NYT: Blame Churches, Not Riots, For Rise In Positive Covid-19 Tests

ED Noor: The leaders of the churches have mainly left it up to the individual priests and pastors to deal with the lockdown and their flocks. The Vatican erected this statue of Moloch at the Roman Coliseum awhile back. Moloch. Devourer of infants, another form of Satan himself. This entire agenda of bringing about a word with "no religion too" does not mention the rise in Satanism around the globe. Believe it or not, this is a war for the human spirit being played out on yet another arena.

The New York Times smears religious Americans as a 'major source' of COVID outbreaks even as church-related infections represent only 0.02 percent of cases.

By Holly Scheer

July 13, 2020

National tension and tempers are incredibly high over the rising numbers of COVID cases in America. We’re all on the edge after months of lockdowns, shutdowns, quarantines, economic instability, school closures, and the surreal nature of social distancing.

We’re mad about recommendations that keep changing and the lack of control and transparency in how this pandemic has been handled. Churches shut down during the initial phases of the COVID panic. Many were in localities where officials imposed harsh rules on faith communities in an effort to halt worship.
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Wednesday, the United States topped 3 million cases of coronavirus. Also on Wednesday came an article from The New York Times titled “Churches Were Eager to Reopen. Now They Are a Major Source of Coronavirus Cases.” (UPDATE: NYT later changed the headline, but you can see the original here.)

As you’d expect from the not-so-subtle title, the NYT blames rising numbers on churches, ministers, sermons, and religious youth camps, specifically noting, 

“It has struck churches that reopened cautiously with face masks and social distancing in the pews, as well as some that defied lockdowns and refused to heed new limits on numbers of worshipers.”

Overt shaming like this might make you wonder how many of these millions of cases trace back to the faithful cautiously gathering for comfort and consolation during this pandemic. Surely the caseload must be astronomical to warrant targeting in this matter.

Except the article paints a different picture in the actual numbers:

“More than 650 coronavirus cases have been linked to nearly 40 churches and religious events across the United States since the beginning of the pandemic.”

I’m no epidemiologist, but I don’t need to be, because simple math shows that 650 out of 3,000,000 cases across our nation means 0.0216 percent of them trace back to churches. Less than one-tenth of 1 percent should not ~ and cannot ~ be called a major source of this infection.

NYT: Churches are a major source of COVID outbreak

Oh shit, how bad it is?

NYT: Over 650 cases

In… in New York?

NYT: No, in the country.

But… That's fewer than half the cases Florida alone has linked directly to travel from New York to FLhttps://t.co/C5kFKy0j0o ~ PoliMath (@politicalmath) July 8, 2020

The Times presents the actions of churches and churchgoers in as negative a light as possible, writing,

“as the virus rages through Texas, Arizona and other evangelical bastions of the South and West, some churches that fought to reopen are being forced to close again and grapple with whether it is even possible to worship together safely.”

It’s disingenuous to pin the caseloads of these states on churches, ignoring that contact tracing connects dozens of cases in Texas to churches, for example, out of their 230,000 and counting total cases. It is divisive. It’s fake news. A tiny fraction of a percent can’t responsibly or seriously be described as a “major source” of transmission. And it’s a total distraction from what drives the predominance of coronavirus infections.

When infections and transmissions are overstated like this, especially in a time of crisis, it makes it harder for the public to know who they should listen to or trust for accurate information. In turn, this makes people more likely to make decisions based on feelings or “knowledge” shared by friends who may not have their facts straight.

Church Gatherings and Protests Are Not Treated Alike

It isn’t the faithful, coming together to worship that has led to so many infections at the national level. I have talked to many clergy and parishes, and none are treating this like a ruse or a joke. They take very seriously the health and wellbeing of their congregations, both spiritually and physically. We keep hearing that we’re all in this together, but it doesn’t feel this way when everyday Americans are targeted for making their own decisions about what is essential.

Congregations have worked hard to keep up with the changing information that health officials have shared about coronavirus. They’ve learned rapidly how to do services online, how to work with local health guidance on the size of gatherings, and how to institute effective cleaning and disinfectant measures.

 People need more than cute signs to get through their lives. Nothing wrong with that!

Yet these additional actions often aren’t enough to placate health departments, and they’re apparently not enough for the NYT either:

“But as new cases and clusters have emerged in recent weeks from Florida to Kansas to Hawaii, public health experts have emphasized that, even with social distancing, the virus can easily spread through the air when hymns are sung and sermons preached inside closed spaces.”

