Chrismukkah is a pop-culture neologism referring to the merging of the holidays A holiday is a day designated as having special significance for which individuals, a government, or a religious group have deemed that observation is warranted. Examples of types of holidays include: of Christianity Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament. Christianity comprises three major branches: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy (which parted ways with Catholicism in 1054 A.D.) and Protestantism (which came into existence during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th's Christmas Christmas or Christmas Day is a holiday observed mostly on December 25 to commemorate the birth of Jesus, the central figure of Christianity. The date is not known to be the actual birth date of Jesus, and may have initially been chosen to correspond with either the day exactly nine months after some early Christians believed Jesus had been and Judaism Judaism is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people. Judaism, originating in the Hebrew Bible and explored in later texts such as the Talmud, is considered by Jews to be the expression of the covenantal relationship God developed with the Children of Israel. According to traditional Rabbinic Judaism, God revealed's Hanukkah Hanukkah , also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple (the Second Temple) in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE, Hanukkah is observed for eight nights, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, which may occur at as celebrated in interfaith The terms interfaith or interfaith dialogue refer to cooperative and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions and spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional level with the aim of deriving a common ground in belief through a concentration on similarities between faiths, understanding of households where one parent may be of Christian A Christian (pronounced /ˈkrɪstʃən/ ) is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe is the Messiah (the Christ in Greek-derived terminology) prophesied in the Hebrew Bible, and the son of God. Most Christians believe in the doctrine of heritage and another parent of Jewish The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation. Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos heritage. Or from two Jewish parents, where one may not be religious at all, or are just assimilated and have a desire to put up a Christmas tree causing Christmas and Hanukkah to cancel each other out into one blur of a gift giving holiday. The word itself is a portmanteau A portmanteau (pronounced /pɔrtmænˈtoʊ/ , plural: portmanteaus or portmanteaux) or portmanteau word is used to mean a blend of two (or more) words or morphemes and their meanings into one new word. In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph which represents two or more morphemes arisen through the blending of the words "Christmas" and "Hanukkah". Chrismukkah is also celebrated as an ironic, alternative holiday, much like the Seinfeld Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself. Set predominantly in an apartment block on Manhattan's Upper West Side , the show-derived "Festivus Festivus is a secular holiday celebrated on December 23. It was created by writer Dan O'Keefe and introduced into popular culture by his son Daniel, a screenwriter for the TV show Seinfeld as part of a comical storyline on the show. The holiday's celebration, as shown on Seinfeld, includes an unadorned aluminium "Festivus pole,"." USA Today USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the paper has described it as "[t]he newest faux holiday that companies are using to make a buck this season".[1]
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History
A Christmas celebration with a tree, songs, and gifts became a symbol of being a part of German culture for many middle-class Jewish families in the 19th century. Some Jews celebrated Christmas as a secular "festival of the world around us" without religious meaning, or they transferred Christmas customs to the Hanukkah festival.
Chrismukkah was popularized by FOX Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as simply Fox, is an American television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, from 2004 to 2009 Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the 18–49 demographic. In the 2007–08 season, Fox became the most popular television Television is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic ("black and white") or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission. The word is derived from mixed Latin program The O.C. The O.C. is an American teen drama television series that originally aired on the Fox network in the United States from August 5, 2003, to February 22, 2007, running a total of four seasons. The series, created by Josh Schwartz, portrays the fictional lives of a group of teenagers and their families residing in Newport Beach in Orange County,. On the show, the character Seth Cohen Seth Ezekiel Cohen lives in Newport Beach, California, though he was born in Berkeley. He is Jewish on his father's side, and connects and identifies with his father's religious and cultural background, although he embraces the mutual holiday of Chrismukkah, a joint Christmas and Hanukkah holiday. Seth is very sarcastic and loves to use irony to has a Jewish father and a Protestant Protestantism is one of the four major divisions within Christianity together with the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Roman Catholic Church. The term is most closely tied to those groups that separated from the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation mother. As a way to merge the two faiths, Seth claims to have "created Chrismukkah" when he was six years old. The series included annual Chrismukkah episodes for every season of its run. Particulars of when exactly the holiday was celebrated were not given; Seth simply said in the first season's Chrismukkah episode that it was "eight days of presents, followed by one day of many presents," with a stress on the word "many" (this was repeated in the second season's Chrismukkah episode by Seth's new brother Ryan, with an added "many"). The only references to how it was celebrated, other than the family displaying both a Christmas tree and a Hanukkah menorah The Hanukkah menorah (also Hebrew: חַנֻכִּיָּה hanukiah, or chanukkiyah, pl. hanukiyot/chanukkiyot, or Yiddish: חנוכּה לאמפּ khanike lomp, lit.: Hanukkah lamp) is, strictly speaking, a nine-branched candelabrum lit during the eight-day holiday of Hanukkah, as opposed to the seven-branched menorah used in the ancient Temple, was that the Cohens spent Christmas Day itself rather than going out for Chinese food Chinese Cuisine is a term for styles of food originating in the regions of China, many of which have become extremely popular in other parts of the world — from Asia to the Americas, Australia, Western Europe and Southern Africa. Where there are historical immigrant Chinese populations, the style of food has evolved – for example, American and a movie as many American Jews have taken up in recent years, watching movies like It's a Wonderful Life It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and loosely based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern and Fiddler on the Roof Fiddler on the Roof is the 1971 American film adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name. It was directed by Norman Jewison. The film won three Academy Awards, including one for arranger-conductor John Williams. It was nominated for several more, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Chaim Topol as Tevye, and Best Supporting Actor for at home while eating Chinese takeout. Chrismukkah later received mention in the television series, Grey's Anatomy Grey's Anatomy is an American medical drama television series. It follows the lives of interns, residents and their mentors in the fictional Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital in Seattle, Washington. The pilot episode, "A Hard Day's Night" premiered on March 27, 2005 on ABC. Since then, five seasons have aired, and the sixth season began.
