In honor of Christmas, or “Festivus,” as we Jews tend to call it, here’s a post from last year’s expedition to find a Christmas tree in St. Louis. Few of you have seen this before, so consider it new.
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For the first time in my short, Jewish life, I was invited to take place in the time-honored Christian tradition of cutting down the Christmas tree. According to rigorous scientific research, such as authentic-looking blogs and websites with festive backgrounds written in Comic Sans font, the custom of erecting a Christmas tree began in the time of the Romans with the festival of Saturnalia. Saturnalia was a celebration of the god Saturn, and was marked by pretty much everyone having sex with everyone else in massive orgies. Whether you were a male or a female was evidently unimportant. Friends and family exchanged gifts, and traditional social norms were relaxed, but really Saturnalia was all about sex. Sex with lots of unknown people, actually.  In a seemingly incongruous ritual, revelers also decorated their homes with bits of evergreen shrubbery. Continue reading →