I sympathize. Christmas didn’t make me happy when I was in the US either. But I choose to live in Israel where the holidays are from the torah. You *choose* to live in America. Why would you want to tell the Christian majority how “wearying and alienating” their holiday is?
Isn’t there some level of common decency that requires the respect of majority customs? Shouldn’t Jews want to avoid giving unnecessary insult? I just don’t get it.
And I don’t buy the facile equivalence of “respect me if you want me to respect you.” Although most Christians I know try very hard to be sensitive in dealing with Jews, there is no chance that they will ever be sensitive enough to make Christmas an easy time for Jews.
Partly that’s because of the nature of the historic divisions between Jews and Christians. Partly it’s because there’s a limit to how far any majority can go in accommodating minority customs that are unfamiliar to them. That’s just what it’s like to be a Jew among gentiles.
I think that before you go demanding more respect from Christians, you might consider whether telling them what you feel about their holidays in a public forum is a likely way of gaining that extra helping of respect you so crave.
My guess is that you would feel less weary if you focused less on how alienated you are as a Jew in a Christian country at Christmas time—and more on the generous offer of home that this American Christianity has extended to Jews for centuries.
