via
http://ift.tt/2gAPIni:
ashkenegro:
spockoandjimjim:
Before you send me an ask asking if it’s okay to write a Jewish character celebrating Christmas/at a Christmas party/doing anything christmassy, please take a full minute and consider why Jewish characters being assimilated into Christian tradition is so important to you.
Gentile followers: please reblog this.
Honestly I disagree. There are a multitude of reasons a Jewish character, or a Jewish person could be celebrating Christmas/ “doing something Christmassy”
1. One of their parents is a Gentile, so half their family is. Even though they’re Jewish, they still celebrate the holiday as a way to connect with family. (This is my case.)
2. It does kinda permeate our culture (which is a whole nother story about Christian-normativity) so Christmas Carols are “Holiday Songs” without changing any of the words, and Santa is shown as just as much of a “winter” figure as a snowflake.
This relates to one of my issues with questions about representation in media. Every plot detail is judged to be a conscious, intricately thought out decision by the writer, and the detail is judged at face value and used as a measuring stick for the “problematicness” of the writer. Maybe that Jewish character celebrating Christmas means nothing- it’s just the consequence of other plot details – having a Christian father (like I did), being forced to go to a Catholic school (like I was- long story short the education there was superior apparently), or maybe it’s an external manifestation of the character’s insecurity, both about their Judaism and themselves as a person. Come on guys, things can be used as plot elements and still be not desirable or a product of a hegemonic power structure, as the subjugation of Judaism is. ]
But that doesn’t mean that a writer who writes Jew at a Christmas party is inherently anti-Semitic– maybe the character just really likes cocoa and cookies.
Tbqh think there’s a potentially experience-erasing, homogenizing idea that OP’s words propagates: the idea that authentically represented Jews are, essentially, ethnically and religiously pure, that we all know and keep our traditions, that we do not know or keep those of any other cultures including groups we may be mixed with or the host cultures we live in. that we’re not assimilated, that it’s the Representative Ideal for us not to be assimilated.
like there are absolutely some sketchy Christians and converted-from-christianity atheists, pagans, etc. out there who are just like “everyone loves Christmas :03” with no respect or consideration for the many and nuanced experiences of nonchristian life in a majority Christian culture, and I’m leery of just going “go ahead, some Jews celebrate Christmas so it’s cool, have fun”. like, I think there should be a special level of consideration that comes in, when writing members of minority religions celebrating other religions’ holidays but it can be done, and to portray the breadth and depth of Jewish experience it MUST be done.
really, I think the thing to do is to portray a diversity of Jewish experiences and consider the unique characters of individual Jews.
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