The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Photo by kevindooley - http://flic.kr/p/5L6A5B

Ads on every TV, radio, billboard, newspaper and magazine all say the same thing come December—it’s the most wonderful time of the year. It’s wonderful for everyone; wonderful for the companies that sell presents that then advertise them, wonderful for the various media outlets that get money for those advertisements, wonderful for the parents that get Christmas bonuses, and wonderful for all those kids that benefit from those Christmas bonuses come Christmas morning. Look around at the lights covering almost every tree, bush and column, the hordes of reindeers and snowmen inside giant plastic globes. You can tell that everything is just wonderful. After all, it is the most wonderful time of the year.

The problem is, wonderfulness is not so wonderful for everyone. Sure, everyone who celebrates Christmas loves it; they can’t get enough of it actually. But then there are the people who aren’t quite so lucky, people who don’t get to eat a chocolate every day of December counting down until the 25th, and people who don’t decorate the family tree and go caroling. And when you don’t celebrate, it is hard to think of this holiday that consumes the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, the world, from Thanksgiving until the end of December as anything good. As a Jew, there’s something that’s pretty un-wonderful about watching everyone get to have a wonderful time and not being part of it.

But, Christmas is not all that different from Hanukkah, right?. Christmas has a story about a miracle, but so does Hanukkah! Christmas has special roast beef and Yule log cakes; well Hanukkah has latkes and gelt. Christmas has pageants, Hanukkah has dreidel, Christmas has special songs—so does Hanukkah.

Photo by kevindooley - http://flic.kr/p/5L6A5B

But Hanukkah and Christmas are decidedly different. Christmas is so universally recognized for its many symbols: Santa, the Christmas tree, Christmas lights. So that’s where I stopped trying to beat, or even measure up to Christmas. There’s simply no way to try to measure up to something that has so many millions of believers and such an immense industry; they have to make it their most wonderful time of the year, there’s too much invested in it, both emotionally and economically, for it not to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing Christmas itself. I’m not advocating some sort of religious competition for whose holiday is best. That wouldn’t be in the spirit of either holiday. But when it comes to how America celebrates, excluding all non-Christians for the month of December, I guess I am part of the “war on Christmas” Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly enjoy telling us about. But don’t worry—Christmas is winning by a long shot. It will still be the most wonderful time of the year.

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