Jews Who Love Christmas

So, because it's late on the night before this is relevant...let me just put this out there to the universe and see what you think. My friend Josh Lamar and I did a song called "I Hate Xmas." It's about how I actually sort of like Christmas.



And if you look deep enough, you'll be able to see some strains of when I was in high school and joined this Christian fundamentalist Bible Club and got really into it...or maybe not? What do you think?

(You can also download an mp3 of my live show from a few years ago that features the poem, along with, uh, an 11-minute jam (I promise it doesn't suck) with some musical people about killing mice.)

Jewish Christmas Music, 2010 Edition

You know, I don't think I've ever actually heard "White Christmas."

Sure, I know that it was written by Irving Berlin, a Jewish immigrant, and that it's become a vital part of American culture. I'd definitely heard part of it before, the end part, where everyone sings "may all your Christmases be white"...but does the song really go like that? Is it really sort of pretty and actually funny? Does this make me a bad Jew? (Add this to the fact that I admitted on our Jewish parenting site that I actually like Halloween, I'm about to be kicked out of the so-Orthodox-I-don't-own-a-TV camp for reals.)

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I Hate Christmas

We are in the strange void between Hanukkah and Christmas, a time where Jews are already sick of being proud and silver-and-blue glitter and singing Maoz Tzur, while the rest of the western world is just about to kick their holiday into high gear. I know it's not fair to pit our minor (though fun) holiday against the birth of the central dude of the Christian religion. But I can't really help it. Kyle Broslovsky was right: it is hard to be a Jew on Christmas. Which doesn't at all explain the song that Josh Lamar and I put together called "I Hate Christmas." It's actually about, uh, why I like Christmas. You can listen to it free right there, or you can download the whole mini-EP for just $1. It's so worth it...both because it's good music, and because you can crank it loud enough to drown out all that Christmas music on the radio. What's interesting is the way this came about. Joshua Lamar, the non-Jewish drummer for the Jewish punk band Can!!Can, asked me if he could have some of my spoken-word tracks to play with. I sent him a volley of a bunch of them -- a while Christmas sack full of presents, you could say -- and the one he picked to work on first is the Christmas one. So take a listen! And, by the way, there's some raw language on it, just as a warning. I'm still kind of nervous about posting this -- much more nervous than posting the Hanukkah songs that we commissioned a few weeks ago -- but, then again, it's a whole different ball game. After all, "Mi Yimalel" and "Maoz Tzur" were written by great people thousands of years ago. This is just me ranting about Bob Dylan and Bette Midler. What do you think?

Santa's All-Star Jewish Dream Team

There's a seasonal uproar about seasonal messages. In the gentile world, the debate rages: How early is too early to start celebrating Christmas? This year, Nordstrom got major props for delaying their Christmas savings until after Thanksgiving.

On the other hand, MyJewishLearning just posted our first Christmas video, Christmas in Calgary, in which comic Ophira Eisenberg tells a story about wanting to visit a mall Santa Claus.

While we were filming, something occurred to me: The same exact thing happened to me as a kid! (And, if you've seen the video, Santa had a very similar response for me.) And then something else occurred: There are probably enough Jews with zany Christmas stories so that we could stock a full-fledged production of A Miracle on 34th Street -- or, at the very least, to create a dream team of Jewish Christmas all-stars.

First up, the character of the Hasidic rabbi in Nathan Englander's story "Reb Kringle," from For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. I forget the protagonist's actual name, but it doesn't really matter; Reb Kringle is all you need to call him. He's an in-demand Santa who makes some extra cash every holiday season dressing up in a red jumpsuit -- the managers love him, because they don't have to rent a beard, and that the kids love it because it's so realistic.

And, of course, we'd also have to include Dvora Myers, an observant Jewish breakdancer and gymnast, who just had a seasonal gig as a breakdancing elf.

I don't know who would play the reindeer, but maybe the skeleton reindeer from Nightmare Before Xmas? The kid sitting on Santa's lap, though -- that would definitely be played by Ophira Eisenberg. Just so we get to witness the moment in the video. It's a whole new kind of priceless.

How to Write a Hanukkah Song

The rest of the world is still eons away from Hanukkah. If you're super-prepared -- like my mother, for instance -- you're just starting to think about buying Hanukkah presents*. If you're like me, you'll realize on December 1 that Hanukkah starts on December 11, and think you have tons of time, and then on December 11, as Shabbat is starting, you'll totally freak out that you haven't bought anyone presents yet.

