Now that Halloween is behind us, the holiday season has arrived and stores have already eagerly put up their holiday displays. As I did homework and recovered from several days of festivities in the comfort of Barnes & Noble, I finally noticed for the first time just how Christmas-oriented the store was. While I didn’t find the displays offensive, it was interesting that there were three rather large showcases in the children’s section concerning Christmas and a mere five books about Chanukah mixed haphazardly in with the books on Thanksgiving. I really couldn’t understand why the same Disney Princesses, Strawberry Shortcake characters and Berenstain Bears couldn’t experience a Chanukah celebration in addition to their Christmas feasts. My friend pointed out that a lot of the authors of these books were Christian but my opinion remained that, considering the purpose of children’s books were to familiarize children with holidays and life lessons, there shouldn’t be such a small number of books on Chanukah.

Instead, all the information a person needs to know about the Jewish holidays are packed into dense volumes geared for adult audiences and the children’s selection is lacking in the popular characters that children are immediately drawn to. In a way, this stems back to the entry I wrote regarding the Jewish American girl doll; I was disappointed that there wasn’t a good selection marketed towards the Jewish holiday and that the few books the store had on the holiday were pushed off to the side. Starting off the holiday season early, while slightly ridiculous considering we aren’t even halfway into November, wouldn’t be so awful if there was more of a balance. As I settled back into my chair, after perusing the children section for gift ideas, I decided to blog about my findings. Finally, I think I can understand what all the fuss was about when, just last year, there was another complaint about the holiday season being too one sided.