[lbo-talk] Chrismukkah & Jewsmas (already thinking about post-Xmas sales)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>If you emphasize their exchange value, then yes, giving money makes 
>more sense than giving often useless stuff. But if you emphasize the 
>emotional/sentimental value of gifts, they at not as much as 
>exchange of values, but hierophanic statements (i.e. expressions of 
>meaning embodied in a physically manifest form).  From that point of 
>view, a perfect gift should say something meaningful about the giver 
>and his/her relationship to the recipient, and as such requires some 
>pro-active thinking and understanding the person that receives the 
>gift. 
>
>That is the idea behind "Western," as you call, it gift giving - or 
>least it was before it was hijacked by marketers and turned into its 
>anti-thesis: mindless commercial consumption frenzy.
>
>Wojtek

<blockquot>[A] great misfortune was to befall Chanukah.  It fell near 
the Christian holiday of Christmas, and so when well-meaning 
Christians wanted to say something besides "Merry Christmas" to their 
Jewish friends, they grasped for the nearest holiday and said "Happy 
Chanukah".  Jewish children saw the presents their Christian friends 
received and asked why they didn't get any, and so well-meaning 
Jewish parents started to give Chanukah presents. And slowly Chanukah 
began to dissolve and degrade into little more than a Jewish version 
of Christmas.

But we know that Chanukah is not the Jewish Christmas! No, we must 
reclaim Chanukah for what it is: a celebration of freedom, faith and 
miracles from G-d.  And to do that, we create a new holiday, the 
Jewish Christmas. From this time forward, each year on the first 
Saturday after Christmas, Jews and Christians shall gather together 
and celebrate Jewsmas.

On Jewsmas, we decorate a house plant with colored lights, we eat 
fondue, and we play dreidel drinking games.  On Jewsmas, we take 
gifts from beneath the decorated plant and give them to our Jewish 
and Christian friends alike. On Jewsmas, we drink Manischevitz wine 
with soda water.  On Jewsmas, we celebrate the knowledge that 
Chanukah is not the goddamn Jewish Christmas, so leave it the hell 
alone!

<http://www.jewsmas.org/story.html></blockquote>

Cf. <http://www.chrismukkah.com/>
-- 
Yoshie

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<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
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