Of course, there’s no word on when other gatherings where people are excited or passionate ~ like, say, mass protests ~ will be in the targeting-sights of officials. Either being together, inside or outside, loudly championing a cause or singing a hymn is a recipe for COVID spread, or it’s not.

In a crisis, religious people come together to receive God’s peace and to help to bear each other’s burdens. The mixed messages and targeted anger at some groups while supporting the rights of other groups ignores that barring people from their faith community for months on end has real and lasting repercussions for Americans.

 

Churches Are Working Valiantly to Reduce Risk

Ultimately, this isn’t really about the right to hold services or if gathering in groups is risky. There is risk. Churches are working to address that, but so much of the writing and guidance on this is by people who don’t seem to have any idea on what faith communities are actually doing during the age of COVID.

Popular infographics cite churches as being in the highest risk category, in part because of the prevalence of surfaces that are frequently touched. Yet any church ~ especially one where families are distancing ~ that cleans between services and pays careful attention to keeping their neighbors safe is not more “high touch” than a grocery store, a restaurant, or a chain retail store. All of those are open without the scrutiny and lecturing that has been aimed at churches.

One of the churches interviewed by the NYT after a regional outbreak voiced exactly this sentiment,

“Mr. Satterwhite, the pastor in Oregon, said that scrutiny had fallen unfairly on churches, while businesses with outbreaks did not face the same backlash.”

The backlash and media attention serves mostly as a distraction, making churches a convenient place to throw blame in a situation that, for many of us, feels uncontrollable.

If we’re to deal with this pandemic for the foreseeable future, it is inconceivable that people will stay away from church. Death, mortality, fear, instability, and chaos are reasons we need more opportunities to be comforted in church. What Americans don’t need is to be blamed and shamed for seeking eternal aid in a temporal crisis. The church has endured plagues before and will stand for hope and peace no matter how uncertain life around us becomes. Attacking churchgoers right now is both disappointing and short-sighted.

 

As we look at this crisis now spreading into the fall, with no end in sight, media organizations that have focused on attacking based on politics and religion instead of fighting this pandemic need to feel some moral responsibility for dividing us when we desperately need to work together. This shouldn’t be about ideology. It should be about evidence-based public health policies and restoring public trust in our institutions.

More War on Christmas: The Virgin’s Purity Offends Rape Victims

One of Caravaggio’s many magnificent paintings celebrating the pure beauty of Mary and the newborn Christ child.

Is this a fresh approach to the war on Christmas?  This year the Left’s annual War on Christmas has taken a bizarre turn with a Washington Post op-ed claiming that the Virgin Mary’s purity is offensive to victims of rape. The headline from the Washington Post reads:

“Our culture of purity celebrates the Virgin Mary.

As a rape victim, that hurts me.”

The author writes: 

Still, I study her this time of the year, 

always dressed in blue with downcast eyes, and want to ask: 

“How was it really? And how do you feel about what the patriarchy has done with you?”

What better time of year to blame Virgin Mary for rape victims feeling badly; you can’t make this nauseating yidiocy up. Well, apparently you can, because this woman did, and then the Washington Post published it. In today’s episode of The Oppression Olympics, writer Ruth Everhart asks “What can I moan about to really get my personal victim party into full swing”?

Sometimes it really is not wise to work out your personal issues in such a public forum. Is that not asking for attention and more affirmation of a self-manufactured victim status?

Other rape survivors may find such a correlation not only ridiculous, but painful.  This “Pastor” insists on holding on to her initial outrage and feeling of impurity and expects everyone to care? Not meaning to come across as insensitive to her trauma, but that is her problem, not ours!  And how can one be a proper “pastor” in the Christian religion if one has such amazingly powerful negative reactions to the very beliefs upon such religion is primarily founded?

I honestly see this as another attempt to defile the beauty of the Christmas season, in this case by a woman who clings to her darkness, not a good trait for a Christian pastor! And so continues the war on Christmas.  I smell the feculent odor of the Talmudics nearby. If your stomach is strong, your desire for masochism strong, and you wish to read more, the article is Here.

What do you think?

The Islamic Emirate and Homosexuality

Looking back to the mass killing in Orlando, Thierry Meyssan reminds us that the conflict between Daesh and the Syrian Arab Republic is above all a struggle between two forms of society, one dominated by men, the other equal in rights. It is also the occasion to underline the fact that the Syrian civilisation has a long yet little-known history of the integration of homosexuals, which Daesh is attempting to destroy.

