Holiday ramblings - The Jewish Standard

The New York Post reported today a rather large oversight by the White House. Every year (in recent memory, anyway) the president has hosted a Chanukah party at the White House for all his Jewish friends (yet my invitation always seems to get lost in the mail). Well, invitations went out for this year’s party (I could still get one, it could happen), and smack dab on the front is a Christmas fir tree being delivered by horse-drawn carriage.

That just screams Chanukah, right?

Well, the White House admitted its goof and people, at least the ones quoted by the NY Post, seem to be taking it with good humor. But read the comments on the article, too. Some are asking why this is news, while others are getting bent out of shape because gosh darn, it’s the Christmas season and anybody who doesn’t celebrate Christmas is a Communist…. Or something like that.

Speaking of nationalism and Christmas, I hope everybody saw Stephen Colbert’s Christmas Special on Sunday, which has been rerunning all week and undoubtedly will continue to rerun through December. It perfectly parodies all those cheesy Christmas specials of years past and has an amusing musical number with Jon Stewart about Chanukah.

You can view “Can I interest you in Chanukah?” here.

On that note, The Big Lipowsky is making the trip to Pennsylvania tomorrow morning to visit the Bigger Lipowskys (the parents). Despite this, I do not get to observe the holiday that falls on Monday. Yes, Monday is a holiday — in Pennsylvania. What holiday, you ask? Why it’s Deer Day, the first day of hunting season. I certainly don’t mean this as a sleight against anybody who enjoys hunting but while growing up in central Pennsylvania I could never keep a straight face when I told people that I got off from school on Deer Day. I remember one year some family friends from New Jersey came to visit and they drove home on Monday. Their car broke down but they couldn’t find a gas station because they were all closed.

Which is why I’m driving back to New Jersey on Sunday.

Have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving. There will be no pardoning of turkeys in my household this year, they have been very bad birds.