Satire | Passover is objectively the best holiday

There are three types of Jewish holidays — they tried to kill us but they didn’t, they tried to kill us and they did and the ones about trees. Coming up this week is Passover — a holiday where they tried to kill us but didn’t, so we celebrate!

Passover is my favorite holiday besides maybe my birthday — which should definitely be a national holiday, but I digress. Every year my family meets up for seder and we eat way too much. What more could you ask for from a holiday? Well, maybe you’d ask to receive presents, but I guess my mind is on my birthday — which is July 29, in case anyone wants to send me a present.

Passover celebrates when Moses and the Jews escaped from Egypt through retelling the story and spending time with family. If you’re like my family, this looks like a bunch of people yelling at each other over some matzah ball soup and brisket. Sometimes there are even visual aids to help with the story, such as puppets that teach little kids about the 10 Plagues. You really haven’t lived if you haven’t seen a finger puppet of lice — how does the attempt to make it cute make the puppet a million times creepier than actual lice?

Not only is Passover my favorite holiday, but it is also objectively the best holiday. What other holiday are you required to slouch in your chair and leave out wine for a ghost? Aside from matzah — which is essentially an over-glorified cracker that makes you constipated — the food is delicious, so suck it Thanksgiving. Also, you are required to drink four glasses of wine at the seder. I don’t see any other holiday even getting close to matching that energy! Overall, Passover is like no other holiday, and because of that, it’s objectively the best one out there. 

The songs from Passover go hard. If there were music festivals for Jewish music — which I’m kind of surprised there aren’t already — the songs from Passover would be the names with the biggest font on the poster, like Harry Styles on the Coachella poster. I mean “Dayenu,” “Who Knows One” and “Chad Gadya” sometimes hit harder than what’s on the radio. Now imagine your relatives singing these completely out of tune. In some ways it makes it better, but probably it’s more likely that I’m used to it. Passover songs blow Christmas songs out of the water because they have the feeling of suffering behind them. Also, most good Christmas songs were written by Jews anyway — we know how to make a banger!

Now back to the ghost comment. In case anyone is not familiar with the holiday of Passover, it’s traditional to leave wine out for the spirit of Elijah the prophet, who is supposedly the next Messiah — sort of like the Jewish version of leaving cookies out for Santa. Part of the seder is opening the door to let Elijah in, even though we all sort of know in the back of our heads that if the Messiah was coming back, he wouldn’t be coming to our family’s seder. He’d probably go to Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s seder instead. 

If you want to spice up your seder, you could dress up like Elijah and scare your family when they open the door — that’s what I did when I was eight, and my family still talks about it to this day because obviously, I’m the favorite. While Elijah doesn’t bring gifts like Santa or the Easter Bunny, the hope that he may come brings a little mystery to Passover, which makes him the best special guest for the holidays.

Passover also loves its symbolism, and as an English literature minor, this makes the holiday one of the best. Not only is the symbolism good, but it’s also dramatic. We literally dip parsley in salt water to remember the tears of our ancestors and eat bitter herbs to remember our ancestor’s bitter time as slaves. This is some theater kid-level drama. I don’t see Thanksgiving bringing any symbols to the table — except maybe the most literal one, the turkey. 

Speaking of English class, there are a lot of stories that make up Passover. One of my favorites is the four sons, in which four sons — the wise, evil, simple and the one unable to ask — ask questions about the holiday and its origins. In my family, we always give my sweet grandma the wicked son — and the joke is funny every year, I promise. I don’t see any other holiday even coming close to that audience participation — it’s like a homemade play put on by your family.

If you’re the youngest like me, the four questions are where you shine. Every year as the youngest cousin, I recite the four questions about Passover. When I was little it used to make me nervous. But now, it’s my time for everyone to pay attention to me. I may be a little biased, but having a religiously mandated section in the seder where you have to pay attention to the youngest makes it the best holiday. Thanksgiving and Christmas don’t have that — the youngest kids are just expected to make a hand turkey or open presents. For Passover, you have to perform. 

Hopefully, now you see why Passover is a superior holiday and I will be satisfied eating my matzah ball soup and coconut macaroons this week. 

Rachel Soloff writes primarily about the entertainment industry and how lame antisemites are. Write to her at RJS191@pitt.edu.