By Thierry Meyssan

Voltaire Network

Damascus

June 20, 2016

In 2011, when the war in Syria was just beginning, a blog appeared under the name of «Gay Girl in Damascus». The author wrote of her life as a free woman in the Syrian capital, and criticised the «Bachar régime». In December, a message was posted on the blog by one of her cousins affirming that the young woman had just been arrested by the «Mukhabarat» (Special Branch). Western gay associations ~ who know nothing about Syria ~ mobilised against the «dictatorship ». We learned later that the young woman had never existed. The blog was in reality managed for propaganda purposes by Tom MacMaster (photo) from Edinburgh University, probably for MI6.

The mass killing in Orlando has shone a hard light on the treatment of homosexuals by Daesh (i.e. Islamic Emirate or ISIL). But the killer, who claimed to be affiliated with the terrorist group, was himself a client of the gay discotheque, and had had sexual relations with at least one other client. It would seem, then, that he had targeted a discotheque, not a gay discotheque.

In any case, the massacre of homosexuals is not the prerogative of Daesh alone; it is a practice of numerous sectarian groups who claim to be followers of various religions, and more particularly that of Islamist groups. It was the case, for example, of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda in the ’90’s, who claimed to follow Jesus ~ or today the djihadists, who claim to follow Muhammad. More generally, a large number of Jews, Christians and Muslims consider that sexual activity between people of the same sex is a «sin», while admitting that you do not choose who you fall in love with.

From an ethnological point of view, the condemnation of homosexuality in the name of these religions is concomitant with a view of a society in which men dominate women. It does not exist in societies where individuals are equal in rights.

The election of «Mister Gay Syria » 2016 was organized by Subhi Nahas during the month of May in Istanbul, and not Deir ez-Zor. A Schengen visa was refused to the winner, who will therefore be unable to compete in the election of « Mister Gay World» in Malta. © Bradley Secker / Daily Mail

 

Daesh and the Baath Party ~ Two Conceptions Of Society

As I wrote a year ago, «the support for Daesh among certain populations has nothing to do either with the Qur’an or the class struggle. It is the revolt of a disappearing way of life, a violent society dominated by men, against a way of life which is respectful of women and which practices birth control. » [1] As from now, the massacre of homosexuals has become, for the jihadists, an argument for «conquering hearts and minds».

Mohammed Allouche, chief negotiator for the moderate opposition at the Geneva negotiations, won this responsibility by throwing homosexuals off the roof-tops of Douma (Damascus). 

The chief negotiator of the «moderates» for the Geneva negotiations, Mohamed Allouche, earned his celebrity by throwing people accused of homosexuality off the rooftops of Douma, in the suburbs of Damascus, without provoking the slightest protest from his Western sponsors. Although his group, the Army of Islam (Jaysh al-Islam), is financed by Saudi Arabia, and supervised by British military advisors, he was given permanent assistance during the negotiations by the French chargé d’affaire for Syria. This diplomat – from a secular Republic - intervened in order to ask that the Swiss hotel where they were staying remove the paintings and cover the statues whose nudity risked shocking this model «democrat». No doubt he thought – and it so happens that he himself lives the life of a gay couple with another diplomat – that Mohammed Allouche’s form of abuse was less serious than that of the «Bachar régime».
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On the 13 June, François Hollande shared a Tweet: «The horrifying homophobic massacre of Orlando has struck at both America and freedom. The freedom to choose one’s sexual orientation and one’s life-style». The French President does not conceive that it is possible to «fall in love» with a person of the same sex ~ for him, it’s a question of «choice».

Today, in the Arab world ~ which is in the minority compared with the number of Muslims in the world ~ only Syria, the Sultanate of Oman and certain of the United Arab Emirates integrate homosexuals.

It should be noted here that contrary to an image that has been imposed without ever having been discussed, the Syrian Arab Republic has never persecuted anyone for motives concerning their private life. All crimes, real or imaginary, that have been attributed to the Republic are exclusively linked to the repression of Islamists, whether the Muslim Brotherhood or more recently their extensions, al-Qaïda and Daesh. Last February, the Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le Jour, financed by the European Union, and known for its systematic anti-Syrian stance, dedicated a series of articles to a comparison between gay life in Lebanon and in Syria. In Lebanon, the police arrest young people, who have often been denounced by their family, ferret through their portable telephones looking for compromising photographs, summon their friends, oblige all suspects to submit to a medical examination supposed to determine the dilation of their anus, and beat them until one of them accuses the others. However, in Syria, observes the newspaper, «under the régime of Bachar el-Assad, the gay community was enjoying a peaceful existence. » [2].

