Jews who celebrate the Gentile year-end holidays do so in a tempered and temporal spirit. But those who abstain on principle do so in a fierce and fire-eating mood. Such, at least, is my general impression after reading responses to a discussion of the subject launched in this department.
Justification of Jewish participation in the non-Jewish holidays came through in polite, playful, uninspired letters. But denunciation was compounded of brimstone and bile and visited chiefly upon my own tender head.
One who signs himself “Highly Indignant” even smells the odor of money-changers in the temple. “What has the church given you for talking like that?” he asks and proceeds to castigate my mild and facetious comments as “boring from within.”
I am already, as is generally known, in the pay of Wall Street, as proved by the fact that I do not shout hallelujah when alleged kulaks are slaughtered. Now that I am also on the church salary list, my pecuniary worries for 1935 are solved.
It is one of the fondest superstitions of the general public, in fact, that any writing man can pick up some easy change by selling himself to the forces of evil. Wall Street, the public utilities, the Catholic Church, the Elders of Zion, the Moscow Kremlin and a lot of others lurk in the shadows to lure innocent reporters with the glint of gold. A few hold out, but the rest of us yield to the temptation and consort with golden sin.
I hate to disillusion anyone, but in this column, if nowhere else, truth comes first. In fifteen years of active journalism not one of the aforementioned agencies of evil has bothered to test my moral mettle with an alluring offer of lucre. I feel slighted. I, too, want the thrill of throwing that million in their face and exclaiming: “I may be poor, but I am honest! My honor is not for sale: You’re barking up the wrong tree, mister!” It is something to look forward to as I move gently but firmly into old age.
“Highly Indignant,” having placed me on the church roster of paid agents, continues:
“If Mr. Lyons had lived in the days of yore the odor of the wine would have gotten into his nostrils. He would have drunk and danced dissolutely in celebration of the Greek Goddess until he would be Hellenized and become our enemy. Today he catches the odor of the stable….
“If we don’t keep our eyes tightly shut to idolatrous celebrations, to paganistic practices, a pure religion about a living God, author of all life, creator of the universe, will disappear from the earth. ‘If ye follow the gods of the nations among whom you live, ye shall be destroyed.'”
There is no such heat in those readers who send and receive Christmas cards so soon after Chanukah. Their tone is rather one of amused apology.
One reader, Florence Burg, of Brooklyn, went so far as to make a nearly scientific survey in her own circle. Ten Jewish children whom she questioned on the matter all admitted taking part in one way or another in the Christmas and New Year celebrations. But not one of them seemed at all aware that those occasions had the slightest tinge of an alien religion.
Adult Jews to whom Miss Burg applied the same test, reacted with less unanimity, though with less naivete about the Christian ideology involved.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
