Christmas is nothing for Jews to sing about

ONE more perspective on Mike Boehm’s piece on Christmas Jews [“For Christmas Jews, Wherever You Are,” Dec. 23]: Growing up in a half-Catholic, half-Jewish neighborhood in Philadelphia where all the Catholic kids went to parochial school, I attended a public school that was more than 90% Jewish. For me, the creches, nativity pageants and heavy doses of Christmas songs felt like a forced indoctrination that made me intensely uncomfortable.

The worst two carols were “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” with its final line, “O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!,” and “Silent Night.” Why “Silent Night”? Because of the line about “round yon virgin.” In the innocent ‘50s I didn’t know what a virgin was, but I assumed it was some sort of supernatural Christian creature that nice little Jewish boys didn’t believe in. As I sang these two carols, I always silently mouthed the offensive lines without saying them out loud, my mind filled with visions of generations of Jewish martyrs who had gone to their deaths rather than utter prayers to their conquerors’ false gods.

For me, being forced to witness these pageants and sing these songs was a clear message from society, delivered through the institution of the public school, that, in spite of all the talk of brotherhood and equality, I was an outsider who would never be truly accepted by the Christian society at large. How much more intense a message this must be for today’s school kids who are Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu.

Jeffrey Cohlberg

Rolling Hills Estates

MIKE BOEHM’S comment that the “exhaustive repertoire . . . was not watered-down ‘holiday’ fare but a full-on celebration of the birth of Our (Majority Rules) Lord” was spot on. Unfortunately, the humor which he sees in all of this is misplaced.

In fact, the Constitution of the United States and Bill of Rights exist, in part, to protect the rights of the minority. The concept of majority rule has strict limits. Otherwise, the majority could impose discriminatory policies at will against the minority races and creeds, wherever they may happen to find themselves, geographically or politically. I include those communities where Jews find themselves in the majority.

In the early ‘50s, my little brother and I grew up in what was then a small town, Las Vegas, where Jews were in the extreme minority. At Christmastime, my brother, at approximately age 6, reported to our father, who was the local temple’s choir director, that he was required to sing Christian liturgical music. My father made inquiry of the school principal who graciously offered to allow my brother to sit outside while the rest of his class sang along. Apart from the social consequences of separation, it can get very cold in Vegas.

There was not a single high school assembly, basketball game or football game which did not begin with some devotional prayer by a Christian clergyman.

Michael P. King

Beverly Hills

I hope Jewish artists continue to record Christmas music because their fans love them no matter what their faith is. Each Christmas when I hear Barbra Streisand sing “One God,” I get goose bumps all over in hoping that there will be Peace on Earth.

Roy Solloway

Laguna Hills