Syrians do not consider the question of homosexuality from the angle of tolerance or intolerance, but from the angle of privacy. 

Thousands of years of civilisation have taught them that they can only survive in this region of the world by living together, and they can only manage that by respecting the private life of each and all. 

It is therefore possible to declare one’s disgust for homosexuals in general while at the same time refusing to accuse anyone in particular of being gay.

Even though the dispositions of the Code Pénal of 1949 have not been repealed, the party of President Bachar el-Assad, the Baath, has developed a form of culture almost unique in an Arab country, based on the respect for differences. So that L’Orient-Le Jour was astounded to hear a gay Syrian refugee describe his period of military service as having been «the most wonderful years of my life», and tell tales of «the parties in reception halls rented by gay couples to celebrate their union». It was only when Daesh arrived that he was obliged to «hide his pink and yellow pants and practice walking in a more masculine way».

Although the founders of the Baath party were inspired first by the French Revolution, their ideology is above all the fruit of the Syrian culture. 

And contrary to other Arab countries, 

Syria has a long tradition 

of respect for different life-styles.

The Biblical Religions and Sexuality

Judaïsm was founded in the kingdom of Jerusalem. Christianity by Paul of Tarsus in Damascus. Islam was given to Muammad in Arabia, but the Qur’an was not written until twenty years after his death, under the authority of the third Caliph, Othmân, in Damascus. In other words, the three Biblical religions were created in geographical Syria.

Three passages of the Torah explicitly evoke homosexuality. According to Leviticus ~ «You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman. This is an abomination.» (18:22) and «The man who lies with a man as one lies with a woman ~ it is an abomination committed by them both ~ they should both die, and may their blood fall upon them» (20:13). Finally, in Deuteronomy ~ «Let there be no prostitutes among the women of Israël, and let no son of Israël prostitute himself in infamy » (23:17).

Ruth and Naomi
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Replaced in their context, the first two verses are rooted in the patriarchal conception of the tribes of the time, and the third is a condemnation of the sacred prostitution practiced in the temples of other tribes, and thus assimilated with idolatry. Today, the Jews reinterpret their religion by abandoning their tribal aspects, and have no difficulty integrating homosexuals. They often understand the relationship between Ruth and Naomi, and that between King David and Jonathan, as homosexual relations. However, the people who claim to follow the Alliance of God with none but the Tribes of Israël persist in seeing homosexuality as an «abomination». Thus, the state of Israël integrates homosexuals, but the Levaha group protests every year against the Gay Pride and, in 2005, an ultraorthodox Jew stabbed six gays during the parade.

According to the Gospels, Jesus of Nazareth continually criticised the taboos and the formalism of antique Judaïsm, although he never criticised Roman paganism. He promoted a form of spirituality founded on love and sacrifice, and never spoke about sexuality. There is therefore no scriptural foundation for the condemnations of homosexuality by the Christian churches.

The first Christians were divided into two distinct groups. The Jews who considered that Jesus was their Messiah, and the Gentiles (the pagans) who saw him as an example of the perfect man. The former group was organised in Jerusalem around James, «the brother of Jesus», while the latter group was organised in Damascus and Antioch. The former refused to celebrate Mass with the latter, who, as goyim, were «impure» in their eyes. The first group was decimated during the Roman repression of Jerusalem, and only the second group survived.

 

Saint Sergius (or Sarkis in Arab) and Saint Bacchus are considered in the Levant as examples for Christians. Theirs is the only case of a couple being canonised, an honour which has not been recognised for married couples.

During Antiquity, including the first centuries of Christianism, lovers of the same sex were integrated into society, and thus into the church. In the 3rd century, Sarkis, the commander of the Schola Gentilium (a troop of elite soldiers which replaced the Praetorian Guard) and his aide de camp, Bacchus, were martyrised by the Emperor Maximian near Rakka (the current capital of Daesh) for having converted to Christ and refusing to offer sacrifices to the Roman gods. The two men were lovers and recognised as such by the Church, which celebrated the adelphopoiia on their behalf, a rite equivalent to that proposed for couples of the same sex in Roman society. Bacchus, who had been demoted and whipped to death, appeared to Sarkis in a vision when he was being tortured in turn. In the uniform of a Roman officer, Bacchus encouraged his lover not to renounce his faith and to die as a soldier of Christ. Thereafter, the cult of Saint Sarkis and Saint Bacchus spread throughout the Levant.

