Don't get me wrong. I am proud of my Jewish heritage even though I may not practice Judaism as much as I did when I went to hebrew school. But when you are a kid watching your Christian friends whooping it up on Easter it's hard not to want to jump the goyish fence.
Yesterday at work, we had our annual Easter egg hunt. It was a ridiculous amount of fun finding those little plastic treasures. What do we have as Jews? We get to go look for a single piece of dry matzah called the Afikomen at the Passover seder.
It isn't even a challenge! Usually it's stuck underneath someone's plate. Big fucking deal! I think we can take a lesson in good hiding from our non-Jewish friends cause some of those eggs were hard to locate. One was even placed in someone's hair. Brilliant.
Judaism has a few other "consolation prize" holidays. Let's look at Purim and Halloween. Purim celebrates the Jews overcoming a plot by wicked royal vizier Haman (sort of the Jafar of his time) to destroy the Jews.
During this holiday, we are encouraged to dress up in costumes depicting this tale. Sound familiar? Yes! It's Jewish Halloween! But instead of going trick or treating...it's a way to get us to go to temple where they serve us crappy prune danish. Sneaky. Very sneaky.
And of course the mother load of all holidays...Christmas. Now sure, we Jews love to brag that we have eight days of Hannukah while the Christians have one day of Christmas. But I seriously don't know any Jew who gets eight presents. In my family we would celebrate Christmas and justify it by changing out the props.
For example, on Christmas Eve when most Christian children around the world would "hang their stockings by the chimney with care", the Sumner children would put a tube sock on the dining room table. In the morning, instead of being filled with candies, cookies, toys and treats, our tube socks would be stuffed with an orange. That's it! Like Santa went to the fucking farmer's market in an effort to get us to eat healthier on Christmas.
And of course there was the absence of a Christmas tree. I remember how controversial it was when my Aunt bought a live tree and decorated it with bit red bows. Shocking! But still, we didn't have a Christmas tree. Instead we would decorate the hideous, plastic weeping willow in our living room with paper decorations.
Because if we bought a tree, or at least ornaments like most people did, that would be a sign that we are praising Jesus. So out of spite, I would write little notes to Jesus on the paper ornaments and hang them on the plastic leaves. "Dear Jesus...please get me a chemistry set."
It worked. I got a chemistry set and nearly set the house on fire.
And finally...one more thing about Easter and Passover. We get holiday pay on Easter. You think we Jews would be able to negotiate this for our own holidays.
And ham! I fucking LOVE HAM!
There! I said it. Now I am going to take my candy-filled eggs and give them away since I am on Weight Watchers. There is no justice!
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