One of the reasons I made aliyah to Israel was to escape the all-pervading American Christmas culture, in whichm as a schoolboy, I was forced to participate.
Now along come the Russian immigrants, the Jewish ones, and erect a pine tree in their homes every year - not for Christmas, but for New Year - apparently a Soviet atheist innovation.
All my supplications and entreaties to my Russian friends that the tree is a Yuletide custom do not help. For them this is a New Year custom - the New Year of January itself being non-Jewish but of Chrisitan, actually of Roman pagan origin. (Many native Israelis go to a "Sylvester" party, not knowing that Sylvester was a Christian saint who persecuted the Jews.) |
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