Column One

Memories of a Jew's Christmas

Every year there's a tasteless debate online about whether Jews should take notice of Christmas and, if so, how? But how could Jews not notice Christmas? Its spirit is everywhere, and our neighbors' joy should be our own.

I grew up in a home with an embroidered sampler on the breakfast-room wall that proclaimed Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men. Across town, a little tabletop town had been set up by Dallas, who must have had a last name even if I never learned it. He was one of a neighboring merchant's employees, and had set up a whole diorama in his modest frame house. My 5-year-old eyes must have lit up with wonder at the sight, for I remember it still. The careful craftsmanship, not to mention love, that had gone into that world-in-miniature was evident enough to have stayed with me all these many years later.

My mother, a devout Jewess, would have been surprised to learn that she had painstakingly embroidered a verse from their Bible to decorate one of our walls. For she loved that verse and found nothing sectarian about it. To her it was a fine sentiment all could share, and she had seen enough of war to love peace. For she had grown up on a battlefield of what was then called the Great War, not knowing it would be followed by a far greater one, or even who would be in control of her little shtetl in what is now Poland when she woke up next morning.

Ma somehow made it across the wide Atlantic to America in steerage. She made it by hook or crook, flirting with the ship's captain all the way across the ocean surrounded by her schiffs-shvetern, or ship-sisters, for protection. She remained friends with some of them for the rest of her life. And would visit a few whenever the family made it up from Shreveport to Chicago, the hub of our family ever since my grandfather had settled there at the turn of another century. It was my mother's future mother-in-law who had brought her over as a match for her boy Benny, and sure enough it worked out, which explains why I'm here. And why my older brother and sister got to be born in this country, thank God, instead of the Pale of Settlement under the Tsar.

So what's not to like about Christmas? Its spirit was all-pervasive up and down Texas Avenue in Shreveport and across the country back then, just as it is now, what with Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" on the radio. For radio was the dominant medium during my childhood years. Just because the song was supposed to be about a Christian holiday didn't mean my mother's eyes didn't mist over when she went to a tear-jerker of a movie about Christmas.

During her last days at Schumpert Sanitarium in Shreveport, she was attended to by the good nurses in their nuns' habits who would glide across the hospital's highly waxed floors to take care of her. Like angels called to earth. So please don't tell me about how Christmas is for Christians only. For, yes, it captures the hearts of all those who believe in peace on earth, good will toward men, even to this day. A Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Happy New Year!

Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Editorial on 12/25/2016

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