Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"But make no mistake: In voting to submit the report to the president neither of us cast a vote of confidence in the Supreme Court itself. Sadly, we no longer have that confidence, given three things: first, the dubious legitimacy of the way some justices were appointed; second, what Justice Sonia Sotomayor rightly called the 'stench' of politics hovering over this court's deliberations about the most contentious issues; and third, the anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian direction of this court's decisions about matters such as voting rights, gerrymandering and the corrupting effects of dark money.

"Those judicial decisions haven't been just wrong; they put the court - and, more important, our entire system of government - on a one-way trip from a defective but still hopeful democracy toward a system in which the few corruptly govern the many, something between autocracy and oligarchy. Instead of serving as a guardrail against going over that cliff, our Supreme Court has become an all-too-willing accomplice in that disaster."

-- Nancy Gertner (ngertner) and Laurence H. Tribe (tribelaw), "Opinion: The Supreme Court isn’t well. The only hope for a cure is more justices", Washington Post, 2021-12-09

Over on Twitter, Jew Who Has It All (@JewWhoHasItAll) Posted a brilliant thread explaining Christmas the way Christians sometimes try to explain Jewish holidays to each other, which a lot of people have replied to staying in the context of the satire, and I think a lot o people will find it funny, a useful exercise in seeing dominant culture through a different lens (de-centering it), or both. And a few people will find it uncomfortable and get mad at, because there's always a few.

(Fortunately there's also a Twitter account, @JWhoKnowsItAll, that explains things @JewWhoHasItAll says that might need explaining -- I failed to catch that the reason for "yellow and white— the colors of Christianity" was a reference to the Vatican flag.)

The last tweet of the original thread directs to a fake website (which I do hope actually gets built) to look up when Christian holidays fall on the Hebrew calendar:

Check http://GregCal.com if you need to know the exact number. It is also a good resource for other Christian holiday dates since they move around so much from year to year, and it doesn't even coincide with a new moon.

And that reminded me of a conversation with a Jewish friend a few years ago, who remarked on a conversation she'd recently had with another friend, who asked what date Christmas was on, that year.

"The 25th, just like every year."

"It's the same every year?! How do they do that?"

And of course, it's exactly the same as Purim always being on the 14th of Adar, or Hanukkah being on the 25th of Kislev.

It's just that the Civil calendar, the "secular" calendar ... is actually the Christian calendar, not some neutral thing separate from religion.

It's so entrenched that even people w/ different religious calendars can forget it isn't neutral, but Christian privilege (largely resulting from historical violence) that everybody else is stuck using ours for so many things.

Others' holidays don't 'jump around on the calendar'; the calendars themselves shift around relative to each other. And once in a while it's probably good to be reminded of that.

I'll close with another line from @JewWhoHasItAll's thread that I enjoyed:

The traditional greeting is "Merry Christmas" or sometimes "Seasons Greetings." If you forget, a simple "Chag Sameach" is never wrong.