Hanukkah is not Jewish Christmas.
Hanukkah starts December 12.
To wish someone a Happy Hanukkah, say “Hanukkah Sameach!” (Happy Hanukkah) or simply “Chag Sameach!” (Happy Holiday). Or if you want to show off your Hebrew skills, say “Chag Urim Sameach!”
"This year (2013) Hanukkah overlaps with Thanksgiving for the first time since 1888. Such a coincidence will not happen again for over 70,000 years. I’m not usually an early adaptor, but the chances of my being here for this future union of Pilgrims and Maccabees is slight, so I have decided to celebrate this conjunction of holy days with a special prayer: Hodu L’Adonai.
Those who know their Hebrew Bible will recognize Hodu L’Adonai as the opening verse of Psalm 136: Hodu L'Adonai ki tov, ki l'olam chasdo/Give thanks to God, Who is good, for God’s mercy is boundless. But this prayer of thanksgiving holds a special surprise.
Hodu is rightly translated here as “Give thanks,” but more surprising it is also the Hebrew word for “turkey.” Yes, there is a slight difference in spelling between these two hodus but let us not limit our great and glorious God to the grammatical quirks of Hebrew. For thousands of years God hid the link between thanksgiving and turkey in plain sight, waiting for us to find it.
As we gather on Hanukkah and light our candles in celebration of the Maccabees’ victory over the Greco–Syrians let us sing hodu l’Adonai: give thanks to God, and then let us give turkey to God as well."
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"My problem with Christianity is that it teaches Christians to worship Jesus rather than to become Christ. Of course you might challenge me saying, “But that’s because you aren’t a Christian.” And I would respond, “That’s why I’m not a Christian!” If Christianity taught me to be Christ, to awaken to my truest Self and realize that all beings are manifestations of the singular Be–ing that is God, I would be drawn to it like a moth to a flame. But not being a Christian doesn’t keep me from loving Christmas.
For me, Christmas is the annual remembrance that each of us was born holy, that each of us a child of God the way a wave is a child of the ocean. Christmas celebrates our capacity to become fully God-realized (just as Good Friday reminds of the cost that realization demands, and Easter reminds us of the promise it contains). I look at the Christ child as the seed of God-realization present in each of us, and see in this holy day a chance to refocus my efforts at cultivating in me the mind that was in Jesus Christ (Philippians 2:5).
What is this mind? I believe it is Chochma/Sophia/Lady Wisdom, the Divine Mother of all things arising in the Infinite Nonduality of God, and manifesting what the Taoists call the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. She is the mind that knows the interdependence of all things. She is the love, compassion, justice that arises with this knowing, and She is the courage to confront the powers and principalities that oppose these things and this knowing.
Christmas is too important to be left in the hands of those who can see in Jesus only three options. Claim it for yourself, or better, claim it for your Self. Merry Christmas."
~ Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro is widely recognized as one of the most creative figures in contemporary American Judaism.
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