When Shabbat Meets Christmas

This sense of missing something kept gnawing at me, until one day I realized what it was: I missed the Christmas season. I missed that time of year in America. At first I denied it. Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home and in yeshivas, I had obviously never celebrated Christmas. How could I miss something that I never had? And being so Jewish, how could I miss the quintessential Christian holiday? It seemed religiously wrong, maybe even sinful.
Dennis Prager
A Yeshiva boy and Christmas

I discovered this article early this morning on twitter and found it fascinating. Particularly in the Messianic movement, we make a specific effort to separate our worship of the Messiah from Christmas or Easter in order to establish and maintain the "Jewishness" of Messianism. Prager's article indicates that in the larger Jewish world, that separation doesn't have to be absolute.

I decided to take time out from what I should be doing (I have one more paid authoring assignment due before the end of the year) and to briefly blog about this matter. I specifically wanted to address the events of this particular year. You probably know why.

The upcoming Shabbat starts on Christmas Eve and ends on Christmas Day. Just one week later, Shabbat worship competes with New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

In traditional Judaism, this isn't much of a point. In fact, my wife is helping out at the Chabad on Christmas Eve (well, the Erev Shabbat of December 24th, anyway) to cook a traditional Chinese meal (on the east coast in areas with a large Jewish population, Chinese restaurants serve Kosher meals on Christmas since Jews, who have the time off from work but who don't celebrate Christmas, have time on their hands). I don't imagine that there's a Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox synagogue in America that would even consider closing their doors because Shabbat falls on December 25th or January 1st and for the church, it is a complete "non-issue".

But closing our doors for two consecutive Shabbats exactly what my congregation is doing this year. I posted the notice on our website and sent out a broadcast email this morning.

I feel sad and even a little guilty for doing this, but that board decided that we would likely have few, if any, members or guests attending on either of those two dates.

But is it the right thing to do? I don't know. We presented it to the people who attended services yesterday (It snowed early, so we didn't have a stellar crowd) and no one objected. We already have members who'll be out of town over "the holidays" so attendence is dwindling as December advances. If we were a larger congregation, we likely wouldn't have made this decision, but we are a rather modest group.

What about you? All Messianic congregations are facing this "scheduling conflict" this year. How is your congregation managing this?

I'll wrap up my missive with another quote from Prager's article:

It is that season now, and I never fail to get goose bumps when I hear Burl Ives sing “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas,” let alone when I attend a live performance of Handel’s “Messiah,” surely the most glorious religious music ever composed. I love hearing people wish each other “Merry Christmas.” When my yarmulke-wearing children were younger, I used to take them to see beautiful Christmas lights on homes.

Those who wish to remove Christmas trees from banks and colleges and other places where Americans gather are not only attempting to rob the 90 percent of Americans who celebrate Christmas of their holiday, they are robbing this committed Jew, too.

Comments?