If I ask nicely will people reblog this and tell me what their most common breakfast is? Not your favorite necessarily, just what you have for breakfast most frequently? 🙏🏽

Preview of Sam Long’s story, drawn by the amazing Cynthia Yuan Cheng! (@cynthiaycheng, cynthiaycheng.com)

Becoming Who We Are Kickstarter ends Dec 14! Preorder now to help us fund the book!

bit.ly/becomingkickstarter

Hey this looks really awesome but there are 5 days left and it still needs quite a bit of funding to hit the goal. Spread the word, signal boost, I want my books! There are tiers specifically for libraries and retailers as well, so especially share with any librarians or bookshop owners you know!

Four days left...

Elliot Page has the chance to do the single funniest thing in the history of Hollywood.

Okay. Elliot Page would be a great choice. As would Elliot Fletcher.

Let's get this done!

Reminder that Christmas is a religious holiday and all the things that come with it (the tree, the colors, the traditions, etc.) are apart of it (even if you don’t celebrate for religious reasons it still is) and if you say “Oh it’s just part of the season” you’re throwing your Jewish & other not Christian religious participants under the bus

Goyim can reblog but don’t add your bullshit

Nah.  Not really.  The bulk of our non-church Christmas traditions were cobbled together from non-Christian (or utterly nonreligious) sources, sometimes then given Christian meaning post-hoc (sometimes much, much later).  

Christmas is a time to celebrate family, friends, and just being kind to others. Doesn’t need to be religious but it can be. Different people have different Christmas, but all are valid and anyone can celebrate it. It’s a time of peace.

I mean, yes, it has non-Christian origins. But people like to pretend it’s secular (read: neutral) and it’s not.

“Christmas is a time to celebrate family, friends, and just being kind to others… It’s a time of peace.”

No. It isn’t a time for this unless you’re Christian or from a culturally Christian background. It isn’t this for (most) Jews, because we don’t celebrate it. Just like Sukkot is not a time of joy and accepting impermanence for you.

I need people to stop universalizing Christmas. It’s not universal, and pretending it is has ugly echoes of supercessionism and Christianity’s history of trying to force non-Christians into their religion.

“Christmas traditions came from pagan traditions!” YEAH AND MY PEOPLE DONT CELEBRATE THOSE EITHER

C H R I S T mas

People keep telling marginalized-people-who-dislike-christmas-being-forced-on-them that “Christmas has pagan roots,” as if this is some vast revelation. Newsflash: if this is something you’re telling to marginalized people in distress, then you saying it serves no purpose but to enforce christian hegemony.

Like, if I’m being beaten with a stick and ask someone to come help me, telling me that the guy beating me with the stick is also a hypocrite doesn’t exactly do me any good. My main concern is the “beating me with a stick” part.

Christmas having pagan roots is NOT a valid excuse to just continue enforcing this fundamentally christian holiday anyway. Its useful in understanding the colonial forces built in to christianity. Its useful to understanding the continuity of oppression between, say, the conquest of Saxony, to the Northern Crusade, to Cortes. Its is even rhetorically useful for refuting the arguments of christians whom are trying to force their religion on others.

But if you are using it as an excuse to help christians enforce their religion on others, than you are simply acting as a direct continuation of the original oppressors whom appropriated pagan traditions to help sneak their bigotry and hate into unsuspecting societies all those centuries ago. Telling marginalized people that they are wrong to dislike-christmas-as-a-tool-of-their-oppression because of christmas’s pagan roots makes you the bad guy.

Also, very unfriendly reminder for all the “it’s a time of peace” assholes out there, but the Yiddish name for Christmas Eve is Nittel Nacht, and the most common practice associated with the day among the people who called it that was quite literally “staying up all night playing card games so that you and your family wouldn’t be caught unaware if a nearby Christmas party turned into a pogrom”, because historically, that happened often enough to warrant preparing for it every single year, just in case. Like you guys could not be more tone deaf if you fucking tried.

Some of y'all ignoring “Goyim can reblog but don’t add your bullshit”

the fact that some of y’all are getting legitimately infuriated at religious minorities for not wanting to celebrate christmas or for acknowledging the fact christmas is now a solidly christian holiday that’s forced on us for the purpose of assimilation is……very telling.

“Christmas is a time of peace”

Yeah explain that to Jews in the shtetls commemorating Christmas Eve by banning learning Torah so that Jews wouldn’t leave home and gather in the Beit Midrash where there’d be more vulnerable to drunk Christian mobs, and instead stay at home with their families where they might be just a little bit safer.

Also surprise surprise, pagans oppressed us too. Saying “oh but Christmas comes from Roman Paganism” doesn’t make it any more palatable to us. Do you know what Roman Pagans did to us? Every year for weeks we mourn the way that the Romans burned down Jerusalem and our Temple, killed and raped our people, and enslaved and exiled the survivors. On Chanukah, we literally sing a song called Maoz Tzur calling for the end of the Roman Exile, which we are still in to this day.

Even if the statement “Christmas is pagan” was accurate, you think Christmas being pagan makes it any better??? It’s still a religious holiday being forced upon us.

Christmas is not a time of love and peace for us, especially when it’s shoved down our throats and we’re treated as monsters for daring to not like it.

Christmas IS, in fact, Christian.

But that doesn’t mean things that happen around December, or things that embrace other holidays are. Just because it might look like a Christmas tradition to you, doesn’t inherently make it one.

Just wanted to add that.

There are so many other things to observe and even celebrate in December. And there’s so many lessons we could all learn. There’s a lot to be said for having a tradition and sticking to it. But, it’s also really important to note that:

If your neighbor is doing something which to you looks like a Christmas tradition, that doesn’t mean it is one. And it speaks to your own bias and up-bringing to label everything you see in December as a Christmas practice or tradition.

There are other religions. There are other cultures. There are other holidays and observances. And they need to be seen and made as (if not more) important too.

We celebrate Chanukkah and Yule in my home. My partner celebrates Christmas at their parents, who are a Christian household. I respect their decision to do so for their mother, and I join in by going up there and opening presents; but the lights strung in my home, my menorah on the mantle, the songs we sign and play, the baking and cooking I do, and the very tiny, tiny tree gracing my coffee table? These are not Christian traditions. They are not Christmas. Because I’m Jewish and my roommate/best friend is Pagan. And so, these things? They are Jewish and Pagan things, in my home.

Sometimes I need the reminder.

i love how a lot of queer ppl have the same experience of toning down ur identities/labels for cishet people so tag this what you actually label yourself v.s what you tell cishet people