Hanukkah is the new Christmas (and they’re both cancelled!)
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Summary
Candice Malan explains why Christmas is being demonized by the left, and why Hanukkah is getting the same treatment. She explains why Jews have been added to the leftist victim hierarchy, and how the left is trying to destroy the most important holiday of the year.
Transcript
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The woke, progressive, left-wing cultural forces have spent years, well, they've spent decades, really, trying to cancel Christmas.
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Fascinatingly, the same forces that are trying to kill Christmas now have their sights set on another religious holiday, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
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It's taken them 50-plus years to demonize and destroy our beloved Christmas, and only one year to do the same to Hanukkah.
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I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
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Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast.
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Okay, so here we go. The left goes after Christmas, our most beloved holiday, the most wonderful time of the year.
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They go after Christmas for one reason and one reason alone.
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They hate Christianity. They hate everything it represents and everything that it has created.
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Now, you and I might look around at our world of peace and prosperity, respect, tolerance, basic human rights, dignity for all,
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the idea that we are all inherently equal and that we have free will.
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We look at those things and we think, wow, that is wonderful. Those things are worth preserving.
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The left looks at those traditions, the ones that you and I cherish, and they want to dismantle them.
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They want to replace it with something entirely different, some utopian scheme, some system that has never been tried before,
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or even worse, something that has been tried and has led to mass murder and universal misery.
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That's what the left wants to do. They want to unravel everything about our society.
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Now, remarkably, when it comes to Christmas, these forces have been successful.
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They slowly erased the most important day in the Christian calendar, the day that simply acknowledges the birth of the most consequential person in all of human history.
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Well, first, they stripped the holiday of any religious meaning whatsoever, making it just merely about commercialism and imaginary children's characters.
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And then after that, they went even further, and they demonized the very idea of acknowledging Christmas.
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We must say happy holidays. In Canada, in 2023, you will rarely hear a person wishing you Merry Christmas at the store, in your kid's school, anywhere you go.
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You will hear happy holidays. You very rarely hear Merry Christmas. Why is that?
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Well, we wouldn't want to offend people who don't like Christmas.
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We wouldn't want to offend those Marxist atheists who get triggered by hearing the word Christmas.
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So it isn't just about erasing religion from our society.
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It's about erasing everything, erasing our history, erasing our traditions and the values that have been embedded in that history and in those traditions.
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And we reached a new low in 2023 when the Canadian government told us that Christmas, I kid you not, Christmas is a white supremacist holiday.
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Simply acknowledging Christmas is a form of discrimination and intolerance, this according to the brilliant Canadian Human Rights Commission.
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It's not just those who celebrate Christmas or who want to acknowledge Christmas that are being demonized.
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Jews have been added to the basket of deplorables.
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In just two short months, two short months since that October 7th terrorist attack.
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Remember, that was when Arab terrorists, an Arab Islamist group called Hamas, invaded Israel and attacked Jewish civilians in their beds.
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So for the crime of being the victim of a terrorist attack, Jews have suddenly fallen to the very, very, very bottom of the left's victim hierarchy.
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Jews are now perhaps even lower on that hierarchy than straight white males in their sympathy from the left, believe it or not.
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So just like that, Hanukkah has also been canceled by the woke mob.
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Jews are settlers, we're told, and settlers are not civilians.
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Apparently, what the left just likes to call resistance.
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So this is what we've seen in cities across North America.
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Hanukkah being canceled, being downplayed, being outright rejected in American cities like Washington, D.C., Williamsburg, Virginia, and Los Angeles for good measure.
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They canceled both Christmas and Hanukkah, just to be fair.
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In Moncton, New Brunswick City Council decided to end the 20-year tradition of lighting the Hanukkah menorah in front of City Hall,
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only to then reverse that decision after some negative feedback.
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I think that Jodi Gondock, the mayor of Calgary, takes the cake.
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She sort of said it all when she refused to attend the Hanukkah memorial lighting ceremony.
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It just says Calgary Community Menorah Lighting.
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It says here, Am Yisrael Chai, which simply means the people of Israel live.
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So again, just say that Jews have the right to live.
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Here it says unity supporting Israel, Jewish pride.
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And she said, On the eve of a beloved Calgary tradition, the annual menorah lighting at City Hall,
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I've learned that the event has been repositioned to be political.
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It is with great regret and sadness that I will not be attending.
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For those who don't know much about Jewish holidays, and Calgary mayor Jodi Gondock has
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simply outed herself as being a person who does not know very much about Jewish holidays.
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Hanukkah is an inherently political celebration.
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It is intrinsically tied with the state of Israel.
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It is a festival commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem and the rededication of the second
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temple at the beginning of the Maccabee revolt.
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So the story you probably know is about how there was enough oil to keep one candle lit.
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And it was a miracle because it remained lit for nine days.
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That was when the Israelites were taking back Israel and Jerusalem.
