Assimilationism
Earlier this week was May Fifth, Cinco De Mayo, the day that Americans get to play at being Mexican. Its something we like to do, play at being something we’re not. We’ve got a number of holidays that are built around the concept. On St. Patrick’s Day we get to be Irish. For Oktoberfest we get to be German. On Halloween we get to be whatever we want.
It’s one of the ways we live out the old Cheyenne saying, “Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins.”
One group, though, that we don’t seem to play at much, is the Jews. I’ve held a number of jobs over the years and hung out with different groups, and it’s pretty common for a group to go out for Mexican food on Cinco De Mayo, and vast numbers of people cook up corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a group say something like “Hey, it’s Rosh Hashanah, let’s go to the deli.”
I asked God about it and he said it was because even more than we’re actors, Americans are lazy. He explained to me that there’s two reasons we don’t have a traditional “everyone is Jewish” day. The first is that we’ve never been able to decide on which Jewish Holiday to co-opt, but the other is the main one, the other is that the Jewish Holidays move around on our calendar and we’re just too lazy to keep track.
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