Okay, okay. I’ve had enough. There is no “war” on Christmas. No one is trying to force Jesus to spin a dreidel (though he was Jewish, don’t forget). No one is trying to keep you from going to church on the 25th. And certainly no one is telling you that you can’t believe in on thing or another thing. If anything, you’re pushing the Jesus thing on us. Sheesh!
Yes, Kmart does live with an atheist, and he is me. (And I is him? And me is thine? Whatever.) Typically, I am all for the expressions of different cultures. Normally I would openly encourage people of all faiths and religions to celebrate their holiest days in our schools and within the halls of our public buildings.
The problem is, how do you make the rules? Do you give equal time based on population? That seems awfully oppressive, and completely counter to the idea of learning about different cultures. We can’t learn about the customs of a smaller group in 20 minutes if we spend 8 months on a larger group.
Why couldn’t the classroom spend a day on every world religion and culture to make sure no one is overlooked? It would take too much time. There are around 200 different countries in the world, and they all have a slighty different culture than the countries around them, which doesn’t even go into the fact that there are multiple culture within each country. That would leave no time for learning about math, science, reading, or anything besides learning about cultures.
This is why our goverment and public facilities need to be free of religious symbols at all times.
In the US you can have the biggest damn statue of Jesus in your front yard as you want, and there isn’t shit that anyone can do about it (unless it violates building or zoning laws). In fact, on the way to Arizona this summer, I saw the 2 “largest crosses” in the western hemisphere. Kind of silly if you ask me, but on private property, so none of my business.
But when you put Jesus in a public building, you say that Jesus is condoned and accepted by the public as a whole, when that is not true. By proxy the same can be said of the Christmas tree, as Christmas is technically still a religious holiday. For people who say it is not, I encourage them to participate in a non-religious celibration of Hanukah, if they can find one.
For a moment, put yourself in my shoes and imagine if it wasn’t a Christmas tree. Imagine if it was a statue to Satanism depicting the sacrafice of virgins. Or, even better, imagine if it was a statue of Osama bin Laden placed by a fundamentalist Islamic religious group and the inscription on the bottom read, “All of Islam rejoice at Allah’s chosen infidel slayer.” Wouldn’t that be fucked up? It would sure as hell piss me off.
So for the same reasons you don’t want to see a tribute to Satan or Osama in a publicly funded government building, I don’t want to see a tribute to Jesus. I don’t think Jesus is anything like Satan or Osama, but the organizational structures around them are the same, and a religion, is a religion, is a religion.
If you decide to let Jesus into goverment buildings, then you have to let the Osama bin Laden’s and the Satanists have equal time. It’s not a war against Christmas, it’s an attempt to keep Church and State separate, with a wall between them thick enough that they can’t reach each other, but low enough that they can still see over it.
In the end, we have Xmas, and Christmas, and they have both been muddled by too much cross contamination. I’m all for a Jesus-less celebration of X-mas, which would include the tree, wreaths, gifts, parties, bells, miseltoe, what have you. Christmas would get the 25th, the nativity, and church. The benefit to this plan would be that the avarice, one of the seven deadly sins, would be removed from Christmas, and any connection to religion would be removed from Xmas, thus making it fine for public buildings like courthouses and schools to decorate the shit out of themselves, like they do on Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.
Look, I’m no different than those of you who believe in God. I just belive in one less god than you do. I know you understand why you don’t belive in other people’s gods, so please understand why I don’t believe in yours. I encourage you to have the holiest, most faithful, and worshipful Christmas as you can, but please don’t make other people have to celebrate with you.
