Slam against Jews distressing
We deeply appreciate Garrison Keillor's "Writers Almanac" and "A Prairie Home Companion." We love the gentle way he pokes fun at so many people and institutions. There's a deep civility and generousness of spirit to his radio show. And that's what made reading this column so distressing, in particular these sentences:
"And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write 'Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah'? No, we didn't."
If the article had made a principled critique on the secularization and commercialization of Christmas, that would have been fine. But instead, while complaining about Unitarians changing the words to "Silent Night," Keillor went after "Jewish guys" for "trashing up the malls."
His words came across as spiteful and mean-spirited, transforming a season that can be challenging for minorities into one in which Christian spiritual sensibility is somehow threatened by minorities, particularly by Jews. And in so doing, his writing dropped to a painfully familiar level of lowest-common-denominator thinking: When it's hard for folks to get into the true Christmas spirit while they're shopping for gifts in the malls, blame the Jews for trashing Christmas with those lousy holiday songs!
And this is where his words were chilling. Why? Because it's not hard to see the path from blaming Jews for trashing the malls to the story of Jesus and the money changers at the Temple in Jerusalem. Neither is it hard to see the path from the charge of taking Christ out of Christmas to the original deicide charge of Jews taking Jesus out of the world.
We envision a world where Lutherans and Jews and, indeed, all people are so deeply aware of and connected to each other's holidays that we can actually write songs about them! And if the tunes are any good, we'll sing them! They'll become part of our celebrations, regardless of the religious background of the composer.
"And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write 'Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah'? No, we didn't."
If the article had made a principled critique on the secularization and commercialization of Christmas, that would have been fine. But instead, while complaining about Unitarians changing the words to "Silent Night," Keillor went after "Jewish guys" for "trashing up the malls."
His words came across as spiteful and mean-spirited, transforming a season that can be challenging for minorities into one in which Christian spiritual sensibility is somehow threatened by minorities, particularly by Jews. And in so doing, his writing dropped to a painfully familiar level of lowest-common-denominator thinking: When it's hard for folks to get into the true Christmas spirit while they're shopping for gifts in the malls, blame the Jews for trashing Christmas with those lousy holiday songs!
And this is where his words were chilling. Why? Because it's not hard to see the path from blaming Jews for trashing the malls to the story of Jesus and the money changers at the Temple in Jerusalem. Neither is it hard to see the path from the charge of taking Christ out of Christmas to the original deicide charge of Jews taking Jesus out of the world.
We envision a world where Lutherans and Jews and, indeed, all people are so deeply aware of and connected to each other's holidays that we can actually write songs about them! And if the tunes are any good, we'll sing them! They'll become part of our celebrations, regardless of the religious background of the composer.
Denver Post
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