I enjoy reading Elicia Brown’s writing, and her column, “Chanukah: To Give And To Get” (Dec. 14) was no exception.
The last line, though, about an excess of Chanukah presents —“[t]here’s a little too much Christmas spirit here” — was perhaps not the best way to make a point. Imagine reading an essay in a secular magazine in which the narrator says: “When my 16-year-old asked for cold hard cash for Christmas, I told him that he was getting a little too much into the Chanukah spirit.”
We could do a little better. I think this holds especially true for a publication like The Jewish Week, which features extensive (perhaps to a fault) coverage of conversion and intermarriage. (I say this as an Orthodox convert of more than 16 years.) We can’t have it both ways — we can’t talk about a big tent and also resort to the same old jokes.
Let Christians complain about the commercialization of Christmas on their own time; it’s not our job to do it for them.
Manhattan
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