Christmas Wars Indeed
I love reading E. J. Dionne. The man is an expert at sounding limitlessly reasonable whilst talking utter rot, in this case about how we must avoid government expressions of "Merry Christmas" in order to avoid oppressing religious minorities. As is usual, Foamy the Squirrel has more sense than the Washington Post Op-Ed page. (Though I'm sure the factual basis of his rant about children's Christmas plays is slightly overstated.) Dionne would probably class as Foamy's "neo yuppie scum."
My take on the entire "Happy Holidays" v. "Merry Christmas" fiasco is pretty easy. Minority religions should be respected by the government: that means everything from no forced conversions and the ability to practice their faiths unmolested to no particular advantages in government hiring. But our Establishment Clause jurisprudence is an unholy mess of trying to reconcile a fetish for "church-state separation" with the fact that we are a Christian nation.
Take, for instance, the simple name of this site. I'm an agnostic, and I get to cherry-pick my religious references. I could have called it Three Years of Gehenna. [1] Though I know far less about it, there's nothing that kept me from calling this Three Years of Naraka. Indeed, there's a vast array of names I could have chosen. But when I went searching for a metaphor, I chose Hell, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense.
To say that the United States is a Christian nation isn't to say that we aren't--or shouldn't be--tolerant of other religions. But just as I'd not say I'd started to understand Japan without studying Buddhism and Shinto, and I wouldn't start to examine the Middle East without sitting down with a Koran, Christianity is the one and only religion without knowledge of which one can fairly be said to be ignorant of American literature and culture. We've had two Great Awakenings, and they weren't awakening us from Samsara. And when we search for a metaphor for otherworldly suffering, we reach straight for that box labelled Hell.
So I guess what it comes down to is, we all have these holidays off because we're celebrating Christmas, and if the majority religion should respect the minority by not interfering with their religion, the minority should have a similar amount of respect, and realize that saying, "Merry Christmas" isn't a sign of the next great Crusade. Having children sing "Silent Night" or dress up as Mary and Joseph in a school play doesn't mean they're all of a sudden going to give up their parents' holy books, but it does mean they'll know something about the larger part of the culture in which they reside.
If you'd asked me about this when I was sixteen and attending high school in Alabama, I'd likely have answered you differently. There's a line to be drawn, and growing up in the South, I can see how that line was often drawn in shaky ways. But that line is miles away from insistence that we must have a happy holiday season, and not simply a Merry Christmas.
Not even I am that curmudgeonly.
[1]: Indeed, given that the period of one's stay in Gehenna is supposedly temporary, this might even be considered more appropriate.
Comments
Posted by: Bateleur | December 22, 2004 3:41 AM
Posted by: martin | December 22, 2004 8:03 AM
Posted by: Tony the Pony | December 22, 2004 6:32 PM
Posted by: A. Rickey | December 22, 2004 8:03 PM
Posted by: Anonymous | December 23, 2004 4:34 AM
Posted by: Anthony | December 23, 2004 11:24 AM
Posted by: Tony the Pony | December 23, 2004 1:27 PM
Posted by: A. Rickey | December 23, 2004 2:01 PM
Posted by: Tony the Pony | December 24, 2004 2:05 PM
Posted by: Tony the Pony | December 24, 2004 2:08 PM
Posted by: PG | December 28, 2004 3:54 AM