MANY THANKS FOR A ROTTEN HOLIDAY SEASON

Let me be among the first to extend my thanks to the misanthropes on the Right and the Left and their minions for making this a rotten holiday season. Thanks for hijacking the one time of the year that we could still be unshakably assured of a little solace and peace.

To the Left: You roasted Christmas on an open fire with such a vengeance that you nearly charred it beyond recognition. To the Right: Not once did the angelic cry, “goodwill to men,” interfere with your accusation of a vast anti-Christian cabal. It could not help but make my coreligionists a little queasy about anti-Semitic intimations.

Thank you both.

To the Left: I do not remember the ACLU sponsoring one “Seasons Greetings” float to replace the “Merry Christmas” floats that you so ardently worked to ban from the Holiday parades on Main Street. To the Right: I do not remember El Rushbo once breaking into a few bars of It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year or Angels We Have Heard on High to modulate his attacks on the miscreants who would denigrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.

Thank you both.

Thanks to all you creeps, we have been gifted with the worst-case scenario holiday season.

What about the best-case scenario? Well how about letting the much touted “reason for the season” once and forever bring both sides of idiotic disputes to the contrite realization that we are piddling away our best energies acting like bunch of spoiled babies hiding behind self-righteousness and legal precedent. A pipe dream, you say? You’re probably right. The lasting capacity to transcend the defamation of Christmas, Chanukah and Kwanzaa belongs to those beloved few individuals who can retain their focus so clearly on "the reason" that they are impervious to the humbug. What else is new?

If not the best-case scenario, what might we reasonably expect? Perhaps we should revisit a word that has become foreign to our vocabulary: truce.

Cynics see truce as hypocrisy: temporary peace with an enemy on the assumption that after a respite, the strife will start all over again. Yet, at its best, a truce can plant a seed of the possibility of peace, which invariably begins with enemies recognizing their mutual humanity. If nothing else, a truce during a time of celebration bespeaks a level of civility that distinguishes humanity from animals.

The spontaneous Christmas Eve truce along the Western Front in 1914 has become so legendary that it is the subject of books and doctoral dissertations for its historical significance and psycho- and socio-dynamics. Snoopy and the Red Baron even declared their own personal truce. In three decades as a rabbi, I have seen many nasty divorces bode ill for a wedding or a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. I have always counseled, and often negotiated, a truce between the warring factions. In the instances that the families have complied, the civility and goodwill have been universally celebrated, while those that declared no truce left only disgust.

So here we have Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa, the season, the reason, the possibility of respite, a little joy, a little less crankiness, a little more “let nothing you dismay.” In a word, it is a season ripe for a truce. We cry bitter tears that we know that we cannot speak of even momentary “truce” with al-Qaeda. That and similar traits are precisely what make them savage beasts, beneath humanity, incapable of civility.

But then there is home. We do claim the crown of humanity and civility. Yet, we enjoyed no holiday truce, no respite. Instead, a continued bombardment of ugly, shrill rhetoric on both sides of every issue from people who have the easiest access to the microphone: politicians, Hollywood types, media squawkers. Not one voice Left or Right, not even among the spotlight-grabbing clergy, pleading for a truce, a seasonal restraint from invective and counter-invective.

During the truce, talk radio would probably not garner the same market share. Celebrity preachers would not have O’Reilly’s bully pulpit for the gospel of hate. The ACLU would have to go back to actually defending someone’s civil rights. Popularity and advertising might temporarily decline.

The American audience does have quite an appetite for bloody red meat, eh? But, maybe for a while we can fill up on grandma’s treats, kick back contently and – even knowing that the War of Left and Right will kick up again on January 2 – enjoy at least a few weeks of peace and goodwill. Call it an illusion. I call it a start.