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the so-called war on Christmas
As I write this, it is mid-December and numerous editorial writers,
buoyed by what they think is a mandate from the November 2004 election
in the US, are railing against the secularization of Christmas.
Now on one level I agree with them; what is supposed to be the
second-holiest day on the Christian calendar has been reduced, largely,
to reindeer, tinsel-covered trees, a fat red guy, and loot. Lots of
loot; it's how many retailers stay in business. If I were a Christian,
I might be pretty annoyed at that too.
The problem, though, is in their targetting. I've seen quite a few folks lately writing about how catering to the non-Christians (who, after all, are a minority and ought to just do everyone a favor and get out of the country now, or so I gather) has brought this on. "The Jews won't let us celebrate our holiday!", they whine, or "those damned athiests are taking the christ out of Christmas and must be stopped!" It's always someone else's fault, it seems.
Where is the self-examination and responsibility? How many of these good Christians, now complaining about secularization, put up trees, teach their kids about Santa, and break the bank on gifts for their families? This seems to be the norm in quite a few families. Hey guys, listen up: the non-Christians didn't impose secularization over the objections of the faithful followers of Jesus; the Christians did it to themselves. And now that it's spun out of control, a few of them are looking for a scapegoat.
It's time for everyone to take a little responsibility for his own beliefs and practices. No one else is going to do it for you, and sitting back doing nothing but whining about it gets old. It's everyone's responsibility to live out your beliefs through acts, not just by spouting words. If you believe that it's time to restore Christmas as a religious holiday, what are you doing about it?
I offer, then, nine commandments for indignant Christians (ten would be presumptuous):
1. Thou shalt act in accordance with thy beliefs. This is the greatest commandment.
2. Thou shalt not be surprised when others draw conclusions about thy beliefs from thy actions. If it walketh like a duck and talketh like a duck...
3. Thou shalt permit others to act based on their beliefs, whether those beliefs be of other faiths or none at all.
4. Thou shalt spend Christmas in worship, not in material gluttony. Extra merit will derive from spending the day with those more needy than thyself.
5. Thou shalt enhance thy private property with decorations in accordance with thy beliefs, and refrain from decorations not in accordance with them.
6. Thou shalt recognize that public property belongs to, well, the public, and refrain from imposing thy views there. This applies to everyone else, too.
7. Thou shalt carry the message of Christmas well past December 26 and strive to emulate the target of thy veneration. That's what it's really about, after all.
8. Thou shalt cease and desist from elevating minor holidays (like Chanukah and Kwanzaa) into "Jewish Christmas" or "African Christmas". It's not that simple, and thou doest not get it.
9. Recognizing that Christmas is not a secular holiday (in thy beliefs), thou shalt immediately commence lobbying for governments and employers to remove this holiday from their schedules of days off. (Thou canst take it as a vacataion day, just as the Jews do with Yom Kippur and the pagans do with Beltane.)
May you be free to enjoy your holy day insofar as you permit others to do the same with theirs.
I wish my Christian friends a merry Christmas. I realize that your lunatic fringe does not speak for you, and I'm sorry you have to put up with those guys.
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Wal-mart did not in any way harm my Christmas experience, either by over-commercializing or by refusing to wish me Merry Christmas... because I do not shop at Wal-Mart, and won't until they clean up the way they treat their employees.
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Wal-mart didn't hurt my December experience either. I can honestly say that I have no direct evidence for what they do or don't say to custmers.
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And to say thay people can't celebrate their holidays in their own way violates #1. But then, I guess that depends on if you believe the rules of holidays should be created by the powers-that-be or the revelers.
Hey, let's storm the Government & force them to make Yom Kippur a national holiday too!
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I have occasionally wondered how the mandatory-(Christian)-prayer-in-school advocates would react if the cafeteria were closed and water fountains turned off for Yom Kippur, and during Ramadan. If they want to say that everyone should observe (their) religion, then it should apply to other religions too.
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(Anonymous) 2005-12-26 02:12 pm (UTC)(link)I think it would be incredibly fair to let all major religions have their biggest holiday off. Though Ramadan, being a month, may be a little tricky. :-)
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Happy Minor Jewish Holiday!
(Anonymous) 2005-12-25 08:26 pm (UTC)(link)That reminds me. Now that I'm black, do I HAVE to celebrate Kwanza?
Rob of UnSpace (http://www.unspace.net/)
Re: Happy Minor Jewish Holiday!
I'm sorry? I think I missed something. This sort of thing isn't usually subject to change (Michael Jackson aside).
do I HAVE to celebrate Kwanza?
Do all Jews have to celebrate Sukkot? Do all Americans have to celebrate Independence Day? Do all people of Irish ancestry have to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day? I think you're off the hook. If I understand it correctly, Kwanzaa is a "nationalistic" holiday rather than a religious one, so while you'd expect that anyone who identifies as a Christian would celebrate Christmas, people don't always feel bound to expectations based only on their nation or race of birth.
Re: Happy Minor Jewish Holiday!
Re: Happy Minor Jewish Holiday!
(Anonymous) 2005-12-26 05:14 pm (UTC)(link)My parents have died, and so I have no way to find out the story behind this, although there are two great-grandmothers for whom no pictures exist.
There's nothing more fun than having someone say "Well, in "this group," I can say..." and then say something racist -- and then I get to say "Well, actually..."