It was only from the 11th century, and especially with the Counter-Reformation, that Christians condemned homosexuality. At that time, Rome re-adopted the Vitalist philosophy dating from the end of the Roman Empire, for which the function of sexuality is the reproduction of the species. Western Christians justified this reversal by basing themselves on Paul’s epistles to the Corinthians (VI:9-10) and to the Romans (I:26-28), even returning to Leviticus and Deuteronomy. But apart from the fact that these texts probably have a different meaning, they do not have the authority of Christ. In any case, the integration of homosexuals continued in the Christian communities of the Levant until the 18th century.

In September 2015, Daesh executed persons accused of homosexuality at Haritan (Aleppo) by throwing them from the roofs of building. One of the victims was 15 years old. 

Islam presents itself as an intervention by God to clarify the theological confusion which reigned in Arabia. The Qur’an, adopting the myth of Genesis (19), evokes on six occasions the myth of Sodom and Gomorrha (7:80-81, 21:74, 26:165-166, 27:54-55, 29:28-30 and 54:33-34). These verses have only recently been interpreted to condemn the «crime of Lot», and to advocate the stoning and killing of homosexuals by throwing them from roof-tops. In reality, the myth of Lot does not apply to relations between people of the same sex, but stigmatises both the non-respect of hospitality and rape, which the Bedouins considered as a mark of enslavement. Besides, the Qur’an does not condemn Lot ~ whom it presents as one of the prophets of Islam ~ nor his visitors, who ultimately reveal themselves as angels, but the inhabitants of Sodom. Many artists from the golden age of Islam celebrated homosexual love, and several caliphs openly displayed their relations with other men (for example Al-Amîne, Al-Muʿtasim and Al-Wathiq).

During the meeting of the Security Council on the 24 August 2015, the permanent representative of the United States, Samantha Power, requested the audition of Subhi Nahas, the leader of a Syrian gay organisation presently exiled in Turkey. The young man described the horrors committed by Daesh. But to the ambassador’s great deception, he explained that he had fled the country in order to escape from the jihadists, and refused to condemn the Syrian Arab Republic.

Who Is Comfortable With Homosexuality?

Today, Daesh is campaigning against those who practice the «crime of Lot». On the 24 August 2015, on the initiative of Washington and Santiago, the UN Security Council held a meeting concerning the executions that the terrorist organisation has practiced on homosexuals in Iraq and Syria.

Nonetheless, several members of the Council hesitated to condemn these exactions by the jihadists. Angola (80 % Christian) and Chad (mostly Muslim) asked their ambassadors not to participate in the meeting, while other members of the Council demanded a closed session, so that there would be no written report of the meeting, and the Council would abstain from any public conclusion.

Homosexual Saints Sergius (or Sarkis in Arab) and Saint Bacchus as portrayed by a Syrian artist.

As a result, we do not know if it examined only the exactions committed by Daesh, or if it extended its investigations to other jihadist groups. In September 2013, the al-Nusra Front (al-Qaïda), supervised by Turkish and French officers, and attempted to take the small town of Ma’loula (40 kilometres from Damascus). The objective had no strategic or even tactical value, but is a powerful symbol for Christians of the Orient. It is the world’s oldest Christian city, converted in the year 35 by Paul of Tarsus and Saint Thecla. Ma’loula claims to conserve the tradition of original Christianity, independent of the schism between Catholic and Orthodox. The jihadists made ferocious attacks on all representations of Christianity, particularly against the grand statue of the Virgin Mary (although she is celebrated by the Qur’an), the relics of Saint Thecla, (whom Catholics no longer recognise as a saint, since she gave the sacraments as a man, but whom Orthodox Christians consider as the thirteenth apostle), and the two monasteries of Saint Sarkis and Saint Bacchus. The Catholic and Orthodox churches, who supported the inhabitants of Ma’loula, were very careful not to mention this aspect of the events.

Finally, the Western powers do not seem to be particularly sincere about their integration of homosexuals. They have made a symbol of free societies, and manipulate the subject to hammer home the idea that the Syrian Arab Republic is a repressive régime. But the propaganda campaign of the «Gay Girl in Damascus», like the attempt to manipulate Subhi Nahas, has failed. However, they had no problem with supporting al-Qaïda when it attacked the monasteries of Saint Sarkis and Saint Bacchus, or Mohammed Allouche while he was throwing gays from the rooftops.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Pete Kimberley

WAR AGAINST CHRISTMAS 2009: REFLECTIONS ON HANUKKAH, CHRISTMAS AND "NITEL NIGHT"

Excuse from the Editor: I have been receiving complaints from a few people lately to have images removed from my blog for one reason or another. Of course I am happy to comply. Who am I to quibble if an artist decides to change their politics and wish to be pulled from the fray? It is hardly worth arguing and potentially having the blog taken down and all that research disappear. 

