In the Calendar of Saints of my fallen (but much-missed) Church of England, December 17 is marked as O SAPIENTA—which

…also known as the Great Advent Antiphons or Great Os) are Magnificat antiphons used at Vespers on the last seven days of Advent in Western Christian traditions….The texts are best known in the English-speaking world in their paraphrased form in the hymn ”O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”

(Emphasis added. Links in original, from—I hate to say this—Wikipedia, permalinked.)

Note the implicitly philosemitic lyrics: 

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory over the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
And drive away the shades of night
And pierce the clouds and bring us light!
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes on Sinai’s height
In ancient times once gave the law
In cloud, and majesty, and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel.

I quite recently discovered that “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” happens to be both my favorite Christmas carol and also that of my Catholic wife. This sort of thing happens quite often when you’re married. We are also both addicted to potato chips, which is why they are rigorously excluded from our home.

Oh, Hanukkah begins too, tonight. But it’s now a multicultural must that no religious festival can be mentioned without also mentioning the nearest festival of some other religion, just as Christmas can no longer be mentioned without a reference to, well, Hanukkah. 

Somehow, however, the MSM neglects to provide the nearest saint’s day in the Christian calendar to each year’s Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover—and there are a lot of saints! So it has become a VDARE.com service (as so often) to fill the gap.

Quite often Hanukkah doesn’t overlap with Christmas at all, but this year it ends on the evening of December 26, Boxing Day. Still, for the record, here’s more confirmation that it’s actually a minor Jewish festival, inflated only because of its proximity to Christmas: Hanukkah 2020: When it is and what to know (no, it’s not the ’Jewish Christmas’), by David Oliver, USA Today, December 10, 2020.

VDARE.com has many Jewish writers and donors (God bless them every one). And, unlike the unpleasant War On Christmas perpetrators, we wish all our readers, writers and donors a Happy. We mean it.