Ho-ho no: Hanukkah’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas - The Boston Globe

Alison Lobron, in yesterday's Boston Globe Magazine, offers an amazingly sensible look at what "inclusion" can mean during the "holidays," from a Jewish perspective. Read the whole thing if you can, but here's the money quote:

The problem is, the more we pretend the two holidays are interchangeable, the more the meaning drains out of both. Hanukkah, which commemorates an ancient military victory, is supposed to symbolize Jewish resistance to assimilation, but it is now often treated as Christmas in blue. And Christians see their symbols and traditions repackaged as a generic holiday. What we’re left with is the lowest common denominator: shopping.

Amen.