What's always fascinated me about Judaism-as-non-celebration-of-Christmas is that it doesn't seem to extend to other Christian observances. Specifically, Easter. I remember dyeing eggs - and at home, not at the behest of some outside entity trying to impose Christianity on unsuspecting Jewish children. And I remember a lot of Peeps. Easter just never meant anything to me either way.
And why was that? Like Christmas, it pops up alongside a Jewish holiday, and there, the two are actually somehow related. And the religious significance of Easter is if anything more Christian than Christmas - as an atheist Jew, I believe Jesus was born, but not that he (or anyone) was resurrected. Historically, a brief search suggests there were pogroms on Christmas as well as Easter, so this doesn't seem to be the determining factor. The obvious: Christmas is the much bigger secular-Christian holiday. It's the soundtrack to your life from Halloween on every year whether you observe it or not. Easter, not so much.
Well! Times have changed, or maybe I've been oblivious, but now, Judaism-as-non-celebration-of-Easter is also a thing. Via Facebook, I came across Ari Kohen's post about Easter and majority-religion privilege. Which led me to his earlier post bringing attention to another post: by a Jewish mother, PJ Feinstein, unsure of whether to donate $1.99 worth of plastic eggs to an Easter-egg hunt at her child's daycare.
I recount this with the chronology in which I came across these posts, to recreate my own thoughts on the matter. First, re: Kohen's post on "privilege," I thought, yes, this does address why 'what's the big deal?' is a pathetic and even offensive response from members of the majority to complaints of a minority. Of course, the word "privilege" is 100% guaranteed to elicit defensiveness (and if you dig into the responses, it does). Particularly when it's applied to Gentiles by a Jew - there's so much of a popular assumption that Jews are extra-privileged that remarks from a Jew about hegemony have a way of eliciting retorts about the % of Jews at elite colleges, the overrepresentation of New York Jews on sitcoms, the power of the IDF relative to the Palestinians, and so forth. It's difficult to convey how a group could be successful as well as marginalized, and to do so without resorting to 'look what happened in Germany,' which is, let's face it, the obvious retort. The word "privilege," though not inaccurate, doesn't necessarily help.
Then there's Feinstein's Easter-egg query. First, my vat-vill-dem-goyim-say? impulse is that it's probably Bad for the Jews to center a discussion around the spending-or-not of $1.99. I mean, I get that it's not about the money, and from the post itself, it's clear that the price is given to indicate precisely that. But those inclined to respond that Jews make too much of a fuss about everything are probably not going to see it like that. Anti-Semitism 101.
As for the substance of the matter, if this child is going to participate in an Easter egg hunt (as seems to have been a given), the matter's already been decided. How is participating and not paying better than participating and paying? How is that a principled objection to anything? And more to the point, it seems like my initial thoughts on this - Jews really don't care either way about Easter - may have been right: Writes Feinstein, "I viewed the egg hunt as something fun for the kids to do rather than as religious activity." Indeed. I personally don't care one bit whether Christians or atheists of Christian origin think Christmas, Easter, etc. are or are not holidays Jews should acknowledge, because it's not for them to say. But I do care what Jews think, and if Jews don't have a thing with Easter, it doesn't seem necessary to artificially impose the Christmas-thing on that holiday.
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