The holiday most goyim know about is Hanukkah, mostly because it drops in the calendar at the same time as their big-deal holiday, Christmas. Too bad because Hanukkah is not only a lame little thing, it’s something no-one ever paid attention to until American Jewkids started whining about converting to Christianity because of the presents. Fuck Hanukkah, the real analog for the goyish holiday where everyone gets together, sings songs, drinks, and has family fights is Passover, or more correctly Pesach. And Pesach is a kick-ass holiday with a great back-story. The general backstory is pretty well known, and if you haven’t seen the sprawling epic The Ten Commandments, pour a few drinks and take in the splendor created by that notorious Jew, Cecil B. DeMille.

Unlike most other Jew holidays, Pesach is not synagogue-centric, but mostly home-based. It centers on a large ritual meal called a Seder (Hebrew for “order,” which generally does not describe real Seders). Because the Seder is a ritual, there is, of course, a guidebook, in this case, called by the euphonious appellation “Haggadah.”

The most obvious way that Pesach kicks ass is, not surprisingly, drinking. Part of the Seder ritual is the consumption of at least four glasses of wine per person, not including what you slurp down during dinner. This includes the kids, and until you’ve seen a shit-faced 8-year-old grab his Aunt Minnie’s tits and yell, “HONK! HONK!” you haven’t really experienced Pesach. The kids usually pass out shortly after this, which reminds the adults of why this requirement was traditionally put into the ceremony. The order in the Haggadah tries to space this out a bit, but the kids will still end up blowing a 0.15 BAC.

Highlights of the ritual include singing songs of praise to Yahweh for killing a bunch of Egyptians. But hey, we show our sorrow by spilling a drop of wine for each of the Ten Plagues. 100,000 dead Egyptians, 10 drops of wine, seems fair. The fun part is intoning the names of each of the plagues as the drops are spilled- we do it in Hebrew because “Dom, Tsvardayah, Kinim, Arov, Dever..” sounds much cooler than chanting, “Blood, frogs, flies, darkness, cattle disease…”

There’s a lot to choose from in the ceremony, but without a doubt, the best part was The Four Sons. Each son (with one exception) consisted of a question, which was then answered at length. Before you assume, no, the sons weren’t Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo, but rather Chachem (the wise son), Rasha (the evil son), Tam (the stupid son), and She’eino Yodaiah Lishol (the son who is too naive or young to ask a question). The questions start with “(son’s name), what does he ask?” or in Hebrew, “(son’s name), ma hu omair?” followed by the son’s question and the answer. For example, “Tam, ma hu omair? ‘What’s all this?’ You answer the dummy by saying. ‘Yahweh sprung us from Egypt and killed a shitload of them.'” Or something like that. I have a sentimental attachment to this ritual because inevitably when the reader started with “Rasha, ma hu omair?” (the evil son, what does he say?), everyone’s head would turn to look in my direction.

The answers to the remaining three of the Four Sons’s questions are pretty much what you’d expect. To the Evil Son’s, “Why do you even bother with this” the answer is to punch him in the mouth and tell him, “it’s because of what Yahweh did for me. Not for you. I’m not sure what the fuck you’re on about.” To the Wise Son’s, “What are all the laws, rules, and histories here?” you answer, “OK, hope you’ve got a few minutes, this is a long story…” then tell him all of the odd little rules and practices, interspersed with a history lesson. The Son Who Is Too Naive To Ask, well, just answer the question you wish he had asked, and tell him that Yahweh kicked 16 varieties of ass and sprung us from slavery.

The other fun ritual for the kids is the Ransom of the Afikomen. Y’all know about matzo, right? It’s like a large Communion wafer with even less flavor. Early in the Seder ceremony, a matzo is broken into thirds, and one of the thirds is wrapped up and set aside. Because we have a different word for everything, it’s called an afikomen, which loosely translates as “dessert.” Having a piece of matzo for dessert is just one more way we like to fuck ourselves over. Part of the ritual demands that the afikomen be used to end the meal and that the ceremony can’t end until the afikomen is eaten. So we train our kids to recognize a business opportunity, and they ritually steal the afikomen and hide it, demanding a ransom payment to produce it so the adults can finish up the ceremony and drink more wine (two glasses are supposed to follow the afikomen consumption). Our favorite hiding place was in my grandfather’s filing cabinet, under “A” for “afikomen.” We were not the most creative of children. In any case, the kid’s grubby little hands are greased with lucre, the afikomen is produced, and many Hebrew and Aramaic songs are sung.

