I Changed My Mind About Saying “Merry Christmas,” and You Should Too
In fifth grade, I was the only Jewish kid in my elementary school class. This was the 1980’s in Central Florida and even though it was a public school, unaffiliated with any church and funded with taxpayer dollars, my teacher taped a poster to the wall in her classroom that read, “Jesus Is The Reason For The Season.”
I wasn’t offended per se. I’m pretty sure at ten, I didn’t know what that word meant. But I could tell the teacher was sending a message to anyone in her class who might have different beliefs — such as, say, that the tilt of the earth on its axis is the reason for the seasons.
Around Christmastime, my family celebrated Hanukkah, and though I didn’t expect to see any menorahs and dreidels on display, I started to resent the inescapable morass of a celebration that clearly wasn’t meant for me.
The Christmas specials on TV said Santa visited “all the children in the world.” The good ones got gifts. The naughty ones got lumps of coal. The Jewish ones got told Santa wasn’t coming to their house.
Why? Because, as every disillusioned Jewish kid learns, it was the parents, not Santa putting gifts under the trees. “No big whoop.” we’d hear from our own parents. “But don’t tell your friends that Santa isn’t real because we don’t want to spoil the…
