>>You have the Achilles heel of very smart people and don't see that your experience is not everyone's. Your experience is not theirs.
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>>Jeez, Mike if last week was "flirting", I'd hate to know what this is :)
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>>I understand where Tamar is coming from. But the reality is that the U.S. recognizes certain days as National Holidays and doesn't recognize others. So it's become sort of the "de facto" standard.
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>>My wife and her mother's family are conservative Jewish, but they don't do anything differently on Yom Kippur. They actually celebrate Christmas. And I've come to learn that many from Jewish backgrounds celebrate Christmas - though not in the religious sense. And that's the way most of us think of it anyway - after all, we say "Merry Christmas" and exchange gifts and go to holiday parties and drive through neighborhoods checking out Christmas lights, as opposed to saying, "Weep and Repent". I don't have a single religious bone in my body, but I love Christmas.
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>Saying "Merry Christmas" is not the same as celebrating it. Most Jews I know when they say "Merry Christmas" don't mean "Merry Christmas to Us All." They mean "Merry Christmas to you and your family and a day off for us." <g>. Since I grew up in an anti-semitic environment (east euro country) when someone back there said "Merry Christmas" to me it was in order to offend me. It took me some time to realize that USA is different and exceptionally different. Here people mean "well wishing greetings" when they say "Merry Christmas." So I learned to say "Merry Christmas" too, as a respect to others.

Hmm, what do you mean by 'Merry Christmas' in USSR? Nobody celebrated it there till recently.