The radio was playing “Easter Parade” and I thought, But this is Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then He gave to Irving Berlin “Easter Parade” and “White Christmas.”… Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow.

Roth’s remark is a characteristically provocative, comic exaggeration that elevates Irving Berlin’s popular songs to the level of sacred revelation in order to underscore a paradox of American culture: a Jewish immigrant songwriter becomes one of the defining voices of Christian holidays. The line points to Berlin’s power to reshape collective rituals through mass entertainment—turning Easter into spectacle (“a fashion show”) and Christmas into a secular, sentimental fantasy (“a holiday about snow”). Beneath the joke is Roth’s recurring interest in assimilation, cultural authorship, and the way American identity is manufactured through popular art that can eclipse or replace religious meaning.