Brandon Walker’s “Chinese Food for Christmas” is the big Christmas-season Jewish Internet video hit. It’s been viewed more than a million times on YouTube. There’s even a stripped-down, acoustic version (which has been watched more than 500,000 times!).
The question is: Why?
Personally, I prefer this one:
My favorite line: “You see all Jewish people are eating in Chinese restaurants, but you don’t see a Chinese person eat gefilte fish in a Jewish restaurant.”
Truer words have never been said. There is no reciprocity in Sino-Judaic relations. My point exactly!
P.S. I should add that despite the second video’s title, it was actually filmed in several cities at several different Chinese restaurants (lest anyone come away with the mistaken impression that a kosher Chinese restaurant was serving pork).
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btw as for the pork reference, there's a string of three quotes in the video that showed a certain, um, fondness for non-Kosher Chinese food (oyster sauce, spare ribs, shrimp).
Actually, the original "Shalom Hunan" in Brookline, Mass, for which I named this video, no longer exists, but I thought the restaurant's name sums up the idea more nicely than "Christmas at Ollie's (and other random Chinese restaurants)". I suppose the video ended up biased towards the two main voices we focused on, but as a Chinese-American with many Jewish-American friends, I find this tradition (or whatever you might call it) an interesting intercultural connection. Anyway, thanks for the link and I welcome any feedback or ideas you have!
Too bad all the Chinese places I tried to go to on Christmas were closed. I ended up eating a veggie sandwich at a subway in a gas station.
This makes me sad.
What a sad commentary on the shallowness of Jewish identify and values from the patrons of the Chinese Restaurant in the second video. At least the lady on the couch has some sense of what is appropriate and what is not. As for the first video, please spare us the constant repetition of the stereotype activity for Christmas day and enough of the fake beards--it has been over used and is not funny!
Brandon Walker's video has delightful music and is funny. The other one is largely sad; I'll bet not one of these people build, decorate or even eat in a Sukkah at Succoth.
How come we (Jews) don't get together and take our families on cruises over this whole christmas mishigas week. This way, we can spare our kids the exposure to a holiday that we (lets face it- living outside of Israel) can't possibly compete with- and this way we'd be able to give them something 'bigger' and 'grander' to look forward to.....