Hanukkah Came Long Before Christmas
A Christmas Education
A sweet, and dear 10-year-old child, who is being raised in the Christian faith, told me that Christianity was the first and only real religion, and all the others were made up. It makes me disheartened and concerned if this is what her family and church are teaching her. For just as America existed before Christopher Columbus claimed to discover it, so too, God existed before Christianity claimed God as its own.
According to WorldAtlas.com, this is the following order in which the five main religions first appeared. It lists the approximate years (CE for Common Era and BCE for Before Common Era):
1. Hinduism 2300 BCE
2. Judaism 640 BCE
3. Buddhism 563 BCE
4. Christianity 1 CE
5. Islam 570 CE
Knowing that Christianity was an outgrowth of Judaism, as The Old Testament comes from Judaism, which is why it’s called “Judeo-Christianity,” I asked her an important question I think we should all ask whenever anyone says anything that contradicts our prior knowledge and piques our curiosity, “Is that true?”
She said, “Yes.”
I asked, “How do you know it’s true?”
“Because the Bible tells me so.” She replied.
“Can you show me where in the Bible it says that? Do all Biblical scholars agree with your interpretations?” I asked.
She said, “I thought everyone believed the same way I do.”
Of course everyone would believe that all bread is white if the only bread one had ever seen was white bread. If we are to give our children any religious education, it must include all world religions to be complete.
When I read or hear people say that the phrase “Happy Holidays” takes the Christ out of Christmas, I wonder if they know that Jesus was a Jew who wasn’t actually born on December 25, or that Hanukkah, while not ”Jewish Christmas,” is usually around December (depending on the Hebrew calendar) and has been celebrated since 138 BCE; whereas the church in Rome didn’t begin formally celebrating Christmas on December 25 until 336 CE (473 years later), and that Christmas wasn’t formally recognized as a national holiday in the US until 1870.
The concept of Christmas was born of pagan celebrations.* In fact, the idea of using the birth of Christ to justify the holiday of Christmas was considered too “unbiblical” by Puritans and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Hanukkah and Christmas are just two of the holidays celebrated around the same time of year. “Happy Holidays” can start as early as September and go through to January 7.** The holiday season includes all the Jewish high holy days as well as significant cultural holidays like Día de Muertos, Halloween, Diwali, Thanksgiving, Winter Solstice, Yule, Kwanzaa, Omisoka, Boxing Day, and more.
I was four years old when I begged to go to churches and temples and begin my religious education; and still, I have more to learn than I will ever know. We are all far more ignorant than we are knowledgeable, and most of us lack in cross cultural and religious education. Therefore, we must temper our judgments, and offer ourselves and each other grace, as we gently educate each other on why “Happy Holidays” doesn’t take anything away from “Merry Christmas.” Rather, it expands to include Christmas.
Sage Justice is achingly sincere. Balancing wisdom and humor she most often writes deeply personal solution based pieces about the enduring virtues that connect us all: love and healing. She is an award-winning playwright and critically acclaimed performing artist who has appeared on stages from Madison Square Garden in New York City, to The Comedy Store in Hollywood, California. Ms. Justice is the author of Sage Words FREEDOM Book One, an activist, a member of the Screen Actors Guild and an alumna Artist-In-Residence of Chateau Orquevaux, France. She is a co-founder of The Unity Project which fuses activism with art, to educate and inspire, with a special emphasis on community engagement to end homelessness. She has a series of short reels about living with the rare genetic disorder, Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome that you can find in a highlight reel on her Instagram page @SageWords2027.
Photo By Margot Hartford
Permission to use art work provided by Larry Glassman. *History.com (The History of Christmas) **HistoryAndHeadlines.com (Is January 6th The Real Christmas)