Thanks for the piece. But re the hypothetical called-out comment that begins “Christmas is the most important Christian holiday…” I would say that’s borderline blasphemous for Christians for whom the Easter holiday and story are much more important to their faith (if not to the time, energy, and money they put into celebrating it!).
I think the distinction to draw is that Christmas is the most important holiday to ethnic Christianity in the U.S. and Europe, whereas Easter is the most important holiday in the faith itself.
Christmas is the most important Christian holiday to me, an American atheist with no family religious traditions who likes holiday stuff. At this point I couldn’t care less what it means to Christians. It’s my holiday as much as anyone else’s now and I’m not giving it back, sorry.
Hanukkah is shallow? What are you smoking? “Not exactly fuel for spiritual ponderance” - are you seriously going to argue that the question of countercultural religious distinctiveness is not relevant today? I don’t know what flavor of Judaism you subscribe to, but I can’t think of one that, on the one hand, takes seriously the question of whether Hanukkah shows up in the Torah to determine its importance, and on the other hand, doesn’t believe that the battle against Greek politico-cultural hegemony isn’t resonant with diaspora Judaism’s biggest challenges in the modern world, nor that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty wasn’t - and/or isn’t - religiously significant. I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about in this whole section.
“The big tell here is that in Israel, one of the few places in the Western world where Christmas is not pervasive, Hanukkah is much less of a focus….” This is simply false. I just got back from a week in Israel; to say that Hanukkah was pervasive everywhere I went - from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to Modiin to a kibbutz in the Beit She’an valley - is an understatement. Kids get off from school for the week, public menorahs are everywhere, Hanukkah-themed cultural events are the order of the day, etc. Maybe this is true in the specific sense of “less of a focus relative to Yom Kippur” - but there is no question that Hanukkah is more prominent in Israel than it is in the US, or that the median Jew in Israel does more to “observe” Hanukkah than the median Jew in America.
“Eight repetitive nights” - I literally don’t know anyone who does this. I have never heard of anyone who does 8 days of presents. If the claim is “well only a few of the nights are interesting” - last I checked Christmas is one specific day.
I’m going to stop doing the point-by-point critique here. This is just bad. It is depressing that this is building up to a case for “Jewish Christmas”. (I am baffled that we earlier made the case that Hanukkah is spiritually shallow to justify joining in with Christmas, a holiday now so utterly devoid of content that it’s plausible to write the phrase “Jewish Christmas” in 2025!) Hanukkah is quite flexible. It’s hard to imagine how someone can fail to concoct a version that works for them. If you can’t - no problem! It’s a free country, and as a card carrying Liberal, I am more than happy to give you “permission” to celebrate Christmas along with everyone else. But you don’t need to write this uncompelling, forced #slatepitch to justify it.
I will end my complaint on a conciliatory note: the conclusion is correct. The stuff that matters to Jews and Judaism is Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, and Passover, far more than Hanukkah. If your appetite for observance is scarce, especially when it’s countercultural, your life will be richer if you devote your energy to those holidays. And it’s good to inform non-Jews about what the priorities are.
- The Jewish calendar is not lunar. Hanukkah is never in the summer. A lunar calendar (like the Islamic calendar) cycles around the solar calendar completely. A lunisolar calendar (like the Jewish calendar) intercalates a month to maintain its position with the solar calendar. This is why Passover is always in the spring, and why Chinese New Year is always around February.
- A cursory halakhic analysis of your "top three" holidays, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Passover, reveals that the latter two share an important characteristic. The severity of the prohibition of eating food on Yom Kippur is unrivaled by any other holiday observance in the calendar--except eating leaven on Passover! Not for naught is Passover the other new year of the calendar. I don't see how it is "definitely in third".
- The piece underplays the significance of political Zionism in reinvigorating the observance of Hanukkah. It notes that the Maccabean side of the holiday is of interest in Israel but does not engage with the emerging significance for Zionism in the Jewish Diaspora in the 20th century.
