GLOBALIZATION IS ANGLOFICATION:

This Christmas celebration, which has become a national rite in non-Christian or multicultural countries, used to trouble my parents and myself, 70 years ago. Given that we were of Jewish origin in a France that was massively Catholic--Muslims had not yet arrived in great numbers--my parents at first decided to ignore Christmas, which was, for them, a day like any other. But for a child like me, surrounded by Christian children, I noticed that they received gifts and got to stuff themselves with chocolate. My parents thought that they had found a synthesis by celebrating Hanukkah, a holiday which, on the Jewish calendar, coincides more or less with Christmas. Hanukkah, or the "festival of lights," celebrates, in principle, the reconquest of the Second Temple in Jerusalem from Hellenistic despots by the Maccabees family. But Jews long considered it to be a minor and controversial holiday: 2,000 years ago (in 165 B.C.), the reconquest had pitted integralist Hebrews attached to the territory of Israel against Jews who were already dispersed and who attached more importance to the study of the Bible than to old stones. In contemporary terms, one might conclude that Hanukkah is a Zionist holiday, or at least one characterized by nostalgia for a distant past. If we give children gifts at Hanukkah, this is only so that they will not feel left out compared with their Christian friends. And so, I received presents for Hannukah, our substitute Christmas.

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