My annual rant about Christmas at work
Last year, the most commented-on post here was Five Things People Say about Christmas that Drive Me Nuts. And the year before that, the piece that made the most newspaper editors cancel my column was, Christmas at the Office is Bad for Diversity.
In general, my point on the Christmas stuff is that religious holidays don't belong at work, and that people who don't celebrate Christmas should not be forced to use one of their religious holidays on Christmas. Why do I use a floating holiday for Yom Kippur and no one uses a floating holiday for Christmas? It's preferential religious treatment and there is no reason for it when you can give each employee x number of days off to use as he or she chooses.
Before you complain about this line of reasoning, please click on the links and read the posts I linked to above. Then you can argue.
I know that you guys have a lot to say about Christmas, not just because of the comments these posts receive, but also because over the years I have found that for the most part, Christians comment publicly, and Jews send private emails to me.
And this is, of course, the root of the problem. Christmas is totally Christian and totally religious and the Christians love to debate this point and the Jews think it is absolutely not debatable but the Jews never speak up because we feel we are just lucky to be where we are in the United States — doing very well, in general — given our history of being economically and culturally trampled for most of the last 2000 years. (I am not linking to this. Look it up at Jewish.com or something.)
So I am thinking that this year I'll turn my Christmas rant into a poll, and then maybe the people who are used to being publicly silent on this topic will speak up, by voting. (For those of you reading this post via email, the poll is on the sidebar of my blog.)
And, since there will be discussion in the comments section as well, here are some starting points:
1. Please do not tell me that this is a Christian country. Commenters say this every year. It is factually incorrect. And I know you know this from sixth-grade civics.
2. Please do not tell me that I am ruining the Christmas spirit. Will you please get a life? One, single, Jewish blogger does not impact the Christmas spirit. Do you want to know who is stealing Jesus from Christmas? Check out the department store windows in New York City (which, by the way, are phenomenal, and they are one of the things I miss since I moved away from NYC).
3. Please consider the idea that progressive companies come up with good ways to accommodate many religions. How about if we discuss possible solutions?
tolerate each other
You Americans need to get over yourselves. I’m an Asian who grew up in an Asian country and is currently living in another. Do you realise that many other countries out there mark 25th Dec as a public holiday? And by many other countries I’m not referring to European ones, Australia or New Zealand. And for most of these other countries, Christianity isn’t even THE main religion.
An American friend wished me Merry Christmas a few days ago then stopped himself and asked if it was alright. I was surprised. He was wishing that I would have a merry day. Why wouldn’t that be alright?
So, there are a great many people living in your country who want to celebrate a particular day in a particular way. They’re celebrating something. Be happy for them. Stop whining already.
Oh, yea, forgot to mention I checked out the NYC ‘department store windows’ links in this post – awesome is another word that could be used to describe them. Thanks for the links.
What about Muslims? We don’t celebrate the religious rituals of Christmas or Hannakah (sp?). And if we are lucky enough, then perhaps we will have an Islamic holiday (i.e. Eid) during the same season. But what about other holidays that are important and require celebration? I have to take personal time off (PTO) to attend my religious holidays. I don’t think the government will ever recognize Islamic holidays as necessary, nor will the government enforce time off for my religious needs.
But at the same time, I appreciate having Christmas off. It’s as though it marks the end of the year and gives me the time to relax when it’s cold and frosty outside. Hell, I would rather sleep when it’s cold than get bundled up and come to work. So, it’s a trade off. You deal with it and make the best of it. Christmas is a social event, not just religious and as ‘American’ as apple pie! Besides, when else can you shop till you drop due to Christmas sales?
Did you know celebrating Christmas was illegal when this country was first settled? Because of it’s pagan origins. Jesus wasn’t even born on Dec 25th but that doesn’t seem to matter to “Christians.” Or the paganness of it all.
I didn’t celebrate when I was growing up and had a lot of people feeling sorry for me. Now that I have celebrated it it was all very anti climactical. I hate it just as much as ever. People are mean, rude and grumpy. They buy presents for people they don’t like that they can’t afford and then the people turn around and return the present for something else. It’s all very stupid to me.
And I totally agree with the forced day off and using a floating day off for your own celebration.
Did you know that Wiccans can have an excused day off from school on Halloween so they can celebrate but Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t get excused because they don’t celebrate even tho the whole school is celebrating? Who’s in charge here?