In 2004, Chrismukkah.com was launched by Ron and Michelle Gompertz, a Jewish-Christian intermarried couple in Bozeman, Montana Bozeman is a city in and the county seat of Gallatin County, Montana, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. With a population of 27,509 at the 2000 census, Bozeman is the fifth largest city in the state. The city is named after John M. Bozeman, founder of the Bozeman Trail. Located in the fastest-growing county in the state ,. Their website took the fictional O.C. Chrismukkah and brought it into reality, selling humorous Chrismukkah greeting cards and dispensing detailed mythology about the fictional holiday. The Chrismukkah.com Web site was widely credited with popularizing Chrismukkah to a non-television watching audience.
Chrismukkah.com stirred up controversy in the Fall of 2004 when the New York Catholic League issued a national press release opposing Chrismukkah. Further, The Catholic League and the New York Board of Rabbis, in a joint statement, condemned Chrismukkah as "insulting" to Jews and Christians.[1]
In December 2004, Chrismukkah was listed in Time magazine Time is an American news magazine. A European edition (Time Europe, formerly known as Time Atlantic) is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition (Time Asia) is based in Hong Kong. As of 2009, Time no longer publishes a Canadian advertiser edition. The South Pacific edition, as one of the buzzwords A buzzword is a term of art or technical jargon that has begun to see use in the wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context by nonspecialists who use the term vaguely or imprecisely. Labelling a term a "buzzword" often pejoratively implies that it is now used pretentiously and inappropriately by individuals with of the year.[2] It was also reported in a Scottish Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. In addition to the mainland, Scotland newspaper, that Chrismukkah had been added to the authoritative "Chambers" dictionary.[3] In 2005, Chrismukkah.com founder Ron Gompertz authored a humorous book of Chrismukkah recipes called Chrismukkah! The Merry Mish-Mash Holiday Cookbook. Gompertz's follow-up book, entitled Chrismukkah - Everything You Need to Know to Celebrate the Hybrid Holiday (published by Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was released in October 2006. A rival book by Gersh Kuntzman, Chrismukkah: The Official Guide to the World's Best-Loved Holiday (Sasquatch Press), came out at around the same time. In keeping with Kuntzman's long-stated ethos, his book was far less earnest — in fact, it was a satire of people like Gompertz.
Similar holidays
A similarly named holiday called Christmanukkah was featured in The Strangerhood. Unlike Chrismukkah, Christmanukkah is twenty days long (twelve days of Christmas The Twelve Days of Christmas are the festive days beginning Christmas Day . This period is also known as Christmastide. The Twelfth Day of Christmas is 5 January, with the celebrations of Christmas traditionally ending on Twelfth Night and is followed by the Feast of the Epiphany on 6 January. In some traditions the first day of Epiphany and the and another eight for Hanukkah), and all of the days are spent receiving gifts and eating until passing out. Pants are considered a traditional gift.[citation needed]
Similar neologisms such as Chrismahanukwanzakah[4] and HanuKwanzMas[5] blend Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa Kwanzaa is a weeklong celebration held in the United States honoring universal African heritage and culture, marked by participants lighting a kinara . It is observed from December 26 to January 1 every year.
See also
- Christmas controversy Christmas controversy refers to controversy or disagreement surrounding the celebration or acknowledgment of the Christmas holiday in government, media, advertising and various secular environments. In the past, Christmas-related controversy was mainly restricted to concerns of a public focus on secular Christmas themes such as Santa Claus and
- DeepaRaya
- Festivus Festivus is a secular holiday celebrated on December 23. It was created by writer Dan O'Keefe and introduced into popular culture by his son Daniel, a screenwriter for the TV show Seinfeld as part of a comical storyline on the show. The holiday's celebration, as shown on Seinfeld, includes an unadorned aluminium "Festivus pole,"
- Hanukkah bush
- Kongsi Raya
- Winterval Winterval was a season of public events in Birmingham, England organised by Birmingham City Council in each of two consecutive winters: first from 20 November 1997 to 31 December 1997, and then again from mid-October 1998 to mid-January 1999. The intention was to encourage people into the newly-rejuvenated town centre, with secular and interfaith
References
- ^ a b McCarthy, Michael (2004-12-16). "Have a merry little Chrismukkah". USA TODAY. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2004-12-15-chrismukkah_x.htm. Retrieved 2006-12-28.
- ^ "The Year in Buzzwords". Time. 2004-12-20. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1009896,00.html. Retrieved 2007-03-08.
- ^ Martell, Peter (2004-12-12). "Scot's Yngling sails on to Blackberries of the blogosphere". The Scotsman. http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1419752004. Retrieved 2007-03-08.
- ^ Amann, Joseph and Tom Breuer (2007). Fair and Balanced, My Ass!: An Unbridled Look at the Bizarre Reality of Fox News. New York: Nation Books. ISBN 1568583478
- ^ "Diversity Calendar" (December 2005). Cincinnati Magazine 39(3): 66. ISSN: 0746-8210.
External links
Categories: The O.C. | Christian and Jewish interfaith topics | Christmas-linked holidays Categories: Christmas | Winter holidays | Summer holidays | December observances | Fictional holidays | Unofficial observances Unofficial, humorous, subcultural or student holidays and observances, that are annually practiced unlike those from category:Fictional holidays | Hanukkah