Telling ex-girlfriends they dated someone of another race was interesting. I've been asked not to inform any parents of this fact! I figure it makes life easier on their kids.
The amazing thing is, for a lot of people, it matters. When I was in New Orleans, someone I'd never met came up to me and told me quietly that they knew I was just "passing" and that my secret was safe with them. I thought, that without the genetic test, there was no way to tell I wasn't the world's "whitest white boy." In the old days, an "octaroon" was not considered white in New Orleans -- and just about anywhere else.
I'm not sure that my parent's marriage was legal at the time in PA, assuming the African ancestry is all from one side.
I'm still trying to figure out what this means to me. The joke about Kwanza was an attempt to express that confusion.
Rob
Re: Happy Minor Jewish Holiday!
Telling ex-girlfriends they dated someone of another race was interesting. I've been asked not to inform any parents of this fact! I figure it makes life easier on their kids.
How sad. I mean, that wouldn't have surprised me twenty or thirty years ago, but you get this now? Outside the south?
I'm not sure that my parent's marriage was legal at the time in PA, assuming the African ancestry is all from one side.
PA had laws against mixed marriages that recently? Wow. (Or perhaps I have drawn massively-incorrect conclusions about your age and, by extension, timing of related events.)
Re: Happy Minor Jewish Holiday!
(Anonymous) 2005-12-27 02:34 pm (UTC)(link)I'd like to think I wouldn't have used my race to get a scholarship. The weird thing is all the Black Studies classes I took. I had no idea. I just did it because it was interesting.
I think just by existing as a good friend to both my ex-girlfriends and their husbands messes with the parents' heads sufficiently without adding to it. It's bad enough at the engagement party when the mother of the groom-to-be is looking through a photo album of her soon-to-be daughter in law and comes across a prom picture -- and turns to me and says "What a coincidence! This looks an awful lot like you." I swear, everyone in the room quit breathing for a good 15 seconds until I managed a "Why thank you!"
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This has so many wrongnesses that I cannot begin to discuss it.
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Sunday Services cancelled
(Anonymous) 2005-12-26 05:20 pm (UTC)(link)Our church cancelled one of two Sunday services. I was grateful to survive Christmas eve. Doubling over in the middle of the Sunday service with this stomach would not have been appreciated. I stayed home.
Rob
(Our church has a rule: if you're sick and contagious, stay home. God knows where you live. If you're just sick, use discretion. I did.)
Re: Sunday Services cancelled
I can sympathize too, just as I sympathize with large synagogues during the high holy days. But I'm still surprised by the outcome.
Perhaps I lack the right theological foundation here, but it seems to me that one of two things must be true:
(1) Celebrating Christmas with communal worship is fundamental and must happen; you can, if necessary, sacrifice other activities to accommodate this. This is the understanding of "holy days of obligation" that I was taught as a child.
(2) Communal worship is technically optional -- if it is for Christmas then how much moreso for regular Sundays -- so people should spend that time at home with their families instead of going to church.
I assume that interpretation #2 would be widely discouraged. But if they cancel Christmas services because they're too difficult, aren't they laying the groundwork for much bigger problems? Isn't abiding by the church's fundamental theological principles important to do, lest people accuse one of picking and choosing when to follow church rules?
Or do only talmudists and Jesuits worry about these kinds of implications? :-)
Please understand that I intend no disrespect with these questions. I'm not saying what they should or shouldn't do; I'm just wondering how it's reconciled with core teachings.
Our church cancelled one of two Sunday services.
So you still offered a service; you just gave the congregation less choice. This is the sort of solution I would expect -- scale back rather than cutting.
Our church has a rule: if you're sick and contagious, stay home.
Makes sense. I assume it's well-understood that sometimes health prevents you from attending, whether it's the flu or a broken leg or being in the hospital.
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"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness."
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Gessi
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I especially like the part about hey, if it's secular use your damn vacation days for it!
Happy Chanukah!
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I think the holiday thing would be only fair. If they want a religious holiday, then they should it treat it like everyone else's religious holidays -- use vacation or floating holidays or unpaid time to observe it. If, on the other hand, they want a national holiday, then they must recognize that there is no state religion and, thus, Christmas is a secular holiday. You can't have it both ways and be logically consistent, IMO.
I'm glad I work for a company that will let me adjust holidays [1] (I'm at work today), but I know many, many people who are forced to take Christmas as a holiday (and sometimes Good Friday too!) and then have to spend limited vacation days for Pesach, Rosh Hashana, etc.
[1] The small company that hired me agreed to this before I accepted the job offer. The large corporation that later bought them doesn't seem to permit this (they balked when I brought it up), but we persuaded them that they would have to honor the policy already in place at this location (or perhaps for me specifically; I don't know and no one else has tried this).
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I find myself bewildered by all the "war on Christmas" flap. There is a billboard near my office that reads "Jesus: the only reason for the season". This is clearly false. Various other traditions have celebrations around this time of year, some of which have been around longer than Christmas. To me it makes no sense to get bent out of shape about hearing "happy holidays" since that includes the whole set of events happening around this time, including but not limited to the Christmas subset.
I agree with you about the work-holiday business as well. I'd rather have more straight PTO to dispose of as I wish.
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And if Jesus is "the" reason, then why does anyone care what people engaging in the commercial aspect say to each other? Shouldn't they be railing against the commercialism itself, not choice of greeting?