Here are some resources for you to learn the origins and basis for Christmas, as well as guidelines for Chanukah, and some other thoughts I had.

Table of Contents for this post:

1. Can Noahides Celebrate Christmas?
2. Can Noahides Celebrate Chanukah?
3. Historical Background
4. How to Handle Family Conflict Over Christmas and Chanukah
5. There Are Worst Things Than Christmas Trees

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Can Noahides Celebrate Christmas?

From The Path of the Righteous Gentile:

… the Noahide is strictly forbidden to create a new holiday that has religious significance and claim that it is part of his own religion, even if the religion is the observance of the Seven Noahide Laws. For example, it would be forbidden to make a holiday celebrating the subsiding of the waters of the Flood of Noah or anything of the like. And, all the more so, it would be forbidden to institute holidays that ascribe religious significance to events [or myths] outside the purview of the Seven Noahide Commandments [for example, Easter or the popular holiday on Dec. 25].

Celebrating secular activities and commemorating historical events, even if they involve a festive meal, are permissible [for example, the Independence Day of your own country, such as July 4th in the U.S.]. [It is also permissible for Noahides to participate in days which are set aside by their nation for remembering to praise and give thanks to the One True G-d, such as Thanksgiving and the National Day of Prayer in the U.S.]

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Can a Noahide Celebrate Hanukkah?

Yes! (there may be Rabbinic approaches that disagree.  iHN follows those that do agree, namely Rav Yoel Schwartz.)

…as long as Noahides don’t turn their celebration into a new religion or incorporate idolatrous practices into their celebration. Doing so is forbidden.  If they light candles, they should not say the blessings over them since they were not commanded to do these things, whereas the Jews were commanded after G-d made the miracles for them. However, reading the story of Chanukah, singing songs of praise to G-d, and speaking about G-d’s greatness are appropriate for Noahides.  See Nancy’s guide below.

Nancy, of the Oklahoma B’nai Noach Society has put together a lovely Chanukah Guide based on her Bnei Noach family’s yearly celebration.

You can donwload the PDF of the guide at the following link:

http://www.okbns.org/Free.html

Chanukah begins at sundown on the 25th of the Hebrew month of Kislev.
This year it is Sunday December 21st.
Each day of Chanukah begins at the evening.
So the first day is Sunday-night & Monday-day.

Here is the introduction to Nancy’s guide (with permission):

Every year as our family begins to prepare for Chanukah, we get a lot of questions from family and friends about why and how we celebrate this “Jewish” holiday.  This guide is written to answer the most common questions and provide a starting point for other Gentiles to begin a tradition of celebration in their own homes.

Unlike the Jews, Gentiles have no command to celebrate Chanukah.  But we may choose to do so as long as we don’t turn our celebration into a new religion or incorporate idolatrous practices into our celebration.

Our family likes to read part of the story each night and light the appropriate number of candles according to the Jewish tradition.  On the eight night, we invite everyone we have room for (always making sure to include someone new) and read the whole story from the beginning!

This book tells only of the way our family celebrates this holiday — which may be different from the way other families celebrate.  However, all celebrations include telling the Chanukah story, lighting candles, and having a lot of fun.

Here are the rules our family uses for gift-giving:

1. The gift must increase or reinforce the recipient’s knowledge or awareness of G-d.
2. The giver should be able to explain the relationship of the item to one of the lessons of Chanukah or how the gift will benefit the recipient to be more aware of G-d.

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Historical Background of Christmas

The Real Story of Christmas (download) (low bandwidth)
The Real Story of Christmas (download) (high bandwidth)

(To read answers to the following questions, go here:
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm -iHN)

1. When Was Jesus Born?
2. How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December 25?
3. The Origins of Christmas Customs
4. The Christmas Challenge

Excerpt:

The Christmas Challenge

• Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated carelessly.  For millennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept away in the season’s festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider the celebration’s intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.
• Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the “curse of the Torah.”  It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.
• Christmas is a lie.  There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25th.
• December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, and murdered.
• Many of the most popular Christmas customs – including Christmas trees, mistletoe, Christmas presents, and Santa Claus – are modern incarnations of the most depraved pagan rituals ever practiced on earth.

Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday’s real significance.  If they do know the history, they often object that their celebration has nothing to do with the holiday’s monstrous history and meaning.  “We are just having fun.”

Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday.  Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices.  Imagine that on that day, Jews were historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries.

Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday.  April 20th arrived. They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.  They had never heard of gas chambers or death marches.  They had purchased champagne and caviar, and were about to begin the party, when someone reminded them of the day’s real history and their ancestors’ agony.  Imagine that they initially objected, “We aren’t celebrating the Holocaust; we’re just having a little Hitlerday party.”  If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you could say a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?

On December 25, 1941, Julius Streicher, one of the most vicious of Hitler’s assistants, celebrated Christmas by penning the following editorial in his rabidly Antisemitic newspaper, Der Stuermer:

If one really wants to put an end to the continued prospering of this curse from heaven that is the Jewish blood, there is only one way to do it: to eradicate this people, this Satan’s son, root and branch.

It was an appropriate thought for the day.  This Christmas, how will we celebrate?

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How To Handle Family Conflict Over Christmas and Chanukah

(NOTE: this is a Jewish woman speaking with a Rabbi, not a Noahide woman.  However, I think the Rabbi’s advice is applicable to anyone really. -iHN)

family_trouble: what is the proper way to handle family who celebrates Christmas and we wish to bring our son up in a strictly Jewish environment?

family_trouble: I should explain–it is my mother who was born Jewish, and raised us Jewishly. My sister married a gentile and thus my mother is trying to please us all-celebrating X-Mas and Chanukah. My son was born naturally Jewish.

Rabbi Gurkow: and you are your son’s mother or father?

family_trouble: I am my sons mother.

Rabbi Gurkow: I see

Rabbi Gurkow: in answer to your question, since you tell me that you and your son are Jewish the correct thing for you to tell your mother is: “thank you very much for thinking of us during this family time, we will gladly participate in the Chanukah celebration, but please understand that we will not be coming to the christmas celebration

Rabbi Gurkow: “that would be contrary to the values and religion in which we are trying to conduct our lives and raise our daughter”

Rabbi Gurkow: then send your parents and your sister nice cards and gifts that have nothing to do with christmas and everything to do with family and love

family_trouble: We tried that for the first time this year and now my extended family is not speaking to us because of our decision. Should we make any attempts to heal the rift?

Rabbi Gurkow: yes
Rabbi Gurkow: but be sure to understand the dynamics first… the root of their irritation
Rabbi Gurkow: is it that your religion is different or that you sent anti family signals?

family_trouble: That we are “too Jewish” now and they cannot relate to us any longer.

Rabbi Gurkow: That itself can be seen in two ways described above. can you discern what the root is?

family_trouble: Yes, I was raised secular and my mother would prefer not to acknowledge her Jewish roots any longer.

Rabbi Gurkow: if the problem is indeed religious then you need to know first and foremost that the shoe is on the other foot… your family is being incosiderate here not yoruself

Rabbi Gurkow: you are not required to participate when the values at an event are contrary to the choices you made in life… you need not be brought to another’s life preferences… you have the right to make your own choices

Rabbi Gurkow: and if they cannot see that, then it is indicative that they do not respect your maturity, independance and inherent right to make your life’s choices
Rabbi Gurkow: you are howevr required to be civil, polite and nice
Rabbi Gurkow: if you have done that then you have fulfilled your requirement
Rabbi Gurkow: so in answer to your question, you should make efforts to make ammends — but do so without guilt… know that you are the one reaching out across a divide that you did not create

family_trouble: Thank you Rabbi–this has been a very painful time for me and my own family. I will take your advise and hope that the rift can be healed. I also plan to discuss this with my own Rabbi for support.

Rabbi Gurkow: I can only imagine how painful a subject this is, I can only imagie the pain of being left alone and misunderstood, and I must tell you that this will not go away… it will be an issue every year… so you must face it head on

Rabbi Gurkow: it may still have after-effects but at least it will have been dealt with
Rabbi Gurkow: please do discuss this with your rabbi
Rabbi Gurkow: he may have an entirely differnt approach, but that will largely depend on your rabbi

family_trouble: I think he will agree with you, Rabbi. I just needed support from a Rabbinical source at this time. You have been so very kind to lend you time and wisdom. Many thanks.

Rabbi Gurkow: your welcome
Rabbi Gurkow: shabbat shalom

family_trouble: Shabbat Shalom and thank you for providing me with some peace.

(source: http://www.askmoses.com/en/article/703,136539/What-is-the-proper-way-to-handle-an-invitation-to-a-family-Christmas-party.html)

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There Are Worst Things Than Christmas Trees

(I feel very similar to Shira who authored the below statements on cross-currents -iHN)

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In his popular book “To Kindle a Soul” Rabbi Kelemen discusses the three ways that we raise a child.

1. Planting
2. Building
3. Prayer

Planting is the instilling of values on a constant basis.  We plant seeds of potential, of values in a child and continuously water the seed as the child grows.

