https://blog.nli.org.il/en/nittel_nacht/
t appears that Jewish folklore recognized, adopted, and even preserved the older Christmas traditions long after they had faded from most of the world.
The German Reformation, the English Industrial Revolution, and American capitalism transformed Christmas into the holiday we know today, almost unrecognizable from what it once was, and almost all of the customs known today only go back to the last 200 years or so. Ironically, some of the only people who still observe these ancient holiday traditions belong to certain Ashkenazi Jewish communities, for whom the practices of their ancestors remain sacred. After all, as the old Jewish joke goes – what do Christians know about Christmas?
Somewhere on the Internet there's a fake Mishnah Berurah page discussion the laws of X-mas, with natural differences in observances between the Mechaber and the Rema.
ReplyDelete(I hope you're not using an artificial tree, that's just modernish and not our minhag!)
But if you're saying that Joe and Mary didn't have a fully functioning X-mas tree and Santa did visit baby whats-his-name in snowy Bethelem, well that's just kefirah!
That's essentially what the NT does.
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