But this year is different than all other years. Why, you ask? Because I wrote a Hanukkah song.

I sat down with my songwriting partner, Mista Cookie Jar, months ago. At first I wasn't sure which direction we were going to take. How could I? It was early November, still basically Halloween. Anyway, my thoughts were a lot closer to shofars and sukkahs than menorahs and Maccabees. It's exactly like department stores that put up Christmas trees in early fall, or hosts who put out dessert while you're still eating dinner. By which I mean to say: you're not in the right head space.

So, when my friend Patrick Aleph of the Southern Jewish punk band Can!!Can came knocking -- one of his friends, Amanda from The Bachelorettes, wanted to put together a Southern Hanukkah record -- we had to rise to the call of duty. (I'm from Philly, but Cookie Jar is from West Virginia, and we both like grits.) It's true that, in my slam-poetry gigs, I do a poem called Dreidel Maven (download the mp3 free!), and I perform it year-round. I also have a chapbook called Dreidel Spinning Champion of the Universe, but the title refers more to being a twelve-year-old boy than to the divine miracle of everlasting olive oil.

So we could go in the direction of kitsch. And, fortunately, Hanukkah is replete with kitsch: menorahs, latkes, sufganiyot, gelt, even chintzy Maccabee costumes. And, closely related, the direction of cheesy rhymes, which Adam Sandler pioneered, and subsequently ruined for all other potential Hanukkah songwriters, ever.

But you know what? Adam Sandler can keep it. I didn't want to rhyme Hanukkah with Veronica or harmonica or marijuanica or anything else. I wanted to write about something cool. Something indie. Something revolutionary.

The story of Hanukkah is a hard one, though -- for all that religious people insist that we're not celebrating a military victory, it sounds suspiciously like we're doing just that. A lot of people died. There was a Maccabee army. Sure, they were fighting for freedom, but it was still fighting. Like it or not, we killed people. And it wasn't pleasant.

It got me thinking, though. If the Maccabees existed today, what in the world would they do? Would they be guerrilla soldiers? Social-networking hackers? Marketing pundits? One pop hook later, and after a lot of sugar inhalation, and we got our song: The Maccababies. It's a little frenetic, a little crazy, and a little can't-get-it-out-of-your-head-y, if I do say so myself.

What did we end up with? Well, you can listen to it here. Or you can buy the compilation CD -- made by a bunch of awesome kids in Jackson, Mississippi, with a hand-screened cover, and including temporary tattoos and a dreidel and gelt -- for $10.

While I'd like to think that our song still conveys the spirit, celebration, and giddiness of Hanukkah, it might not call to mind that same vision of snow flurries as "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree" or "Jingle Bell Rock." Maybe just because it doesn't have jingling bells or kitschy rhymes. Or maybe because, when we started writing it, it was still 65 degrees and sunny outside.

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* - Hi, Mom! If you're reading this: A new camera, the final volume of X-Statix, and socks. No, not socks.

A travelogue to Philadelphia rooftops

Briefly: I'm going to be performing tomorrow at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia! Opening for the retro-Catskills lounge comedy band Good for the Jews, and guest-starring Adam Brodsky.

Also: awesome new review of Losers:

Matthue Roth’s novel is about the character and the voice, and it rocks. It’s hilarious. It’s more than a little crazy, yet manages to ring true. There are universal life truths in here among Jupiter’s escapades, and you’ll find yourself rooting for Jupiter wholeheartedly. And the writing! Even funnier. Descriptive and gritty and captivating. Matthue Roth can write. I already loved his book Never Mind The Goldbergs, so I expected this to be awesome, and it was. It’s a coming of age story that also falls into the madcap adventure category occasionally, and the result is a lot of amusement minus brain rotting. This is a short novel that packs a lot of punch and will provoke a lot of muffled laughter. Highly recommended.

This one's been putting a mad grin on my face all weekend. As if my sixth-grade English teacher's Xmas party, in which I had beers with a bunch of my former junior-high school teachers and watched this guy (yes, it was late) dislocate his butt...I seriously wonder how I'll ever be able to say that New York is more exciting than Philadelphia.

And there is an amazing roof deck on their house, which looks out on the Schuylkill River and the Center City skyline and a Matrix-like ocean of other rooftops, and I'm already too far into writing the sequel to Losers to decide this, but somewhere in Jupiter Glazer's life, he is going to end up being chased atop this very rooftop deck.