When I said I agree with the forced day off thing I meant that I agree with you that it is ridiculous also. I should read what I write before I hit the button and make sure it says what I mean. Hot topic for me.
Oh for heaven’s sake — an American holiday? I wish the Christians would just reclaim their holiday from the commercialization and the “family time” meanderings and make it what it is — a Christian holiday celebrated by people born into the Christian tradition.
And by Christian, I don’t mean the church-goers who self-identify as “Christian”. My family isn’t Jewish because we believe in God or go to Synagogue. We’re Jewish because we were born that, and born into that tradition.
Frankly, growing up, NOT celebrating Christmas really helped put a fine point on what it means to be Jewish in my country (OK, Canada, but all the same stuff applies as to the US).
Thankfully, my kids know that Christmas is celebrated by Christians (my six year old actually believes that Santa is alive and real, but he just gets that Santa only goes to the Christian kids’ houses), and we don’t. We did a movie and Chinese food this year, just as I did every year as a kid when forced to take the day off.
Thanks for bringing your viewpoint front and centre. Hope your Chanukah was bright and cheery, and that your latkes were as tasty as mine.
Carla
I don’t ascribe to any religion. I love to buy and give gifts to my family and friends, so this is a perfect time for me to do so. I will never be upset to have a day off when I can give special gifts to those I love. Enjoy the beautiful decorations and being able to celebrate time with your family!
Here, here, honey. I’m Jewish and I agree with you wholeheartedly on this issue.
Come to think of it…if we only had a day or two at Christmas (I’m think of schools, as we have 2 weeks at Christmas) we’d have plenty of days left for major Jewish holidays and even Muslim and pagan holidays. Of course, we could give up a week of Christmas holiday for a week at Sukkot, but that would be silly, wouldn’t it. : )
I am a Christian, but I don’t think Christmas is very Christian anymore. It once was, and can be for believers, but the way most of America celebrates it is pretty commercial. You know, the department store windows (which has nothing to do God arriving on earth as man to pay the ultimate price for our sins).
I have no problem with Corporate America changing the rules and letting people work when they want and celebrate their religious holidays when they want. I think some people will say that it’s easier if we all take the same days off so that they don’t have to continually figure out how to keep the lines running when half the staff takes their day on the same day.
I think there also would be great potential for people to feel pressured not to take Christmas off after all. Maybe that’s a good thing … quit celebrating the holiday if it isn’t truly a Holy Day for you!
I see your point; really, I do. But it’s simply not practical to implement for the vast majority of employers in this country.
Let’s look at the numbers:
78% of the American workforce identifies itself as Christian.
2% is Jewish
1% is Muslim
3% practise another religion
16% are unaffiliated
So your average, relatively diverse employer looks at these numbers and says, “Hey, more than 3/4 of my workforce is going to want Christmas Day and maybe even Christmas Eve off. Is it worth keeping the office open for the 1/4 of the workforce that doesn’t?” Usually, the answer is no. It’s a decision based primarily on economics.
Each employer has to figure out what works for his particular business. A predominantly Jewish business that caters to a predominantly Jewish clientele will probably choose to take the Jewish holidays off, especially if it’s a business that must be “shomrei Shabbat” to do business, such as a kosher butcher or a mashgiach (kashrut supervisor). Non-Jewish personnel of those businesses will have to use personal days for their own religious holidays.
I work for three really great Jewish guys who employ a diverse workforce comprising Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus, among other religious and non-religious workers. We even have a few atheists and a Wiccan. We get Christmas AND Yom Kippur off, in addition to eight other holidays during the year — we even get Martin Luther King’s birthday off.
It is worth noting that a lot of people who are not Christian DO celebrate Christmas as a secular, family-oriented holiday. That doesn’t make Christians like me very happy — any more than Jewish people would be happy to find Purim over-run by a bunch of goyim who just want an excuse to dress up and have a party. But it IS a fact that some people see Christmas as a secular, family-oriented celebration. Of the 18% of people who are either unaffiliated with any religion, or who practise a religion other than “the big three,” approximately 10 percent celebrate Christmas. So now you are looking at 88% of the workforce. Again, the economics of office openings and closures comes into play.
If you are Jewish and don’t want to take the holiday, perhaps you could work out an arrangment with your employer to work from home, or to come to the office on the holiday, in exchange for a floating holiday to be used for Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah, or one of the other days of religious obligation. A lot of employers are willing to work with employees on such issues … they just don’t know how to approach them.
