VIRGINIA MIRIAM

[Arpa]

YES VIRGINIA, NO MIRIAM

Sadly, as we approach Christmas,that sacred Christian date we will see more of misapproriated garbage of the kind.

America is a Christian Country. A country of Christmas Carols.

Who invited her to this Christan country?

At this season of Christmas we are singing Christmas carols.

 

The following is from one of our local papers. Oddly enough it refers to this, from another of our papers from over a century ago..

 

http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/

 

I am glad to see that we are returning to wish one another MERRY CHRISTMAS, rather than the 60s-70s “happy holidaySSSS” nonsense. That our school children are once again singing Christmas Carols instead of “happy holidays”. See below how the writer says-"In school, I helped decorate a tree with the colored lights, borrowed from my father's electric store on Remsen Street in Cohoes. I sang Christmas carols, editing the obviously religious words, but not skipping "E-man-uel" in the hymn since that was my brother's name.". This is tantamount to entering an Armenian Christian church and scratching one's crotch when it is time to Cross one's face. In other words. If one will not respect the Christian traditions of the Christian “church”, what the … business do they have entering it?

We are waiting NOT!!! for the day when Ramadan becomes an American national holiday.

Jingle bagels to you too!!!

 

No, Miriam, Santa Claus isn't kosher

By MIRIAM NEWELL BISKIN

Published: 12:00 a.m., Saturday, November 27, 2010

 

Page 1 of 1

About a quarter of a century after Virginia O'Hanlon received reassurance about the existence of Santa Claus, there was one little Jewish girl who was unsure of her own relationship with the old gentleman. Everyone talked about him, notably the neighbors and other children. His picture was in store windows. And as the holiday neared, his many clones stood on street corners, ringing bells for charity. Everywhere, there were reminders -- everywhere, but not in my house. His name never came up.

Back in the 1920s, my mother was too busy grating potatoes for latkes, and Hanukkah had not yet been commercialized to rival the Yuletide. My holiday gifts were a sweater my mother knitted, a large orange and some gelt (real money, not chocolate). In school, I helped decorate a tree with the colored lights, borrowed from my father's electric store on Remsen Street in Cohoes. I sang Christmas carols, editing the obviously religious words, but not skipping "E-man-uel" in the hymn since that was my brother's name.** I also wrote and directed my own adaptation of "A Christmas Carol," borrowing my father's tire chains for Marley's ghost's costume. I never bought the Santa Claus story although I knew I mustn't share that revelation with my contemporaries. That was verboten, kind of like the information about how babies were born.

Years passed. As a Jewish schoolteacher in a predominantly gentile city, I helped my charges make red-and-green decorations, supervised their chalkboard murals, read "The Night Before Christmas" and told them all about Clement Clarke Moore having his poem first published on Dec. 23, 1823, in a newspaper in Troy. About that time, I also pursued my hobby, writing, and had an acceptance for a story in Highlights that happened to be about Hanukkah.

I realized I had stumbled onto a magic formula because magazines, in an effort to satisfy a minority audience, always included one such story in the Christmas issue. Thus a series was born: Hanukkah in Hawaii; Hanukkah in Alaska; Hanukkah on the Frontier; Hanukkah in July. My favorite is the one in which the Hanukkah candles are a signal for a character who resembles Paul Revere.

Poor Santa was out in the cold except when I honored a publisher's request creating an epic called "Santa's Summer."

For my own two children, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, Hanukkah, which begins at sundown Wednesday, has great meaning. As they hear of the defeat of Antiochus by the Maccabees and light the candles, say the prayer and sing songs, they are celebrating a tribute to religious freedom in the miracle of the oil lamp in the temple burning for eight days while also getting gifts for eight nights.

A few years ago, I was in Jerusalem in December. Instead of the red and green of Christmas, the decorations were blue, with lighted symbols of dreidels and menorahs glowing along the highways. It was busy in the malls, but obviously no lines for Santa. Along the streets, we passed bakeries that try to rival each other with special doughnuts called sufganiyot in Hebrew, fried delicacies, oily miracles of another kind, filled with not only the traditional strawberry jelly, but also varieties of chocolate, vanilla and cappuccino.

For me, it is especially wonderful to share this mitzvah with my family. My favorite song is "Sivvivon" (Hebrew for dreidel, which is the Yiddish word) related to a spinning top game. On each side of the top is a Hebrew letter (N,G,H,P) which stands for "a great miracle happened here.'' In other places in the world, an S for the P changes the message to "a great miracle happened there."

To put things in perspective, I must tell you about a time I sent a platter of Hanukkah cookies (store-bought and marked kosher) as a donation to a synagogue party my young daughter was attending. "Did your mommy bake these?" was the query. "No," came the prompt answer, "My mommy can't bake," she said. "She can only tell stories."

Miriam Newell Biskin, who lives in Albany, taught English at Cohoes High School and is the author of many children's stories and poems. Her latest effort is an IUniverse reprint of "My Life Among the Gentiles," available at Amazon.com.

** We will come to this under another topic, when she skipped all the Christian words until it came to her brother's name "emanuel".

Edited November 29, 2010 by Arpa