Theoretically, the Seder of 1971 has not ended, because our Dalmatian sniffed out the afikomen hiding place and ate it while we were all busy opening the door for Elijah (who was, as usual, a no show). The Bible and the Talmud make no mention of what to do in these circumstances.

Unfortunately, all things Pesach have gone sharply downhill since I was a kid. Let’s start with the Haggadah itself. In the finest American mercantile tradition, the overwhelmingly most common Haggadah was published by… Maxwell House Coffee. Just about every American Jew Family had a set of them, typically stained with wine and food from previous years. And really, they were quite good, having both the traditional Hebrew/Aramaic text and on the facing page an English translation. For very common prayers, there was even a transliteration of the Semitic so that the benighted few who hadn’t attended Hebrew school could join in.

But, given that the main religion of contemporary American Jews is liberalism, you can predict what happened. Yes, they “revised” the Haggadah. A mere few thousand years of tradition cannot withstand the onslaught of Social Justice Warriors. The New and Improved Maxwell House Haggadah is “inclusive” and “gender neutral.” The Four Sons has transmuted to “The Four Kinds of Children.” And sometimes a Fifth is added, the oppressed child. Yahweh is no longer a King, he xe is a Monarch. Yahweh is also no longer a Father, but a Parent. It takes a lot to de-ball Yahweh, but the SJWs managed.

It gets worse.

One of the Pesach rituals is an unattended glass of wine for the prophet Elijah, just in case he shows up. Think “milk and cookies for Santa.” The SJWs, of course, find this intolerably sexist, so put out TWO cups, the other one for Maryam, mother of Moses. Because you never know.

Woke Jews will place Fair Trade coffee beans on the Seder plate to symbolize… something. They will also place an orange on the plate, not as you might think to symbolize Donald Trump, but to honor LGBTQ3M# Jews. Because Biblical Era Jews were all about tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality, right? If you’re going to do social signaling, might as well get Vitamin C with it.

Alternative Haggadahs are a big deal now. Here’s the Four Sons told in the Earth Justice Haggadah (I am not making that up!):

The Wise Child: This child knows that climate change is real and that they must act to combat its effects. The Wise Child has read that global temperatures and sea levels are rising every year, that more species are becoming endangered, and that more communities are experiencing extreme weather events and decreased crop viability. The Wise Child sees all this and is motivated to combat climate change in any way they can.

The Wicked Child: The Wicked Child has read about climate change and is aware that scientists predict a whole range of negative effects if we don’t reduce global carbon emissions. But the Wicked Child doesn’t think the issues caused by climate change apply to them. They believe climate change will only affect the poor and the vulnerable in places they will never visit. They remain unconcerned.

The Simple Child: The Simple Child is overwhelmed by the idea that humankind could be radically altering the entire face of the earth. They don’t believe it’s possible that scientific predictions are accurate. This child simply ignores the evidence that the problem is real at all.

The One Who Does Not Know How to Ask: This child is much more like The Wise Child than we may typically imagine. The One Who Does Not Know How to Ask has also read about climate change and knows that environmental degradation and the effects on the global population are a real and present threat. Unlike The Wise Child and much more like the Simple Child, this child is overwhelmed. How is this possible? This child might ask, How can I, alone, prevent this global catastrophe?

If Global warming isn’t your fashion statement in social signalling, you can also have Haggadahs centered on Conflict Minerals, LGBTQ (make sure you read the new prayer, “We’re Rainbow Folk” and have that orange out), Unions, Palestinian Arab issues (what’s the blessing for suicide bombers?)… anything on the Progressive menu. Fuck the actual meaning of the holiday, we have to show solidarity, resist, make our voices heard, and no better way to do this than by refocusing Pesach on our own moral preening.

OK, so what do we need to do here? My personal opinion is to troll troll troll. Wear a MAGA yarmulke. Bring along a BLT, toss it on the Seder plate, and point out that it’s just as traditional as the Fair Trade coffee beans. Blow out all the candles, pointing out that they’re contributing CO2 to global warming. Grab Maryam’s cup, lament that they didn’t fill it to only 70% of Elijah’s, chug it, and yell, “OK, grab her pussy!” Ask loudly, “How do you get a Jewish girl’s number” and when you get blank looks, roll up your sleeve and point to your arm.

Your problem of what to do for next year’s Progressive Seder will solve itself.