As for spelling, I have always felt that we should appropriate the Spanish jota and write:
Some footnotes on footnotes (due, of course, to the lack of margins to write in):
- Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are the *High Holidays*. Emphasis on the High (or Awesome in Hebrew). I'll let the Machzor (prayer book) for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur make the rest of their case:
"Let us now relate the power of this day's holiness, for it is mighty and frightening. On it Your Kingship will be exalted; Your throne will be firmed with kindness and You will sit upon it in truth. It is true that You alone are the One Who judges, proves, knows, and bears witness; Who writes and seals, Who counts and Who calculates. You will remember all that was forgotten. You will open the Book of Remembrances — it will read itself – and each person's signature is there. And the great shofar will be sounded and a still, thin voice will be heard. Angels will be frenzied, a trembling and terror will seize them — and they will say, 'Behold, it is the Day of Judgment, to muster the heavenly host for judgment!'"
and so on, until...
"On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed – how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die."
- By contrast, Passover is one of the three pilgrimages. Three, with its siblings Sukkot and Shavuot. And yes, the Seder is more meaningful than building a yurt on your porch and pretending to live in it (or whatever you happen to do on Shavuot), but in principle they're equals.
- I don't see why Chanukah can't have 6th place! Atzeret/Simchat Torah? It's an appendage to Sukkot! Tisha Bav? Not a holiday! Purim? Come on. Jewish Mardi Gras based off a comedy that somehow made its way into the bible doesn't get a lock on sixth place.
Rosh Hashana has beautiful liturgy. Unetane tokef is exquisite poetry of medieval origin. The biblical sources of the holiday are vanishingly small, and the implications of the day are only present in hints and allusions. In the rabbinic literature, b. Rosh Hashana is four chapters with 35 folios in the classic Vilna edition. Only the final chapter deals with the holiday itself. Conversely, Passover is everywhere in biblical writings, and b. Pesachim is ten chapters with 121 folios. The fact that there is a rabbinic debate over whether the world was created in the months Tishrei or Nisan is a testament to the duality of both holidays. (The liturgical "hayom horat olam" attempts to harmonize both positions.)
I feel like you know enough to know that the significance of holidays isn't measured by the length of the corresponding masechta in the Talmud? (Otherwise, Baba Day reigns supreme.) And post Talmudic additions matter. [Gestures at Kol Nidre, whatever on earth it's supposed to be.]
In practice, all three major Jewish denominations and most unaffiliated Jews recognize the High Holidays as the most sacred days of the Jewish calendar.
I have a friend I don't talk to much anymore who is from Amman, the capital of Jordan. It is a majority Muslim city, but apparently they actually put up a huge Christmas tree in the middle of town every year. My friend is Muslim and she went every year. The city does it because there is a Christian minority there, and I guess also because it's probably actually good for the economy and the community to motivate shopping once a year by celebrating Christmas. Jesus is in the Quran, too, just not as the Messiah.
The city of Bethlehem is in the West Bank. It is a majority Christian city. I only learned that this past year because the man who owned the gyro shop next to my apartment building told me he was from there. I was totally blown away to learn that. I didn't even know Bethlehem was still a city. I imagined it being an archeological site somewhere, probably poorly maintained.
I know this wouldn't fly for a lot or even most of the country, but one day I hope that Christmas becomes a truly secular holiday. We can even call it something else, I don't care.
I know that's Christian-centric. I just feel a community separation over it, and it bums me out. It seems warmer to include people in the gift-giving/music-and-movie-filled/food holiday rather than go our separate ways. Christmas trees are pretty and smell good. It's cute to see kids who believe in Santa meet him and Mrs. Clause... I don't want people to feel like it's not for them, especially since I myself don't celebrate Christmas as the birth of Christ.
My family celebrates Christmas, but none of us are religious. My grandparents were Christians (Catholic and Methodist) so Christmas a habit on both sides of the family.
2. A Chinese-American friend of mine is currently trying to start a tradition of Chinese-Americans (and I suppose Americans of non-Western descent more broadly) getting takeout from Jewish restaurants on Christmas. He's been doing this with friends for a couple years now.
