So: Hanukkah is

neither Christmas kosher-style nor the Fourth of July in

December. What’s left, besides wringing our hands about how

to survive December 25th camouflaged in some Chinese

restaurant or hidden in a dark theater, picking the popcorn

from our teeth in the company of a few dozen other furtively

recognized co-conspirators?



The answer is

staring us in the face. Look at this puppy-hearted,

lick-you-in-the-face American Christmas as the Creator’s

sardonic dreidel prize to American Jewry!



You want to be

comfy? Take a good look at comfy! While so many of our

neighbors stagger off on a binge of consumerism,

self-indulgence, and seasonal despair, we are given eight

days of growing light in the dead of winter to rekindle the

amazement we should feel at simply seeing our own

reflections in the mirror — Jews still in the world beyond

all rational prediction!



Now is the time

to recall and to cherish our singular mission — to

distinguish ourselves against every surrounding culture

whose world we share, and so, by the quality of our lives,

to illumine and call forth the presence in all the world’s

beings of the Light of the Creator.



So, this year,

when Skip or Heather at the office gives you that well-meant

“Happy Hanukkah,” be grateful, and roar back a hearty “Merry

Christmas! Ho-ho-ho!”



They are the

Creator’s subtle way of reminding you who you are — and of

calling you back to your work! You’d prefer, maybe,

Antiochus?