Cut to the chase. I just got a notice from Blogspot about an image that was on this particular page when I originally posted it. I removed the image as requested and for some reason the page has been reposted as a new item. It isn't. I do find it interesting that, after all these years of some of the images that have been posted, with thanks by the original artist at the time, within the past month or two I have had several requests to do so.

So to the young lady who was upset about the image she posted of herself as a scantily-clad menorah that I had included here before, you may rest assured, your good name is intact and your image removed. Truly, you could just have asked me. I understand how we all do silly things when we are young. 

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It is time to update a piece I presented last year. Over the next few weeks these relevant pieces, in updated 2010 form, will appear. Now, tell me, after reading this, Can you spell Christmas envy?

The original reason for the season, the birth of Jesus Christ.

By Tom Piatak

December 16, 2009

VDARE.com

Eight years ago, when the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a slightly abridged version of my first essay on the War Against Christmas, the paper offered a fair description of my argument to its readers:

“The public celebration of Christmas has been sacrificed, says Tom Piatak, to the feel-good forces of multiculturalism.”

A truly lovely Hanukkah dinner setting.

Last year, so much progress had been made in fighting back against the War Against Christmas that The Daily Beast’s Max Blumenthal was reduced to willfully misreading my essay in an attempt to scare people away from the struggle. [Who Started The War On Christmas, December 8, 2008 ]

But two things Blumenthal wrote about my essay were somewhat accurate: I did quote American Heritage’s Frederic Schwarz as calling Hanukkah the “Jewish Kwanzaa”, [Merry Chanukah, American Heritage Magazine, December 2000]and I did write that Hanukkah was among the many alternative holidays presented by “multiculturalists” as “faux-Christmases” in “order to compete with, diminish, and ultimately efface Christmas”.

A lovely German pine Hanukkah Tree.

Given Blumenthal’s singular focus on Hanukkah ~ which this year starts at sundown tonight, December 11 ~ I wondered if I had been unfair in my characterization of that festival. Is Hanukkah at all comparable to Kwanzaa, and is a desire to compete with Christmas really an important force in its celebration?

As fate would have it, an article addressing these questions appeared in my hometown newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, on December 20 last year. The article, How Hanukkah Has Become Hip by John Campanelli, noted that

“Until the late nineteenth century, the holiday was celebrated modestly in Jewish homes, with an adult male lighting candles and reciting the blessing”.

Indeed, the article, citing Dianne Ashton, a religious studies professor at Rowan University who is writing a book on Hanukkah, noted that “It’s hard to tell exactly how things were celebrated because there’s almost no record of it. Ashton found no mention of Hanukkah in old diaries and letters. Instead, they mentioned the Sabbath, Passover, and other, more significant holidays”.

Needless to say, the same can hardly be said of Christmas: even though the Puritans succeeded in suppressing Christmas for a time, both in England and parts of America, Christmas was enormously popular both before and after the Puritan interlude, with such carols as The First Nowell. “I Saw Three Ships,” “The Coventry Carol,” and “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” surviving the Puritans and being embraced by the Victorians.

Even the Jewish dog is dressed up for Hanukkah!

The whole world knows something about Christmas in 19^th century London, thanks to Charles Dickens, who quotes from “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” in A Christmas Carol.
 

The impact of the Puritan interlude is also undermined by the fact that most Americans have ancestors from places where Puritanism never put a damper on Christmas. The 2000 census recording that more Americans claimed German ancestry than any other ancestry. And Germans, both Protestant and Catholic, have always celebrated Christmas with gusto.

"These are genuine Christmas carols that any Jew can sing with lusty pride and not a shred of prejudice; well maybe just a little.  Who else but a proud Jew could turn the Hallelujah Chorus into We Will Sue ya? These well-known Christmas carols when given the Yiddishe twist, often do not relate to this special birthday the majority of the world celebrates.  The intellectually creative includes Goys Rule the World (Don't ya believe it.) Order today, and get ready to laugh on the full 8 days of OUR holiday."

In fact, according to Ashton, it was the German-American zest for Christmas that was instrumental in creating the modern Hanukkah. The first concerted effort she found for more emphasis on Hanukkah occurred in the 1870s in Cincinnati where “Because of [the city’s] large German population, the traditions of Santa Claus, trees and gift giving were everywhere.”