At my Classical Reform Hebrew school, it was intimated that Christmas and Chanukkah are both effectively marking the winter solstice, the darkest time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. I get a real sense that these humanist interpretations have been getting run out of Reform Judaism since the mid-1980s, but those interpretations hold for me, as a Jew.
As for the holiday itself, our 7 year-old seems to dig it, and we watched the Rugrats Chanukkah special while listening to Sharon Jones and The Dap King’s 8 Days (of Chanukkah): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT2_7aq3ytE
Hey, if we can write all the good Christmas songs, she can write the best Chanukkah song! RIP, Sharon
PS: *The Hebrew Hammer*, starring Adam Goldstein as a cross between a Chasid and Shaft, is fun for about the first 30-45 minutes before they fail to stick the landing.
Boo, Chanukah is fun! 8 presents is also easy to do if you reset your expectations. Presents can be a joke or a song or a lollipop. It doesn't have to be a big deal, but it's absolutely fun to have people over to fry latkes. If the complaint is "people who don't know a lot about Judaism make a bigger deal of it then they do Rosh Hashanah" then I say... so what? This is only a pain if you don't participate in a Jewish community that *does* make a big deal about Rosh Hashanah.
Thanks for the piece. But re the hypothetical called-out comment that begins “Christmas is the most important Christian holiday…” I would say that’s borderline blasphemous for Christians for whom the Easter holiday and story are much more important to their faith (if not to the time, energy, and money they put into celebrating it!).
I think the distinction to draw is that Christmas is the most important holiday to ethnic Christianity in the U.S. and Europe, whereas Easter is the most important holiday in the faith itself.
Christmas is happy like a birthday is happy. Easter is testing of your faith.
Christmas is the most important Christian holiday to me, an American atheist with no family religious traditions who likes holiday stuff. At this point I couldn’t care less what it means to Christians. It’s my holiday as much as anyone else’s now and I’m not giving it back, sorry.
It's also an empirical fact about Christianity as it is (on average!) practiced in the United States.
My high school history textbook said this was a difference between Western and Eastern Christianity, but I have no idea whether it was right.
Hanukkah is shallow? What are you smoking? “Not exactly fuel for spiritual ponderance” - are you seriously going to argue that the question of countercultural religious distinctiveness is not relevant today? I don’t know what flavor of Judaism you subscribe to, but I can’t think of one that, on the one hand, takes seriously the question of whether Hanukkah shows up in the Torah to determine its importance, and on the other hand, doesn’t believe that the battle against Greek politico-cultural hegemony isn’t resonant with diaspora Judaism’s biggest challenges in the modern world, nor that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty wasn’t - and/or isn’t - religiously significant. I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about in this whole section.
“The big tell here is that in Israel, one of the few places in the Western world where Christmas is not pervasive, Hanukkah is much less of a focus….” This is simply false. I just got back from a week in Israel; to say that Hanukkah was pervasive everywhere I went - from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to Modiin to a kibbutz in the Beit She’an valley - is an understatement. Kids get off from school for the week, public menorahs are everywhere, Hanukkah-themed cultural events are the order of the day, etc. Maybe this is true in the specific sense of “less of a focus relative to Yom Kippur” - but there is no question that Hanukkah is more prominent in Israel than it is in the US, or that the median Jew in Israel does more to “observe” Hanukkah than the median Jew in America.
“Eight repetitive nights” - I literally don’t know anyone who does this. I have never heard of anyone who does 8 days of presents. If the claim is “well only a few of the nights are interesting” - last I checked Christmas is one specific day.
I’m going to stop doing the point-by-point critique here. This is just bad. It is depressing that this is building up to a case for “Jewish Christmas”. (I am baffled that we earlier made the case that Hanukkah is spiritually shallow to justify joining in with Christmas, a holiday now so utterly devoid of content that it’s plausible to write the phrase “Jewish Christmas” in 2025!) Hanukkah is quite flexible. It’s hard to imagine how someone can fail to concoct a version that works for them. If you can’t - no problem! It’s a free country, and as a card carrying Liberal, I am more than happy to give you “permission” to celebrate Christmas along with everyone else. But you don’t need to write this uncompelling, forced #slatepitch to justify it.