Building is the sudden fixing or enforcing of an idea or habit that cannot be left to the slow growth of “planting.”

Prayer is the final component, which acknowledges that a mother and father are two out of three partners in the raising of a human being.  This aspect is important because we will never be able to watch over our children 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but G-d can.

TV works against you if you are trying to plant seeds of positive values in your child.  The TV is a force that has clinically addictive features for the viewer, especially children.  Yet this is something that spews values of the pop culture, not of the parents.

Here is an interview of a mother who does not let TV run her home.
Here is a some research on the destructive nature of television, also by Rabbi Kelemen.

In the cold and dark of winter, we must remember and await the spring.  We await the Light and the Redemption.

Shabbat Shalom.

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From Blossoms
by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the joy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

“The baser a person, the harder for him to distinguish hatred of evil
from hatred for people who do evil…
The exalted trait of people with lofty souls
is their ability to make this distinction.
Their hatred of evil
is trained solely on the evil itself…
and thus the light of loving kindness
illuminates their wisdom.”

(Orot HaKodesh 4:497)

Last post I suggested a definition for Noahide Culture:

The expression of love, admiration, and reverence for the G-d of Israel, His Torah, and His People.

I had begun a camparison of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.  However, I was not successful in clearly bringing out the lessons I thought I could bring out from their biographies.  Both men had greatness and both had flaws.

The point I want to bring across, however, is the following:

America is a religious country.  Statistically, America is by far the most religiously observant country in the Western world.  For that reason, I think that there is still hope for America in terms of her role in the End of Days.

Yes, America/Rome is descended from Esav, but what was Esav’s role supposed to be in this world?

Originally Esav was to be guardian of the physical, while Yaakov would be guardian of the spiritual.  Together they would form a symbiotic relationship, supporting one another.  Only after Esav failed to use his talent for the good did Yaakov have to transform into Yisrael, who can master both the physical and the spiritual simultaneously.

(Second Chance) [The] Netziv [commentary] reminds us of the potentially symbiotic relationship that can exist between the descendants of Yakov and Esav, specifically embodied by Rav Yehudah haNasi (Rebbi) and Antoninus [of Rome].

The spiritual greatness of Rebbi was used to elevate Antoninus, while, in turn, Antoninus could assure much of Rebbi’s temporal concerns (see Avodah Zara 10b). When the latter taught the former, the power and splendor of Rome was placed at the disposal of the Jewish leader. Seforno on 27:29 suggests that this potential symbiotic relationship was what was envisioned by Yitzchak when he wanted to bless Esav with physical wealth and power [in the first place].

Further more, Rashi on Genesis 32:23 brings the Midrash that blames Yakov for not allowing Esav the opportunity to do teshuva!

What’s clear is that the future is not sealed.  Teshuva, returning to G-d’s Torah, is still open for those with a heart beating to the drum of Truth.  I believe this to be true even for Esav, as manifest by America today.

Although, it behooves me to note that my opinion here seems to contradict some of the greatest sages in all of Jewish history, namely Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai t”zl.

So perhaps teshuva for Esav as a nation is unrealistic, but certainly parts of the nation of Esav are changing their ways, as in the beautiful emergence of the Bnei Noach.

What is Noahide culture?

It’s certainly not whatever-Jews-seem-to-do.  Nor is it whatever-Gentiles-seem-to-do.  So what is it?

First of all, we need to understand that what most people think of as “Jewish Culture” is not really Jewish.  It’s the expression of assimilated Jews into their host culture.  A prime example is Chanukah in America.

The core concept of the Chanukah story is Jews defending Judaism against those who wanted to assimilate into Greek culture.  This included Jew vs. Greek and Jew vs. Jew, r”l.  Tragically Chanukah in America has a lot to do with assimilation (8 days of presents?) and little to do with Judaism.

I recently saw cards and books such as the ones below at a Jewish Museum gift shop (of all places).

This is not an expression of Judaism.  It is an expression of America’s melting pot.  Orthodox Jews prefer that America (at least) be a salad bowl of distinct foods rather than a melting pot of indistinct alloy.

So what is true Jewish culture?
It’s the thing you find in every Jewish culture around the world.  Iraqi Jews never heard of European klezmer music because Klezmer music is only a byproduct of Jewish exile in Europe¹; it is not inherently Jewish - however, both European and Iraqi Jews read from the Torah, study Talmud, eat matzah but not chametz on Passover, etc.

True Jewish culture is Torah and Mitzvot (commandments).