As for your “annual rant,” Penelope, maybe next year, instead of injecting negativity and intolerance into the holiday season, you could share more with your readers about Hanukkah. Surely that would be more useful in helping others embrace diversity than launching a diatribe against the religious practise of others.
My two (euro)cents: I’m not Christian, but appreciate the fact that my culture is in a large part based on an once-obscure Middle Eastern cult that got really big in Europe, for this reason or another. So I’m quite happy to celebrate an ancient pagan festival, winter solstice in fact, that my Christian neighbours choose as the birthday of the alleged Messiah.
As an atheist, I don’t think any of them should be holidays. We should have floating holidays/PTO time only and use it when we want. I’ve work in both heavily Christian and heavily Jewish offices, where any number of combination of holidays were observed. And I’ve still spent most of my career in ecommerce and/or travel, where you are open 24/7/365 and if you want time off you use your PTO to get it. Christmas is a Christian holiday, and making it a national holiday and a work holiday undermines not only the separation of church and state, but also diversity in the workplace.
Wow. It is amazing to see the wide differences in American culture enacted right here, in response to a blog post.
In college* I tried to lead a movement against putting Christmas trees up in the public dorms. My biggest lesson: don’t fuck with Christmas. It really pisses people off.
* UW-Madison
There was a Christmas poll, and I missed it? No!
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Penelope, for the voice of reason in this post and the past years’ posts. Another season, another 20 party conversations with people who say things like “but lots of Jews have Christmas trees.”
I am a Christian, and I could not agree with you more on these issue.
To someone who works at a company where everybody gets the statutory holidays off, and people of other religions get their religious holidays of on top of the stats and the floaters your argument does not sit too well with me.
There are some people at my place of employment that get two or three weeks more holiday than I do to mark their religious observances, and they certainly do not work on the days that are “religious holidays” not of their religion.
Alice
I think it comes down to this: Christmas is one, maybe two, days of vacation. Hanukkah is what, eleven? Someone, somewhere, squealed about that being unfair.
It’s a really shallow way to look at the problem, but I doubt it’s any more complex than that. All the complexity arises from justifying the attacks against a perceived injustice, or business hoping to squeeze more time (money) out of it’s employees.
Last year I thought you were right on. This year, I worked on Christmas (from home, while cleaning and making dinner), and realized that instead of ranting about the office being closed, I was going to go ahead and do what I want anyway.
The problem isn’t Christmas. It’s the culture at your particular corporation – if it weren’t Christmas, there would be something else to complain about. The other problem, of course, is you (general).
I don’t take vacation for my holidays (I flex time), but if I did, so what? Doesn’t religious faith require sacrifice? I would argue that my brothers and sisters in faith who take time off are cognizant of that fact, and are more pious as a result. My holidays don’t get secularized and turned into an excuse to have a spending orgy.
Let the Christians have the bastardization of their secular holidays. I’m secure in the self-recognition of my faith, and it’s all the more beautiful because of it.
Christmas is a Christian holiday…if you’re not Christian, don’t celebrate it. Quit whining about the holidays, etc. and go back to work.
I tried that one year. It made me incredibly sad since Solstice is a pagan holiday that was coopted by the Christians into being Christmas. So I celebrate both now and have a lot more fun: I get to participate in the biggest cultural celebration of the year, one that focuses on peace, and I get to reflect on the changing of the seasons. win-win.
First let me preface by saying I am a devout Christian. Why is that important to my post, because mainstream christianity believes that we have to fight every battle presented, and I don’t follow that premise. No where does it state we (as Christians) have to observce Chrismas in the Bible, in fact it doesn’t appear there. I personally have no problem with someone wishing me Happy Holidays, rather than Merry Christmas. If anything Christmas is a retailers holiday :)
However, any employer that wants to give me a “religous” holiday as a paid day off, bring it on. I will happily celebrate any and all religous holidays even those that have nothing to do with Christianity if it means a paid day off.
Quit complaining, enjoy the time with your loved ones and celebrate it as you see fit.
I was working for a very diverse company in Wisconsin (we’re talking employees from all 50 states and 40+ nations) and they followed a traditional holiday calendar, despite the fact that huge numbers of the staff worked odd schedules (not 8-5, M-F). The executives “discussed” moving to a Personal Time Off program but never did it.