I will end my complaint on a conciliatory note: the conclusion is correct. The stuff that matters to Jews and Judaism is Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, and Passover, far more than Hanukkah. If your appetite for observance is scarce, especially when it’s countercultural, your life will be richer if you devote your energy to those holidays. And it’s good to inform non-Jews about what the priorities are.
I absolutely love this comment! It disagrees with many (if not most) points in the article, but also still wholeheartedly agrees with the conclusion.
It is somehow exactly what I expected as a reply to this article on this topic.
Entertaining piece, but alas, a few notes:
- The Jewish calendar is not lunar. Hanukkah is never in the summer. A lunar calendar (like the Islamic calendar) cycles around the solar calendar completely. A lunisolar calendar (like the Jewish calendar) intercalates a month to maintain its position with the solar calendar. This is why Passover is always in the spring, and why Chinese New Year is always around February.
- A cursory halakhic analysis of your "top three" holidays, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Passover, reveals that the latter two share an important characteristic. The severity of the prohibition of eating food on Yom Kippur is unrivaled by any other holiday observance in the calendar--except eating leaven on Passover! Not for naught is Passover the other new year of the calendar. I don't see how it is "definitely in third".
- The piece underplays the significance of political Zionism in reinvigorating the observance of Hanukkah. It notes that the Maccabean side of the holiday is of interest in Israel but does not engage with the emerging significance for Zionism in the Jewish Diaspora in the 20th century.
As for spelling, I have always felt that we should appropriate the Spanish jota and write:
Jag Januka Sameaj!
Some footnotes on footnotes (due, of course, to the lack of margins to write in):
- Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are the *High Holidays*. Emphasis on the High (or Awesome in Hebrew). I'll let the Machzor (prayer book) for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur make the rest of their case:
"Let us now relate the power of this day's holiness, for it is mighty and frightening. On it Your Kingship will be exalted; Your throne will be firmed with kindness and You will sit upon it in truth. It is true that You alone are the One Who judges, proves, knows, and bears witness; Who writes and seals, Who counts and Who calculates. You will remember all that was forgotten. You will open the Book of Remembrances — it will read itself – and each person's signature is there. And the great shofar will be sounded and a still, thin voice will be heard. Angels will be frenzied, a trembling and terror will seize them — and they will say, 'Behold, it is the Day of Judgment, to muster the heavenly host for judgment!'"
and so on, until...
"On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed – how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die."
- By contrast, Passover is one of the three pilgrimages. Three, with its siblings Sukkot and Shavuot. And yes, the Seder is more meaningful than building a yurt on your porch and pretending to live in it (or whatever you happen to do on Shavuot), but in principle they're equals.
- I don't see why Chanukah can't have 6th place! Atzeret/Simchat Torah? It's an appendage to Sukkot! Tisha Bav? Not a holiday! Purim? Come on. Jewish Mardi Gras based off a comedy that somehow made its way into the bible doesn't get a lock on sixth place.
- Chanukah isn't a Chag.
A Happy Janice and a Gut Gebencht Yor!
Rosh Hashana has beautiful liturgy. Unetane tokef is exquisite poetry of medieval origin. The biblical sources of the holiday are vanishingly small, and the implications of the day are only present in hints and allusions. In the rabbinic literature, b. Rosh Hashana is four chapters with 35 folios in the classic Vilna edition. Only the final chapter deals with the holiday itself. Conversely, Passover is everywhere in biblical writings, and b. Pesachim is ten chapters with 121 folios. The fact that there is a rabbinic debate over whether the world was created in the months Tishrei or Nisan is a testament to the duality of both holidays. (The liturgical "hayom horat olam" attempts to harmonize both positions.)