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So again, the celebration is inherently political.
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And so this ceremony is simply acknowledging that.
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And by acknowledging that, apparently, that makes it too political for the Calgary mayor
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Let's just recall a year ago when Calgary raised the Ukraine flag to show its support
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Show support for sovereign nation under attack.
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We stand in support of the Ukrainian community in our city and the people who have close ties
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It is okay to turn City Hall into a political symbol by raising the Ukraine flag when it comes
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But when the same thing happens when Israel is invaded, it is a sovereign and democratic
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A student over at the University of Alberta, my alma mater, wanted to put a menorah up to
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And then they also took down the Christmas tree for a good measure.
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You're getting canceled just like Christians have been canceled over the many years.
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So to get more insight on this issue, I would like to bring in my friend and colleague,
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Andrew Lawton, host of the Andrew Lawton Show here at True North, to get his opinion.
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So, Andrew, you have been covering the war on Christmas since, as long as I've known
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you as a journalist, I think that you are someone who covers this every year and you
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stay on top of the latest craziness like the Human Rights Commission this year saying
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that celebrating Christmas is discriminatory and white supremacist or something like that.
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So can you just tell us about the forces behind this movement and when you first started
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And I never even like using the term war on Christmas because there's this weird parallel
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reality in which you get a number of people, typically those on the left, that say there's
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And it's kind of like political correctness where it's a term that becomes the subject of
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And the point that I always say to counter that is that there is a war on Christmas, but
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It's not coming from immigrants that are offended by this, you know, originally Christian holiday.
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It's coming from white secular liberals that want to be offended on other people's behalf.
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And I think that worldview has become very much institutionalized, not just in the Canadian
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Human Rights Commission, which you alluded to, but also in the bland, risk-averse corporate
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world, which thinks that we need to just strip away anything that might possibly at some point
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And as a result, Christianity and Christmas, which are not mutually exclusive, I'd argue
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that Christmas has become more of a cultural holiday to a lot of people than strictly a religious
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But as a result, Christmas tends to be in the crosshairs.
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And, you know, you always see some wacky manifestations of that.
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Well, it's so interesting, Andrew, because I think a lot of people who come to Canada
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as immigrants, and I would count my in-laws, my husband's family in that group, you know,
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They like Western civilization, and they understand how it is intrinsically tied to Christianity,
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Like I said, Christmas is simply acknowledging the birth of probably the most influential,
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And so they actually like the Christmas markets and the Christmas festivals and the Christmas
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trees, and they're more likely to say Merry Christmas than, you know, the white liberal
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And so it's kind of a shame I made this comment to some people at True North that, you know,
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if you were like in Dubai or if you were somewhere in the Arab world, and it was Ramadan,
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could you imagine like someone not saying Happy Ramadan around you because they were worried
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about offending you and saying Happy Holidays and said like it would just never happen.
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It's something that's like uniquely happening in the Western world and probably a lot in Canada.
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So I talked a lot about how Jews and people celebrating Hanukkah are now getting a very
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similar treatment to us Christians and those who want to celebrate Christmas.
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What do you make of Jews being lumped in now with sort of the deplorables and not being
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It doesn't surprise me because it's been part of a very long-term process here where there's
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And what I mean by that is that Jews have always been a religious minority, they've always
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been an ethnic minority, they've always faced tremendous persecution, and my friend Laura
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Rosen-Cohen has this very, I mean, it's a sad, but it's a very apt line that everyone
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It's the place that is the target of hate for the far left, for the far right, for various
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religious fundamentalists, and anti-Semitism is always the most prevalent form of hate whenever
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there are studies done on hate crimes, which I realize is a bit of a loaded term.
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But Jews have also been rebranded by, in a lot of cases, anti-Semites, so that they cannot
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And it's why this anti-colonialism narrative has been injected into the horrendous atrocities
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that Hamas was perpetrating against Jews and Israelis just a couple of months ago.
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So you have now Jews that people refuse to see as minorities and refuse to see as being
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So now their holiday, which is not, you know, nearly the most widespread holiday in Canada,
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Hanukkah, is viewed as part of the dominant culture now, this hegemony like Christmas,
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which is just bizarre and makes no sense whatsoever, unless you follow that context of how Jews have
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Well, it is kind of interesting, Andrew, because I have a lot of Jewish friends and I even have
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And for religious Jews, Hanukkah isn't really that big of a deal.
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Like the main holiday in the Jewish calendar is Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the new year,
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and then Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year, the day of atonement.
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And that happens in the fall, and that's sort of very important.
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And then you have Passover, which is like the big feast, and again, like celebrating the existence
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of Israel, but also just celebrating your community and your family.
