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I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but it kind of feels like it's ignoring how culture happens in a way that's hard to describe.
Like, yeah, Hanukah wasn't previously a major Jewish Holiday? And now it is.
How do we know it's a major Jewish holiday? Because of how much people talk about it and celebrate it and make a big deal about it and etc. Because of how much Hannukah paraphenilia is sold in stores.
The exact same way we know that Christmas is a major Christian holiday. Because Christians treat it as such.
It's not like Christmas has been what it is in modern America since 0AD. The date wasn't even known as Jesus's birthday until they made that up in the 200s. The holiday is descended from winter solstice festivals. In the 900s it was just celebrated by reading a special liturgy, and had nowhere near the importance of Easter or Good Friday. Gifts weren't exchanged until the latter half of the 19th century, most of what we recognize as the cultural event of 'Christmas' is a capitalist invention over the past century.
Christmas became 'important' for various reasons at various times, which is exactly what happened to Hannukah. Now they're both important and people treat them as such appropriately.
There are hundreds of holidays I've never even heard of celebrated all over the world - why are all these people talking about and celebrating and making a big deal about hanukah etc
Are you a jew?
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That part isn’t true, Jesus’ birthday is on December 25 because it’s 9 months after March 25, which was assumed to be the date of the annunciation based on the belief that Jesus was conceived the same day as he died. Saturnalia, the winter solstice festival that would have been most familiar to early Christians, takes place before Christmas and it’s not unreasonable to trace a few customs from saturnalia to Christmas(certain decorations, for example), but they were thought to be different holidays even at the time.
This explanation is often repeated but it's a lot less certain than people would have you believe. The theory goes "it was a widespread belief among ancient jews that prophets lived perfect lives and died in the same day they were born", also known as the "integral age theory".
There's two problems with this, the first one is that it is almost completely unsourced. The only source that exists is in the Rosh Hashanah and states that only Moses was born and died on the same day (for rather contrived reasons). Now, that text is about right in terms of dates for the establishment of Christmas and Jesus was supposed to be better than Moses, so it makes sense. However there is another problem: Jesus didn't die on the day of his birthday.
So the entire argument is moot, someone placed Jesus birthday on the 25th for some reason, that reason has been deleted from history. It is plausible that the integral age was used as a contrived excuse to place it there, but we don't know for sure. It can not be the real reason (because a straightforward application would just tell you that he was also born on easter). The real reason has likely been deleted from history.
Sources:
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It's not though. And considering that Jews comprise only about 1.8% of the US population and live in only a few parts of the country, Hanukkah’s presence in America’s public square is clearly astroturfed. From a quick google search, only 38% of Israeli Jews think Hanukkah is one of the three most important Jewish holidays. And I'm willing to bet that number there is also inorganic due to American influence. If you asked that question 50 years ago, it would probably be significantly lower. Hanukkah isn’t even mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. It along with Kwanzaa (fake holiday) were memed into reality so "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" could become "Happy Holidays".
Who cares about what Israeli Jews think?
Please write as though everyone is reading and you would like them to be involved in the conversation. "Who cares what $GROUP thinks" is not permissible rhetoric here.
I didn't mean it in a disparaging way towards Israeli Jews, my point was more like "why is it important that Israeli Jews don't care about Hanukkah" - but I could have been clearer.
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It's a control group to compare with Jews who live in Christian majority countries showing that Jews only care about Hanukkah if they live in a place where Christmas is culturally dominant.
Halloween was much bigger in the US than other countries, and still is. Different countries are...different. Suffice to say I don't think the presence of difference WRT holiday celebration/importance means much. There is no "true" Judaism from which all other Judaism must be compared.
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That doesn't mean that Hanukkah isn't a major Jewish holiday in America, which is what the guy was saying. Cultures are different in different places.
Let's review. We have Kwanzaa (fake holiday made up in the 1960's), Hanukkah (a non-important holiday in Judaism celebrated by an ethnic group that is less than 2% of the population in the US), and Christmas, which according to polls approximately 85% of Americans celebrate. Furthermore, it was the Christmas Season until very recently, and Christianity is the religion of the vast majority of Americans now and historically. Yet now it is "The Holidays". Let's take this down to Sesame Street level logic here. One of these things is not like the other. It's really that simple. And the only reason it's even considered important is because it happens around the same time as Christmas, and some Jews wanted to have a holiday near Christmas and because it's useful as a narrative tool to make the cultural change to Holidays instead of Christmas.
It's frankly absurd it has as much cultural cache in the US as it does considering all those factors. There's almost as many Indian Americans as Jews. Diwali should be considered just as important as Hanukkah by this logic. It only makes sense since it happens during the holiday season. Diwali is the most important festival of the year in India after all.
I wonder if you live in one of the few areas with a high % of Jewish residents, because I grew up in one and Hannukah was fairly high profile but now I live in a place without many/any Jews and there's no Hannukah presence which makes me feel as though there was no "astro turfing" but rather a natural reflection of the population of a place.
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Yeah, American Jews wanted a holiday for their kids to celebrate around the time their Christian friends were celebrating Christmas and so Hanukkah rose in importance. It's quite clearly a major Jewish holiday in America.
Which one of these is not like the other?
Hanukkah - an objectively non-important holiday in Judaism celebrated by an ethnic group that is less than 2% of the population in the US
Kwanzaa - fake holiday made up in the 1960's
Christmas, which according to polls approximately 85% of Americans celebrate. Furthermore, it was the "Christmas Season" until very recently, and Christianity is the religion of the vast majority of Americans now and historically.
If you need more evidence, there literally wasn't a "Happy Holidays" until after WW2: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22happy+holidays%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
It really didn't even start being a major thing until the New Left and proto-SJWs started showing up in academia and pushing for inclusiveness and PC shit in the 1980's.
You keep stating this but it's simply not true. It's important to many American Jews.
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Don't Christians celebrate New Year's right around Christmas as well? I always assumed "the Holidays" started as a Christian thing and not an inclusive thing.
A little bit, but also St Nicholas Day, Epiphany/Theophany, and Three Kings Day.
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New Year's is an important holiday in the Catholic Church but not Christianity more broadly, and it's not really that important of a secular holiday- just a day off work.
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Where I live it is always happy holidays since mid December if you don't expect to see the person till the next year. But on 24-25 it is Merry Christmas and on 31-1st it is happy new year. And if you are fossil enough to send a postcard it is We wish you merry christmas and happy new year.
To culturally appropriate sjw slang - the one is the lingo of inclusion, the other of erasure. Holidays shouldn't be thought of as replacement for christmas, but as a complementary catch all.
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It doesn't start until after world war 2: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22happy+holidays%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
I did a little digging on NGram, and found some interesting things. First, look at this graph. I for one, have never heard someone wish me a "Prosperous New Year", and yet looking through this has a sudden uptick in popularity during the early 1900's and then seems to drop off entirely.
While "Happy Holidays" certainly becomes popular after WWII, there are pre-WWII instances like this one from 1937 which has a "Happy Holidays and Prosperous New Year." A quite early one is this one from 1921, although this one seems to support a Jewish origin for the term - since Liberman is a common Ashkenazi surname.
However, I have also found entries like this one from a 1904 Christian periodical.
I'm inclined towards a hypothesis that "happy holidays" has been an existent but uncommon greeting since at least 1904, it likely caught on in the Jewish community pre-WWII, and then was popularly adopted from the Jewish community's usage after WWII, based on this investigation. So while a Christian origin for the phrase isn't unlikely, a Jewish origin for its popularization is fairly likely.
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