Historically, "Judeo-Christian" means "Okay we're still mad about the whole killing Jesus thing, but at least you're not Communists. You're *not* Communists, right?"

(I have the same issues with that term, amych.)

Except you missed one meaning.

4. Jesus was Jewish, so Christians really are Jewish too! Anything that's changed about the Jewish religion since 2000 years ago? Oh, that's not real Judaism.

Most uses of "Judeo-Christian" from the fifties that I've seen seem to be the exact same people who would have said "America is a Christian nation" ten years earlier, but realized that didn't sound so good in a post-Holocaust world, so they added the "Judeo" to that sentence without actually changing what they meant.

4. Jesus was Jewish, so Christians really are Jewish too! Anything that's changed about the Jewish religion since 2000 years ago? Oh, that's not real Judaism.

Yes! Also known as, "so, are you, like, a Pharisee?"

Yes! Also known as, "so, are you, like, a Pharisee?"

I'd answer "Yes."

Okay we're still mad about the whole killing Jesus thing

I've never understood that. Wasn't the death of Jesus supposed to happen? To me, it always seemed like blaming the hammer if someone smashes a window with it. That doesn't even get to the point of blaming a whole group for the acts of a few. But then, you know, agnostic (or atheist depending on your definitions) so my perspective is different.

I've never understood that. Wasn't the death of Jesus supposed to happen? To me, it always seemed like blaming the hammer if someone smashes a window with it.

Yeah, except that according to Christians, the window getting smashed was a good and necessary thing.

I've never understood that. Wasn't the death of Jesus supposed to happen?

Ditto. And isn't it the whole basis for the religion? I mean, seriously.

I have heard exactly one Jewish person use the term "Judeo-Christian" seriously, and that's Dennis Prager, who you may remember from the "It doesn't matter if you're in the mood -- have sex with your husband whenever he wants to, or else it's your fault that he has an affair!" debacle a few months ago. He also once wrote several columns claiming that every person being sworn into office in the US should be sworn in on a Christian bible, to uphold the Judeo-Christian tradition. The particular person he was writing against was a Muslim who was being sworn in on a Koran, but he also specifically mentioned that Jewish politicians should be sworn in on the Christian bible. He also said that Jewish politicians generally are sworn in on a Christian bible, which is just factually wrong.

We used to have a mullberry tree and the birds would get so drunk that Mom had to keep the cat inside for a week or two or our back yard would have been an abattoir.

My crazy aunt once decided to try to raise silkworms. There was a local school with mulberry trees, yet they inexplicably refused to keep her supplied with mulberry leaves. Naturally, she decided the only sensible response would be to send my older brother, without my parents' knowledge (or my brother's before they got there) to intrude upon school grounds and swipe the leaves.

Remarkably, given the planning and care she'd obviously put into this, the silkworms didn't survive.