Hanukkah bush

In his book A Kosher Christmas: 'Tis the Season to Be Jewish (Rutgers University, 2012), author Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut cites perhaps the first mention of the term Hanukkah bush.

Henrietta Szold in the Jewish Messenger newspaper dated January 10, 1879, asked "Why need we adopt the Christmas tree, ridiculously baptized a Chanukah bush?"

Plaut writes extensively on how Jews in America brought a secularized version of Christmas into their homes and helped in the public realm to mold media and entertainment representations in a similar vein.

In a 1959 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, actress Gertrude Berg described her father's substitution of a "Chanukah bush" in place of a Christmas tree.

[7] Another family's dynamic is described by Edward Cohen,[8] in a memoir about Jewish life in 1950s Mississippi: I recalled the year I had asked my mother for a Christmas tree.

... We had Hanukkah, a minor military holiday transformed by the combined pressure of thousands of Jewish children over the years into a substitute for Christmas.

It was characteristic of her that she didn't take the easier approach of some Jewish parents who, without rabbinical sanction, were buying small, squat Christmas trees and renaming them Hanukkah bushes.

A December 1974 New York Times ad[12] by Saks Fifth Avenue offers an array of holiday merchandise including a "happy bagel" ornament, "painted and preserved with shellac, ready to hang on a Christmas tree, Chanukah bush, or around your neck, 3.50."

In a 1981 contretemps over a Nativity scene in the South Dakota capitol, a side issue involved a Christmas tree which had been decorated with seventeen Stars of David.

The stars were redistributed among other Christmas trees in the display, to avoid giving offense to some Jews by implying that the state endorsed Hanukkah bushes.