In response, Cincinnati rabbi Max Lilienthal promised that “Our children shall have a grand and glorious Hanukkah festival as nice as any Christmas festival.” 

Ashton’s account is consistent with the one offered by Frederic Schwarz in the American Heritage article in which he termed Hanukkah the “Jewish Kwanzaa ~ an invented cultural celebration”. 

The first celebration of Hanukkah is described in the Bible I use, at 1 Maccabees 4, 35-59, but it is not found in the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, since the book of Maccabees is not part of the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, as Schwarz notes,

“the tradition about one day’s worth of oil lasting eight days is not mentioned in any contemporary record. It first appeared several centuries later in the Talmud”.

Hanukkah matches, especially for the lighting of the menorah.

Because of Hanukkah’s absence from the Hebrew Bible, “many other Jewish holy days are more important from a religious standpoint ~ not just Passover, Rosh Hashanah (the New Year), and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), but also Simchat Torah, Shavuot, and Sukkot.” 

“Of course”, notes Schwarz, the reason Hanukkah now enjoys at least as much prominence as any of these festivals “is Christmas”. And in fact it took a while for the idea of Hanukkah as an alternative to Christmas to catch on. Schwarz cites an 1855 New York Times article describing how Jews “in most European countries” gave presents at Christmas, and how Jews in New York City exchanged presents at New Year’s. Writes Schwarz:

“In neither of these cases was substituting Chanukah considered an option; it was simply too insignificant”.

A Jewish couple created the Meshuga Nutcracher to save their child from Christian envy one December.

Empirical evidence showing that competition with Christmas is a driving force in today’s unprecedented emphasis on Hanukkah also became available last year. As Ray Fisman noted in his article The Invisible Hand of God in Slate, Stanford economists Ran Abramitzky, Liran Einav, and Oren Rigbi concluded [PDF] that “it is competition from Christmas . . . that makes families more likely to celebrate Hanukkah”.

Among the data supporting this conclusion was a survey conducted by the Stanford economists that showed that “only 30 percent of Israelis ranked Hanukkah as a ‘top three’ festival celebrated by their Jewish classmates” while “at Stanford the figure was more than 95 percent”.

Of course, there are different ways of interpreting the fact that Hanukkah is an historically insignificant holiday now given great attention to compete with Christmas. Schwarz regards Hanukkah as “the greatest American holiday”, because it is “democratic, inclusive, and multicultural”, whereas Fisman wonders if the “outsize importance” attached to “a minor holiday largely unrelated to Judaism’s core values” is necessarily the correct response to the appeal of Christmas.

But there can be little real debate over whether Hanukkah has indeed become a “faux-Christmas”: plainly, it has.

Hanukkah Claus needs a Star of David embroidered on his jacket!

Last year I also came across, at the website of Catholic apologist Mark Shea, a 2004 article from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, discussing what Hasidic Jews call Nitel Night and the rest of us call Christmas Eve:

“According to kabbala (Jewish mysticism), on the night on which ‘that man’ ~ a Jewish euphemism for Jesus ~ was born, not even a trace of holiness is present . . . . For this reason, Nitel Night . . . is one of the few occasions when Hasidim refrain from Torah study. On this horrific night, they neither conduct weddings nor do they go to the mikveh (ritual bath)…” [For them, it's wholly unholy, by Shahar Ilan, December 24, 2004]

Of course, such outlandish ideas are far outside the Jewish mainstream, and would be completely irrelevant to a consideration of Hanukkah except for this fact: the group responsible for erecting giant menorahs in public places to observe Hanukkah is Chabad. And Chabad is run by the same Hasidic sect that observes Nitel Night.

This is a new look for the Christmas season at the Whitehouse. Thank you, Mr. Bush.

Far more mainstream, and vastly more enjoyable, was Dahlia Lithwick’s witty and intelligent analysis last year in Slate of which Christmas specials are viewed as acceptable for Jewish children. 

But Lithwick was puzzled by the popularity of Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas among her peers, and concluded that “perhaps my colleague Emily Bazelon is right, and Jewish kids like the Grinch because ‘Without the ending, the movie is the ultimate fantasy for a Jewish kid with a case of Santa/tree/carols envy ~ Christmas, canceled.’” [Oy, Hark! | A Jewish parent's guide to Christmas specials, Slate, Dec. 17, 2008]
 

Adults can be envious as well. My uncle, who lived in Manhattan, noticed some years ago flyers for a performance in December of Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus at a Manhattan temple. What caught my uncle’s eye was the flyer’s description of Judas Maccabaeus as “Handel’s greatest oratorio”.