I moved back down south and started working for a Catholic hospital who uses a Personal Time Off program and I love it. My family is Catholic so I do end up taking a few days around Christmas but I am not obligated to take any holiday I think is stupid (like Labor Day). It should be mandated that every business uses the PTO program!
That is a great idea. I use to work for a large company in Texas that had PTO but also gave traditional holidays. But it would be better to give those days as extra pto. Also time bank was a great way to control excess sick leave. More companies need to get on board!
I think it comes down to how the office celebrates the holiday. If there are numerous religious references, group prayers, etc than it certainly crosses the line. But if it’s more of a simple, all-inclusive celebration that doesn’t get too specific other than the shape of cookies, than it isn’t a big deal.
I. When was Jesus born?
A. Popular myth puts his birth on December 25th in the year 1 C.E.
B. The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus' birth. The earliest gospel – St. Mark's, written about 65 CE – begins with the baptism of an adult Jesus. This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked interest in or knowledge of Jesus' birthdate.
C. The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk, "abbot of a Roman monastery. His calculation went as follows:
a. In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from ab urbe condita ("the founding of the City" [Rome]). Thus 1 AUC signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th year of Rome's reign, etc.
b. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor Augustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.
c. Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years old, it was the 15th year of Tiberius reign.
d. If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius' reign, then he lived 15 years under Augustus (placing Jesus birth in Augustus' 28th year of reign).
e. Augustus took power in 727 AUC. Therefore, Dionysius put Jesus birth in 754 AUC.
f. However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus' birth in the days of Herod, and Herod died in 750 AUC – four years before the year in which Dionysius places Jesus birth.
D. Joseph A. Fitzmyer – Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America, member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and former president of the Catholic Biblical Association – writing in the Catholic Church's official commentary on the New Testament[1], writes about the date of Jesus' birth, "Though the year [of Jesus birth is not reckoned with certainty, the birth did not occur in AD 1. The Christian era, supposed to have its starting point in the year of Jesus birth, is based on a miscalculation introduced ca. 533 by Dionysius Exiguus."
E. The DePascha Computus, an anonymous document believed to have been written in North Africa around 243 CE, placed Jesus birth on March 28. Clement, a bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 CE), thought Jesus was born on November 18. Based on historical records, Fitzmyer guesses that Jesus birth occurred on September 11, 3 BCE.
II. How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December 25?
A. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose "an enemy of the Roman people" to represent the "Lord of Misrule." Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival's conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.
B. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival's observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).
C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]
D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia's concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus' birthday.
E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, "In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior's birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been." The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.
F. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that "the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens' Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones."[3] Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4] However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.
G. Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, "Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran – amid Rome's taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily."[5]
H. As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, "It is not opportune to make any innovation."[6] On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.
III. The Origins of Christmas Customs
A. The Origin of Christmas Tree
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were recruited by the Church sanctioning "Christmas Trees".[7] Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer by the Church.
B. The Origin of Mistletoe
Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim.[8] The Christian custom of "kissing under the mistletoe" is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.[9]
C. The Origin of Christmas Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January). Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see below).[10]
D. The Origin of Santa Claus
a. Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.
b. Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they produced portrayed Jews as "the children of the devil"[11] who sentenced Jesus to death.
c. In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children’s stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas' death, December 6.
d. The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden – their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.
e. In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.
f. In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.
g. Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: "Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there – " Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.
h. The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore's poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper's Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.
i. In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa's fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.
IV. The Christmas Challenge
· Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated carelessly. For millennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept away in the season's festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider the celebration's intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.
· Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the "curse of the Torah." It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.
· Christmas is a lie. There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25th.
· December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, and murdered.
· Many of the most popular Christmas customs – including Christmas trees, mistletoe, Christmas presents, and Santa Claus – are modern incarnations of the most depraved pagan rituals ever practiced on earth.
Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday's real significance. If they do know the history, they often object that their celebration has nothing to do with the holiday's monstrous history and meaning. "We are just having fun."
Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday – April 20 – as a holiday. Imagine that they named the day, "Hitlerday," and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices. Imagine that on that day, Jews were historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries.
Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday. April 20th arrived. They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. They had never heard of gas chambers or death marches. They had purchased champagne and caviar, and were about to begin the party, when someone reminded them of the day's real history and their ancestors' agony. Imagine that they initially objected, "We aren't celebrating the Holocaust; we're just having a little Hitlerday party." If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you could say a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?
On December 25, 1941, Julius Streicher, one of the most vicious of Hitler's assistants, celebrated Christmas by penning the following editorial in his rabidly Antisemitic newspaper, Der Stuermer:
If one really wants to put an end to the continued prospering of this curse from heaven that is the Jewish blood, there is only one way to do it: to eradicate this people, this Satan's son, root and branch.
It was an appropriate thought for the day. This Christmas, how will we celebrate?
Yes, yes, yes. Cancel Christmas as a public holiday. Cancel it completely!!!!! I hate it, hate it, hate it. I am sick of the whole stupid debate. I understand how the whole Christmas thing evolved but we are long past that. You are right, this is not a Christian country. In fact I would call it anti-Christian. Driving down my Asheville highways I see bumper stickers everywhere that say, “So many Christians, so few lions.”
I am a Christian and I am told in all aspects of my life to keep my faith to myself, and I do. I don’t bring it up period. But I find the complete opposite is true concerning all other religions. Others at work can and do celebrate a High Wiccan Day, for example. And then we stand around and discuss how interesting it all is. I work in government by the way. We ask what the Wiccan symbols adorning their office means and feel, as a result, we’re being super diverse.
I wouldn’t dream of decorating my office for any season of the Christian calendar but if I did, within minutes I’d have so many people bitching at me–it would go on for weeks, and I’d likely be fired.
I am part of Leadership Asheville where the leader teaching us to be leaders makes regular jokes about Christians to which the whole group howls, though there are at least five Christians in the 30 member group. Dear Lord, if she joked about Jews or Buddhists or anyone else it would be on our Asheville news. She would be called upon to give a public apology and she would no longer be our leader teaching us to lead.
So, no we are not a Christian country and I would love to have my Christian holiday back and yes, I will gladly take a floating holiday for it. I would yelp with delight to do that to keep everyone who is not a Christian from bastardizing the day.
I don’t give a shit how any of you feel about the day. Enough bitching about it and stop celebrating it. Enough debating it and stop celebrating it. I will trade you Christmas for any of your religous holidays just to have the day back.
Be thankful our country hasn’t gotten hold of your holiday yet and that you do have to take a floating day for it. I remember your description of one of your religious holidays celebrated at home and it was lovely. Enjoy that before someone decides it will be a federal holiday and turns it from the sacred to the idiotic.
I have read your blog. I like your post. Thanks
Well the Jews killed jesus hardly surprising you wouldn’t wanna celebrate christmas is it.
I absolutley agree and I am a Christian. I have argued for years to take Christmas away as a federal holiday. It is a very important religious day for me and I hate what it has become, the less focus on it by the general population, the better. The whole Happy Holidays thing drives me nuts. This is my relgious day, don’t tell me what I can say in regard to it. I would hope on the floating holiday band-wagon in a heartbeat.
I would love to see Christmas return to the church where it belongs, and get out of the marketplace and work place.
Your idea is simple, rational and fits all needs. Thanks for posting this.
I have to agree with what another person said. Christmas is a national holiday. Someone decided long ago that it would be and it was so. Yes, it is a more significant holiday to Christians but I wouldn’t call that preferential treatment, it is merely an homage to the Christian heritage of this nation. Whether you are a Christian or not, the roots of this country are Christians roots and they should not simply be discarded for the sake of diversity. Just as Israel should not be forced to make Christmas a national holiday, as chanukah and yom kippur are more significant to the heritage there. This issue is very similar the thanksgiving. I’m sure Native Americans don’t consider that a holiday worth celebrating. As a national our national holidays are established around the heritage of our founding fathers. While our culture has evolved, that is no reason to disregard our historic roots. America is a land where you are free to choose whether you celebrate these holidays personally or not. If you do not agree don’t celebrate them, but do not expect the entire country to forsake its roots simply to accommodate you. It hasn’t worked out that way for any other marginalized minority in the world and it’s not gonna work now for you. The fact that you have floating holidays at all speaks the the attempts of our corporate leaders to accommodate everyone.
Looking for solutions to the “Christmas potluck” problem in order to include people of all (and no) faiths during the winter months. Can you direct me to the “good ways” linked in item 3? The link itself is broken.