I feel like you know enough to know that the significance of holidays isn't measured by the length of the corresponding masechta in the Talmud? (Otherwise, Baba Day reigns supreme.) And post Talmudic additions matter. [Gestures at Kol Nidre, whatever on earth it's supposed to be.]
In practice, all three major Jewish denominations and most unaffiliated Jews recognize the High Holidays as the most sacred days of the Jewish calendar.
I was really surprised to learn about the "eight days of presents" thing, long after I had stopped getting presents for Chanuka.
The simple solution (in the spirit of the miracle of Chanuka) is to buy a single present that lasts eight nights.
Is it a coincidence that every Mega Man and Mega Man X game has eight levels?
Nice article, btw!
One more thing in my mind--
I have a friend I don't talk to much anymore who is from Amman, the capital of Jordan. It is a majority Muslim city, but apparently they actually put up a huge Christmas tree in the middle of town every year. My friend is Muslim and she went every year. The city does it because there is a Christian minority there, and I guess also because it's probably actually good for the economy and the community to motivate shopping once a year by celebrating Christmas. Jesus is in the Quran, too, just not as the Messiah.
The city of Bethlehem is in the West Bank. It is a majority Christian city. I only learned that this past year because the man who owned the gyro shop next to my apartment building told me he was from there. I was totally blown away to learn that. I didn't even know Bethlehem was still a city. I imagined it being an archeological site somewhere, probably poorly maintained.
Great article, Eli!
I know this wouldn't fly for a lot or even most of the country, but one day I hope that Christmas becomes a truly secular holiday. We can even call it something else, I don't care.
I know that's Christian-centric. I just feel a community separation over it, and it bums me out. It seems warmer to include people in the gift-giving/music-and-movie-filled/food holiday rather than go our separate ways. Christmas trees are pretty and smell good. It's cute to see kids who believe in Santa meet him and Mrs. Clause... I don't want people to feel like it's not for them, especially since I myself don't celebrate Christmas as the birth of Christ.
My family celebrates Christmas, but none of us are religious. My grandparents were Christians (Catholic and Methodist) so Christmas a habit on both sides of the family.
I think this is largely already true for most Americans
Two random points:
1. One of my favorite bloggers wrote a piece sort of similar to this, analyzing Hanukkah from the perspective of "what not to do if you're trying to design a good holiday": https://balioc.tumblr.com/post/738708085697347584/holiday-engineering-what-not-to-do
2. A Chinese-American friend of mine is currently trying to start a tradition of Chinese-Americans (and I suppose Americans of non-Western descent more broadly) getting takeout from Jewish restaurants on Christmas. He's been doing this with friends for a couple years now.
On the meaning of the holiday, I find this from Zohar Atkins compelling:
https://etzhasadeh.substack.com/p/the-miracle-of-channuka-isnt-what?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
For good songs, the Maccabeats have you covered:
https://open.spotify.com/album/4uhCOOmk62FJOMqMCzL1No
At my Classical Reform Hebrew school, it was intimated that Christmas and Chanukkah are both effectively marking the winter solstice, the darkest time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. I get a real sense that these humanist interpretations have been getting run out of Reform Judaism since the mid-1980s, but those interpretations hold for me, as a Jew.
As for the holiday itself, our 7 year-old seems to dig it, and we watched the Rugrats Chanukkah special while listening to Sharon Jones and The Dap King’s 8 Days (of Chanukkah): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT2_7aq3ytE
Hey, if we can write all the good Christmas songs, she can write the best Chanukkah song! RIP, Sharon
PS: *The Hebrew Hammer*, starring Adam Goldstein as a cross between a Chasid and Shaft, is fun for about the first 30-45 minutes before they fail to stick the landing.
Boo, Chanukah is fun! 8 presents is also easy to do if you reset your expectations. Presents can be a joke or a song or a lollipop. It doesn't have to be a big deal, but it's absolutely fun to have people over to fry latkes. If the complaint is "people who don't know a lot about Judaism make a bigger deal of it then they do Rosh Hashanah" then I say... so what? This is only a pain if you don't participate in a Jewish community that *does* make a big deal about Rosh Hashanah.