So what is true Noahide culture?
If there even is such a thing as Noahide culture, I would like to suggest it is that which is found in every Noahide home and Noahide community, no matter where they are on the planet.

True Noahide culture, in my opinion, is the expression of love, admiration, and reverence for the G-d of Israel, His Torah, and His People.

The question is, what direction will American culture take from here on out?

Land of Noahides or Land of Other-hides?
Land of Jefferson or Land of Hamilton?

To be continued in the next post…

Below you can listen to Rabbi Tovia Singer’s lecture from the 2008 Noahide World Conference.

Rabbi Singer has a show on IsraelNationalNews.com and also is the founder of OutreachJudaism which does anti-missionary work on behalf of G-d’s people Israel.

Listen Here.

Hat tip to Ari.

Excerpts I especially enjoyed:

I’ll tell you this, if tomorrow the U.N. comes out with a resolution blessing you, supporting you, if Jimmy Carter next week comes out and blesses you, check your theology - haha! - because you don’t want the praise of the nations of the world, you want the praise of the G-d of Heaven.

I also enjoyed:

We know from the book of Genesis chapter 12 that G-d blesses those nations that bless Israel, that bless the Children of Israel, and curses those who damn our people, because in reality when they curse Israel they’re cursing the G-d of Israel.

So it’s really quite illogical for someone to say “I’m gonna put my hope with Rome.”  Hard to imagine how someone today would stand up and raise his fist against the G-d of Israel, after all we’ve seen mighty miracles here in the Holy Land.

So [what I've said up until here] are the two parts of the Gentile world that have turned their backs on the G-d of Israel.  And G-d will harden theirs hearts as he did Pharaoh.  And they’ll rise up to destroy Jerusalem.  And the Bible tells us in Zakariah chapter 12 that G-d will take even the weakest Jew, verse 8 & 9: “He will strengthen him like David even like the angels of the Lord of Hosts.”

But then there’s this third part, this other section of the Gentile world, who will choose the G-d of Israel, above every other god, above every other lord, above every other host.  And then G-d is going to refine them like gold.  That’s you, the Righteous Gentile, who chose the G-d of Israel.

Also I enjoyed this:

You recognize that the Almighty is working with the Children of Israel.  And you made a tough decision.  I would imagine that for many of you listening to my voice right now, walking out of a Church…You might have lost some family over that decision; to this day it’s quite possible that your mom won’t even talk to you.  Sisters have disowned you because you left The Assemblies of G-d, you won’t walk into a Baptist Church, and you won’t praise any other name than the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I don’t wish any suffering upon you, but if you’ve suffered on behalf of the G-d of Israel, you’re alright.  I wouldn’t sell it on the open market, I wouldn’t put your suffering on eBay.  [But] the Almighty sees every pain that you’ve endured on His behalf, that’s uppercase H.  And you’ve decided to cleave to the Children of Israel.

“When a person diminishes himself and is filled with humility, he draws nearer to his essence and the crux of his soul is revealed to him in all its glory. From its reflection he sees all the heavenly majesty in the depths of his own infinitely great soul.”

(Erpalei Tohar 125)

As you know,

Everyone who accepts the seven [Noahide] commandments and is careful to perform them – this person is of the Chasidei Umos HaOlam, (Righteous Amongst the Nations) and he has a portion in the World to Come.

He accepts them and performs them because they were commanded by the Holy One Blessed is He revealed to us by the hand of Moshe Rabbenu that the Bnei Noah were previously commanded in these things.

Since the state of Israel is dominated by a secular government, they do not honor you lovely Bnei Noach for fulfilling the above Torah definition of “Righteous Gentile.”  Israel does, however, recognize mesirat nefesh - self-sacrifice and heroism.  And thus…

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(IsraelNN.com) Israel plans to name Sandra Samuel, who saved the life of two-year-old Moshe Tzvi Holtzberg from the terrorist attack on the Chabad House in Mumbai, as a person who is “Righteous among the Nations,” – a Righteous Gentile It is the highest Israeli award that may be presented to a non-Jew.

Samuel will be the first citizen of India to be honored with the title. Other recipients of the honor, which is bestowed by a special commission headed by a Supreme Court Justice, include Oskar and Emilie Schindler, and Raoul Wallenberg. It has generally been awarded to people — 22,000 to date — who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

I just spoke with Jim Long of the Noahide Nations radio show on Arutz 7/IsraelNationalRadio.  What a great guy with a lot of wonderful information.

Click on the link belowe to listen to Jim and Ray’s show this week.

Esav - The Ultimate Consumer