When you walk around New York City this time of year, you can’t not think about Christmas. Every shop and cafe you enter is playing Christmas songs in non-stop rotation.
Which is ironic, because NYC is one of those places in the U.S. which has a huge non-Christian population — mainly Jews and Muslims, but also pretty much every other faith, as well as a beefy contingent of complete non-believers.
As I walked into one store I was hit by another irony. They were playing Bing Crosby’s version of White Christmas, which I believe is the best selling single of all time.
The thing, in that moment, which struck me as ironic is that the most popular Christmas song of all time was written by a Jew.
But then I remembered. “Oh, right, the entire holiday is about a Jew.”