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And then Hanukkah has sort of been made, especially in North America and the U.S., to be a big
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And, you know, a lot of the Jewish kids growing up felt left out that they didn't get a Christmas
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tree, and so their parents made Hanukkah like a bigger deal over the last, I don't know,
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But if you go to Israel or if you're in a very strictly religious community, it's not
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It's about the fight for Jerusalem, Jews recapturing Jerusalem during the Second Temple
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period, and about the Jewish people having their own place.
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So it's kind of ironic that, you know, a holiday that wasn't necessarily the top profile Jewish
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holiday has become that way because of North America.
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And then now, you know, as we saw in Calgary, Mayor Jordi Gondek saying that it was too political
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to go to Hanukkah because, you know, it said support Israel or something on the flyer.
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But it's hard to remove the holiday of Hanukkah from Israel.
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So, yeah, I just wanted to sort of get your thoughts again on, you know, why, like, let
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It seems that Christians have sort of come to terms with the fact that our holiday isn't,
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we can't celebrate Christmas out in the open anymore.
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You know, we'll just say happy holidays and we don't want to offend people.
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But it seems to me that Jews aren't going to take that.
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They're saying, no, we're going to push back against the Jodi Gondeks that are canceling
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We saw the city council in New Brunswick say that they're not going to celebrate Hanukkah.
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And then there was so much pushback that they said, OK, OK, fine, we will.
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It seems to me that Jews are fighting back a lot more than Christians are.
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I think as far as Christmas goes, and this is where I go back to why the war on Christmas
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I'd argue we don't just hide Christmas, but we do this internally inconsistent and illogical
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thing where we try to strip away what Christmas is and we'll keep the red and the green and
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we'll keep the holly and we'll keep the presents, but we'll pretend that it's not Christmas we're
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We just happen to be doing all of these things that kind of look and feel and sound and smell
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like Christmas around the same time as Christmas.
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What a coincidence that we're doing all this on December 25th.
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I mean, Justin Trudeau, a couple of years ago, issued a Christmas statement in which
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So to him, Christmas, I mean, he might as well have just been honoring the winter solstice
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It was just this generic, I mean, some might say pagan, but it was just this generic, bland
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honoring of Christmas as being some meaningful day.
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Now, look, I believe as a Christian that people should be able to enjoy Christmas, whoever they
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But Jews don't say Hanukkah is for everyone and Muslims don't say Ramadan is for everyone.
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And the people that honor Diwali don't say, really directly, that Diwali is for everyone.
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That doesn't mean other people can't participate and exchange and learn about it.
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But Jews are saying, no, Hanukkah is this to us.
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And when you mentioned, I think quite accurately, that there is an inherent politics to the history
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of Hanukkah, what I would do is go one step further and say it shows the inextricable link
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between Jewish people and Israel, that you can't just separate these two things out and
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say, well, I'm not anti-Jew, but I'm anti-Israel, or, well, yes, I'm OK, you know, being nice
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to my Jewish neighbors, but I don't want them to mistake me for being pro-Israel, which is
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Well, it's interesting what I've observed, Andrew, to your point, I think you're completely
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right, that even secular atheist Jews are standing up for Jewish people at this time
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and saying, no, like, it doesn't matter how religious you are or how orthodox you are,
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or even, I mean, to your point, like, there is something intrinsic about Jewish identity
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But I've noticed sort of across the board, every Jew that I know, I was talking to a Jewish
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friend, Andrew, from Montreal, who is very liberal, so much so that he's one of the top
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And he's one of the people who just absolutely live in, I've had enough, and he's like, look,
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you know, me and my wife are very much on the left, and when you lose my wife and I, you
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know, you know that you've lost this battle, because they are no line, they said, hey, welcome
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But I feel like this is a breaking point for so many Jewish people that they just, they see
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the true colors of the sort of anti-colonial, decolonized, woke left, and they don't like
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Yeah, I think you're right, and I think everyone has their red line, everyone has their hill
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to die on, and for Jewish people, Israel has always been that, I shouldn't say always,
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but for many Jewish people, Israel has always been that hill to die on, because for them it
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is personal, I mean, you cannot find that many Jewish people that do not have at some
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point in their family some horrendous loss, either directly to the Holocaust or to some
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other atrocity that's taken place against the Jewish people with alarming regularity and
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So for Jews, this is very personal, and I'm seeing some incredibly far-left Jews that I
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know, I mean, people that would even be further left than the friends that you just described,
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that right now are in lockstep with the right by promoting Israel, but because to them it's
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not a left-right issue, it's not a partisan issue, it's just the survival of them, their
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family, their community, and their people, and that's the one thing that I think a lot
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of people that aren't connected to this debate need to realize.
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Well, Andrew, I really appreciate your thoughts and your comments, and I'll probably see you
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again before Christmas, but just in case I don't, Merry Christmas to you and your family,
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I hope you have a wonderful, blessed celebration. Thank you so much for joining us.
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Thank you, and happy Hanukkah to those affected by that as well.
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Certainly, certainly. All right, thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candace Malcolm,