The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:10, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hanukkah bush[edit]

AfDs for this article:

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Page is an offensive depiction of what is pretty much considered a joke to most people of Jewish faith. Page lacks importances and citations. Dfnj123 (talk) 03:44, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The article seems to pass WP:GNG Just to let you know, Wikipedia is not censored and the page being offensive is not considered a valid reason for deletion. There is WP:PROFANE, but that only comes in if the article is written in a manner that is non-encyclopedic. WP:NOTCENSORED Tokyogirl79 (talk) 05:01, 29 November 2011 (UTC)tokyogirl79[reply]
Keep. To quote myself from the prior AfD in 2005, "The fact that some people may be offended by the existence of Hanukkah bushes does not mean that they would necessarily be offended by an article about them provided it is written in a fair and factual way ...." Contrary to the nom, the article does have citations, although I haven't been able to look most of them up because they are not online. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:24, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I agree with the above, that the subject is offensive does not mean the article is offensive. Racism is offensive, but we won't go around deleting the article racism just because of that. JIP | Talk 05:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect/Merge. Completely understand how my points above are invalid now looking back at what I typed (got to get better versed in wiki guidelines). Regardless this article is about a topic which is commonly thought of as a inside joke, and very few people practice it seriously. Even the article itself admits this. Also the "Anecdotes" section, which takes up the majority of the article, adds little to the actually content of the page. A condensed form of this page inserted under the "Hanukkah rituals" subsection on the Hanukkah page may be a better place to serve this information.Dfnj123 (talk) 06:53, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep accurate and well-cited article on not unnotable subject.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:10, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - some people may find this a lamentable, trivial, and even offensive subject, but as Tokyogirl79 rightly observes, that is not our criterion. On the straight question, is this subject Notable, the answer is clearly Yes. It was discussed directly in the New York Times as long ago as December 12, 1960 Jewish Families Puzzled by Problem of Christmas, and has been so discussed many times since in that publication and numerous others. Keep is the only option. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:39, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep A notable part of American culture. Google News archive has 352 results for "Hanukkah bush" exclusive of Wikipedia, many of which cover the subject of this article. They date back to the NY Times (1960) which said "For many years, some Jewish children who have longed for a Christmas tree have been permitted by their parents to have a "Hanukkah Bush"..." It notes the pagan (not Christian) origins of the Christmas tree. A 1970 Evening Independent article also notes the non-Christian origin of the Christmas tree as a reason for Jews to allow their children a Hanukkah bush. See also[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. I regret very much that any readers find it offensive or don't like it, but that is not a valid deletion argument. Edison (talk) 21:57, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There are also some results at Google Books, such as "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jewish History" page 110 and :Jewish-gentile couples:Trends, Challenges and hopes, page 86. Edison (talk) 22:38, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Meh. Nominator's rationale is WP:IDONTLIKEIT, which is unacceptable, but all the (reliable, ie. children's books not included) references in the article are trivial. It's possible that better references could be found for what is indeed a phenomenon (some of Edison's may be good), but a lot of the "keep" arguments are really WP:EVERYONE arguments, which are also unacceptable. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:27, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:10, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. This is a classic example of OR and SYNTH. There is no story here, so let's cobble together a bunch of examples to prove the point. Yoninah (talk) 12:00, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is no need for any OR or SYNTH here. There is no doubt from the hundreds of reliable references available (only a few are in the article today, but that is not the criterion) that both the term and the actual practice exist, and have been in use since 1959, however deplorable this may seem to some people. If it's any help, many Christians feel much the same about the (pagan) 'Christmas Tree', but we aren't likely to delete that, either. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:16, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. This is not an actual thing in Judaism and does not really serve any religious purpose in Judaism. It is a joke related to a Christmas tree. Maybe can be merged into Christmas tree article.71.225.233.158 (talk) 06:41, 2 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep While a joke in Judaism, valid concept under what is and is not Jewish Culture.Naraht (talk) 10:58, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.