{"id":381,"date":"2007-12-27T02:02:08","date_gmt":"2007-12-27T02:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/merry-christmas-mike-huckabee.html"},"modified":"2007-12-27T02:02:08","modified_gmt":"2007-12-27T02:02:08","slug":"merry-christmas-mike-huckabee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/merry-christmas-mike-huckabee.html","title":{"rendered":"Merry Christmas, Mike Huckabee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Much ado is being made out of Mike Huckabee\u2019s, all I want to do is wish you <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8xn7uSHtkuA&amp;eurl=http:\/\/www.wdef.com\/blog\/republican_presidential_candidate_mike_huckabee_says_merry_christmas_god_bless\/12\/2007\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;a Merry Christmas&#8221; TV advertisement.<\/a> Huckabee&#8217;s ad seems sincere. He is an ordained minister, a devout Christian, and someone who seems to be as honest as any politician. As a Jew, I really don\u2019t find anything all that shocking or disturbing about the ad. If Mike wants to wish me a &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221; that\u2019s fine&#8211;it makes very little difference in my life. Come to think of it, God knows how many Jews are walking around New York right now (two weeks after Hanukkah) wishing every person they bump into &#8220;happy holidays&#8221; and &#8220;Merry Christmas.&#8221; Just the other day one of my friends&#8211;and a fellow member of the tribe&#8211;waved across the street mouthing, &#8220;happy holidays.&#8221; I smiled and waved back. Suffice it to say she was not referring to Passover.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nI can\u2019t help but think that those such as Huckabee, who seek out every opportunity to show off their Christian bonafides by inserting Christmas into every other sentence, have emptied Christmas of any unique religious value. What does Christmas mean when at least 10 Jews I know this year alone went to a Christmas party. None of them would ever dare think of becoming Christian. For them it&#8217;s, \u201cHey, why not, it&#8217;s just Christmas.\u201d  In their eyes Christmas does not mean or signify all that much. The more popular Christmas becomes the more secular the holiday is perceived. In America, &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221; means nothing more than the banal \u201chey wuz up\u201d or \u201csee u later\u201d&#8211;just with a little snow on top.  So Mike, I know I\u2019m not the first, but let me be one of the many Jews to wish you, too, a very Merry Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Much ado is being made out of Mike Huckabee\u2019s, all I want to do is wish you &#8220;a Merry Christmas&#8221; TV advertisement. Huckabee&#8217;s ad seems sincere. He is an ordained minister, a devout Christian, and someone who seems to be as honest as any politician. As a Jew, I really don\u2019t find anything all that&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-holidays"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Merry Christmas, Mike Huckabee - Virtual Talmud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/merry-christmas-mike-huckabee.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Merry Christmas, Mike Huckabee - Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Much ado is being made out of Mike Huckabee\u2019s, all I want to do is wish you &#8220;a Merry Christmas&#8221; TV advertisement. Huckabee&#8217;s ad seems sincere. He is an ordained minister, a devout Christian, and someone who seems to be as honest as any politician. As a Jew, I really don\u2019t find anything all that&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/merry-christmas-mike-huckabee.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-27T02:02:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Merry Christmas, Mike Huckabee - Virtual Talmud","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/merry-christmas-mike-huckabee.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Merry Christmas, Mike Huckabee - Virtual Talmud","og_description":"Much ado is being made out of Mike Huckabee\u2019s, all I want to do is wish you &#8220;a Merry Christmas&#8221; TV advertisement. Huckabee&#8217;s ad seems sincere. He is an ordained minister, a devout Christian, and someone who seems to be as honest as any politician. As a Jew, I really don\u2019t find anything all that&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/merry-christmas-mike-huckabee.html","og_site_name":"Virtual Talmud","article_published_time":"2007-12-27T02:02:08+00:00","author":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/merry-christmas-mike-huckabee.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/merry-christmas-mike-huckabee.html","name":"Merry Christmas, Mike Huckabee - Virtual Talmud","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-12-27T02:02:08+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-27T02:02:08+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/53c806e36632262087fa251c621f2bc9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/merry-christmas-mike-huckabee.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/merry-christmas-mike-huckabee.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/12\/merry-christmas-mike-huckabee.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Merry Christmas, Mike Huckabee"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/","name":"Virtual Talmud","description":"Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, where politics and pop culture meet 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/53c806e36632262087fa251c621f2bc9","name":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/417\/4170a8452a509d8efe19496bf5d566e9x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/417\/4170a8452a509d8efe19496bf5d566e9x96.jpg","caption":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/author\/estern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}