http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
LAST YEAR ABOUT THIS TIME, I saw a newspaper which carried a comic strip
I had never seen before. The strip was called "Rhymes With Orange" and it was
written by Hilary B. Price.
The strip contained this poem:
Everything in reds and greens!
Jewish World Review Dec. 7 1999 / 28 Kislev, 5760
Competing With
the Red and Green
By Erica Meyer Rauzin
Trees and wreaths and jellybeans
Santa Clauses, candy canes,
Gracing storefront windowpanes...
But then there are the hapless few,
For whom these colors just won't do.
It would, in fact, be quite a horror
To have them there by the menorah.
Oh where to find the white and blue
Among the reddish-greenish hue?
Walk through the store and to the back
Past tinsel, bows and bric-a-brac...
And there you'll see off by itself,
The tiny, token Hanukah shelf.
I think that is pretty profound for a comic strip.
In so many public places, the seasonal reds and greens completely
dominate December displays. This is indicative of the pervasive
commercialization of Christmas, as well as showing the tangential nature Chanukah has in the eyes of the general population. I do not envy the commercial
exploitation of Christmas and I don't wish to share it. However, I do feel
wistful about the sidelining of Chanukah because I fear it influences our
perceptions about our own holiday.
Chanukah is not a mini-Christmas, a substitute Christmas, a fall back
celebration. It has nothing at all to do with Christmas except December, and
gifts. Chanukah has everything to do with Jewish survival (including the
survival that allowed the birth of Christianity a couple of centuries after
the historic event Chanukah commemorates) and Jewish faith.
The Jews who survived that conflict with Syria had the faith to light the
lamp in the temple without knowing it would burn for eight days. They focused
on what mattered to them, not on the priorities of the enticing popular
civilization that surrounded them and tried to conquer them. They were
rewarded with the short term miracle of light and the long term miracle of
survival. That is what we celebrate.
Given that, maybe it isn't so bad to be shunted to the back shelf. I'm
not sure that the giant menorah next to the giant tree is to be preferred
over the tiny menorah behind the giant tree. I don't want to see Chanukah
gussied up (any more than many observant Christians are comfortable with the
tinsel and ballyhoo aspect of Christmas).
I'd rather see all of us, Jews and the general public, respect Chanukah
as a separate religious festival, with its own message and meaning. But even
if the general public doesn't have that perspective, and never will, we must.
As in ancient Syria, our enemies aren't only the armies that would
exterminate us (though those are very real, even today). Our enemies include
the dazzle and attraction of other ways of life. The Macabbees didn't just
resist the Syrian army, they resisted the Syrian lifestyle. And so must we
resist the red and green.
This "Rhymes with Orange" comic strip also showed two tiny characters,
apparently a customer and a store clerk, talking to each other in the margin.
The customer says, "Got anything with the Macabees?" To which the clerk
replies, "Which elves are they?"
This whimsical bit of humor holds a telling message, even a warning. How
diminishing it would be to turn Judah Macabee into an elf and to turn
Chanukah into a commemoration of fairy tales and frantic shopping. We are
better off with our candles glowing with legend and legacy in our own homes
than we would be if they were the sales stars of the department store.
This Chanukah, we’re going try to truly cherish the strength of our own
lights -- internal and external -- and to let them burn full measure for us,
brighter in our hearts than all the glitter in the
JWR contributor Erica Meyer Rauzin writes about the contemporary Jewish
condition. Send your comments by clicking here.