Good
Morning Everybody, and Merry Christmas to all. Just as I posted a short blog
entry back on Thanksgiving, I want to put up a short one today. Today of all
days. First a bit of catch-up. Since I last posted anything, three of the
places I applied to have contacted me for initial job interviews, the University
of Georgia, Kansas State, and Grinnell College, a small, highly selective liberal
arts college in eastern Iowa. That last isn’t a professor position. It’s a
two-year postdoc for teaching and research. All of these interviews happen next
week starting on Thursday in Boston. I have one final week to prepare, and I
like to think I will use the time wisely. However, yesterday and today, I’ve
resolutely stayed away from university-related things, because it is Christmas!
It’s also my guide dog’s birthday today, and that’s just convenient. She’s a
Christmas puppy, and this guarantees I can’t ever forget her birthday.
Today what’s
on my mind are the Christmas haters. I’m talking about the relatively small and
very vocal minority of folks who think that Christmas should be done away with
or at least that all public displays of Christmas that have any religious overtones
whatever should be banned in case anyone, like themselves, gets offended. This
would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that many places across the
country have banned everything from the singing of Christmas carols to displays
of Christmas colors or nativity scenes, and the usual rout to use when taking away
such things is the civil court. Here’s one example, http://www.wnd.com/2004/12/28047/.
That’s an old case, but things like it still go on. Just read that article and
see what you think.
Now, before
I go on, let me pause to acknowledge one fact. I know that there are groups of
people who, either collectively or individually, don’t celebrate Christmas in
America. That’s fine. There have always been groups of people in this country
who don’t celebrate it, and I don’t think they should have to if they don’t
want to. I’m not going to go into their houses and make them exchange gifts or
sing “O Come All Ye Faithful.” What I object to, vehemently and passionately,
is this: I can’t stand it when I see
people trying to use the First Amendment as a weapon to take away my own First
Amendment liberties.
The First
Amendment, in so far as it concerns freedom of religion, only guarantees two
things. First, it guarantees that the government won’t impose a church on you.
There will never be a First American Church with the president as its religious
leader in the same way that the British monarch has headed the head of the
Anglican church since Henry VIII. That won’t happen. It also guarantees that
you can celebrate your religion in your own way as long as your religion doesn’t
involve human sacrifice or other generally disruptive practices. I’m happy to
say most don’t. So, you’ll never see the government banning the practice of
Islam or Judaism or Hinduism or Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy or Wicca.
Leastways if a government makes that attempt, and there have been times when I
wonder about Obama, anyone challenging the law based on the First Amendment would
have an irrefutable case. That’s it! That’s all the First Amendment guarantees as far as religion is concerned. I’ve read it.
So having
said that, if you don’t celebrate Christmas, that’s fine. I celebrate it. My
family celebrates it. Everyone I know personally celebrates it, and most of the
people I’m only nodding acquaintances with (including quite a number of
visitors from other countries) celebrate it. In fact, over 70% of people in
this country celebrate it in some way, and I’m not even talking about the
religious observances. My point is this:
we have that right. If I choose to wish someone a Merry Christmas, so be
it. It’s on them to tell me they don’t celebrate it. My experience with this
has been, however, that most ordinary folks who don’t observe Christmas, that
is, most people not inclined to rush to court because you have a nativity
painting on your door, will either return your ‘Merry Christmas’ in the spirit
it was offered or they’ll tell you very nicely that they don’t celebrate
Christmas, but they wish you a great holiday anyway. Either approach is just
fine. As I said, I’m not trying to make anyone celebrate Christmas who doesn’t
want to.
Having said
that, my patience with political correctness is limited in the extreme. The
fact of the matter is that most folks in America celebrate Christmas in one way
or another. That’s our right and we’ll continue to insist on it, but my
question to Christmas haters is this:
what are you really objecting to? What exactly is wrong with a holiday
that commemorates peace and good will towards one’s fellow human beings? The
answer, of course, is nothing. So if I choose, as some professors of mine in
the past have done, to have pictures of Christmas scenes on my desk or my
office door, what of it? If my Jewish colleague across the way has a small menorah
in their desk, is that supposed to offend me? Should I insist that that person
not celebrate Chanukah because it imposes their morality on me? Should we
German teachers, for example, not teach our students about German Christmas
celebrations because someone in the classroom may not celebrate it? Of course
not! This feels like common sense to me. But if there is one thing I have
learned, it’s that common sense isn’t common at all.
My one
piece of advice to the Christmas haters in America is this. To quote Ebenezer
Scrooge, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.” The
difference here is that unlike the Christmas haters, I’ll actually leave you
alone if you don’t celebrate it. God forbid that my home or neighborhood or
town should celebrate it though. Then all hell breaks loose. I’m put in mind of
the last line of James Finn Garner’s satirical poem “’Twas the Night Before Solstice.”
Santa’s amused and exasperated parting words sum up my feelings about these
people quite nicely, “Happy Christmas to all, but get over yourselves.”
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