The implicit comparison, of course, was to Messiah, which was first performed in America at Christmas and has become a staple of the American Christmas, and the score of which Handel is depicted as holding in his hands at his tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Fortunately, such crabbed attitudes are in the minority. I agree with Dahlia Lithwick that “the proper non-Christian response to Christmas joy is not to try to block, suppress, or hide from it”, and Lithwick’s sentiment is, in my experience, shared by the vast majority of American Jews.

A wall hanging of the Hanukkah nut cracker.

As I wrote in my 2001 essay, “Much of the public celebration of Christmas was capable of being enjoyed by non-Christians as well as Christians, and almost everyone did enjoy at least some of it. I know non-Christians who enjoy Christmas specials, Christmas movies, Christmas music; I do not think these people are unique.” 

Indeed, American Jews have made significant contributions to the American Christmas ~ contributions that have been widely embraced by American Christians. The best selling Christmas recording of all time is Bing Crosby’s rendition of White Christmas, written by Irving Berlin, who was of course Jewish.

The driving force behind the War Against Christmas remains multiculturalism, ~ a credo embraced by those of all faiths and of none, that insists that Western culture, of which Christmas is undeniably a part, is problematic at best and oppressive at worst. 

As E. V. Kontorovich, himself Jewish, argued long ago, the public elevation of Hanukkah represented the first triumph of the multiculturalist idea in America. But the multiculturalist approval of Hanukkah is not based on an appreciation of Judaism, since, as I have demonstrated, Hanukkah has historically not been an important part of Judaism and an overemphasis of Hanukkah therefore leads to a misunderstanding of Judaism.

Is this what it basically all boils down to?

The multiculturalists approve of Hanukkah for the same reason they approve of all the other faux-Christmases they are promoting these days, including Kwanzaa, Eid, Diwali, Bodhi Day, and the winter solstice: none of these holidays is Christmas. 

And thus we have the War against Christmas ~ a War that will only be won once we again realize that there is nothing problematic or oppressive about the public celebration of Christmas, one of the crowning glories of the Western culture that gave birth to America and sustains us still.

Tom Piatak (email him) writes from Cleveland, Ohio.

And what, pray tell, is THIS?

I know there is a lot of controversy over the birth of Christ. I could tackle all of that another time. For now, I speak of how it is, not how it shoulda coulda woulda been was the world a different place. One thing I thought very interesting is, for a culture that is against Christian manifestations of their religion, whatever Christians do in red green and gold, the Jews do in blue and silver. 

For more of the latest debate on the onslaught on Christmas as it has been going for the past decade, please refer to the following links. It seems the author has been involved for at least 10 years and has built up quite a library.

WAR AGAINST CHRISTMAS COMPETITION 2009: [blog] [I] [2] ~ See also: War Against Christmas 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999

THIS JUST IN!

What do we have here? A group of hirsute rabbis all dressed in red and searching for frivolous and demeaning Christmas trees?

JEWISH LOBBY WAGES WAR ON CHRISTMAS TREES

Lobby for Jewish values passes out fliers against hotels,restaurants putting up Christmas trees, other Christian symbols ahead of civil New Year, say businesses who do so risk losing kosher certification.

By Ali Galhar

Ynet
 

A new front for religious battles ~ hotels and restaurants. The "Lobby for Jewish values" this week began operating against restaurants and hotels that plan to put up Christmas trees and other Christian symbols ahead of Christmas and the civil New Year.

According to the lobby's Chairman, Ofer Cohen, they have received backing by the rabbis, "and we are even considering publishing the names of the businesses that put up Christian symbols ahead of the Christian holiday and call for a boycott against them." Fliers and ads distributed among the public read, "The people of Israel have given their soul over the years in order to maintain the values of the Torah of Israel and the Jewish identity.

"You should also continue to follow this path of the Jewish people's tradition and not give in to the clownish atmosphere of the end of the civil year. And certainly not help those businesses that sell or put up the foolish symbols of Christianity."

One man's fool is another man's Savior, Rabbi.

The Jerusalem Rabbinate also works each year to ensure restaurants and hotels receiving kosher certification from the Jerusalem Religious Council do not put up Christian symbols.

According to a senior official in the kashrut department, this is done each year consensually, but that businesses which do not meet this requirement may find their kashrut certificate revoked. It should be noted that most of the hotels in Jerusalem and a significant part of the restaurants in the capital receive permanent kosher certification from the city's religious council.

Of course this piece means I MUST post an image of a Christmas tree!