Pop Quiz: Which of the following are religious holidays?
A. Rosh Hashanah
B. Easter
C. Ramadan
D. Thanksgiving
E. Christmas
F. Halloween
If you picked A, B, and C; you would be correct. Rosh Hashanah is a Jewish religious holiday; Easter is a Christian religious holiday; and Ramadan is a Muslim religious holiday. The last three, D, E, and F, are questionable. Thanksgiving is a national American holiday, of which Americans are all expected to give thanks to God for our bounty. Yet Thanksgiving was a Christian religious holiday that celebrated the harvest in Europe long before the Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving in America. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the Puritans waged the first War on Christmas as…
“some Puritans wished to completely eliminate all Church holidays, including Christmas and Easter. The holidays were to be replaced by specially called Days of Fasting or Days of Thanksgiving, in response to events that the Puritans viewed as acts of special providence.”
As for Halloween, it was once a religious holiday combining Christian beliefs with Pagan traditions. Today, not so much. Although Halloween retains its spooky flavor, people no longer celebrate it to protect themselves from the souls of the dead who return to Earth this night of the year and must be appeased.
So is Christmas, literally the Mass of Christ, a religious holiday? Hardly. It has become a commercialized national holiday that celebrates and worships the American gods of Money, Materialism, and Greed.
When I tell people I am Jewish and thus don’t celebrate Christmas, the reaction is often one of incredulity and disbelief. In most people’s minds today, Christmas is a universal national holiday, not a religious one, and not celebrating Christmas becomes tantamount to being un-American rather than simply being not Christian.
To be sure, many self-professing Jews adorn all the trappings and traditions of Christmas. They exchange gifts, spend hundreds of dollars on lights to decorate their homes, and put up stockings and even Christmas trees—just like their Christian neighbors. It’s tough being a Jewish parent and telling your kids that only Christian boys and girls gets toys at Christmas. It’s even tougher on the kids. So the minor Jewish holiday of Hanukkah was hijacked as an excuse to give gifts this time of year, even though Hanukkah is a holiday of religious freedom—in fact celebrates the first war in history that was fought to preserve religious freedom.
Many of my non-Jewish friends argue that Christmas was once a Pagan holiday; and even before that had ancient Roman roots in the celebration of Saturnalia, which occurred at the same time of the year—and not coincidentally, just when daylight in Winter stopped becoming shorter and shorter (the end of the world?) and began to become longer (ah…false alarm). So they say, what is wrong with a little revelry when Christmas wasn’t even a Christian holiday to begin with?
Nothing. There is nothing wrong with having a party, exchanging gifts, and being with friends and family. And there is something very positive about wanting Peace on Earth and Good Will toward Men. Yet the truth is, Santa Clause has replaced Jesus Christ as the personification of Christmas. So little Christian children no longer ask, “Was Jesus really born in a manger in Bethlehem this time of year?” (Experts believe Jesus was probably born in early Spring.) Instead they ask, “Is Santa real? How can he climb down the chimney to give us presents, when we don’t have a chimney?” Not wanting our dear innocent children to grow up without faith in the impossible, we assure them that Santa is real; rather the cynically assert that Christmas is a nation-wide capitalist conspiracy to get consumers to spend.
As a child in a public school system I was inundated with messages telling me that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t celebrate Christmas and believe this was the day God was born as a human from a mother who was a virgin. In kindergarten my teacher, Ms. Speedy, took me aside when all the other children were coloring pictures of the nativity scene; and gave me a picture of Santa Clause on the roof to color instead. When Christian school prayers were broadcast across the loudspeaker into all the classrooms, I was told I could leave the classroom at this time if I wanted to. This was offered in deference to my non-Christian religion, but I stayed anyway not to look like I was being ostracized for being Jewish. I was most sensitive in Second Grade when all of us, Christians and non-Christians alike, were expected to sing religious Christmas Carols, like Silent Night, that emphasized Christian beliefs. It is hard to resist believing lyrics you are expected to sing that teach you Jesus was a “holy infant, tender and mild” when it is set to such hauntingly beautiful music. Struggling to maintain my awareness that this wasn’t what I was taught at home by my family, I hummed along, lest mouthing the words out loud would compromise my beliefs.
As an adult, I became keenly aware of the vital necessity for separation of church and state. In fact, I wrote an article called, A Crack in the Wall of Separation of Church and State. At the time I worked at a state-run in-patient alcohol and drug treatment center. Reagan was in the White House and the conservative mantra of the day was “prayer in school”—in opposition to our shared First Amendment right to freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Since the First Amendment forbids the state establishment of religion, the rational conclusion is that state-run programs should not force-feed Christianity—or any other religious beliefs and practices.
But here in the South, particularly South Carolina, there is a pervasive assumption that everyone is already a Christian, and if not, they should be. In other words, if you ain’t Christian, you’re an atheist who needs to be saved. Southerners might pay lip service to religious freedom, but that only applies in other places where everyone isn’t Southern Baptist.
This is ironic, as Baptists were the direct benefactors of the Jeffersonian ideal of separation of Church and State. Although America is ideally a land of immigrants seeking religious freedom, those, such as the Puritans, who sought religious freedom for themselves, were often reluctant to provide religious freedom to others. According to Thomas Kidd, in his excellent article, Baptists and Religious Liberty...
Baptists endured harassment, fines, prohibition against meetings, and even jail time, right up to the eve of the American Revolution… [Massachusetts] outlawed Baptists altogether in 1645, calling them “the troublers of churches in all places.”
Even so, our mostly Baptist clients in our public state-supported treatment center were coerced to attend Sunday Church services, in direct violation of the principle of separation of Church and State. When I complained to the Treatment Director (a former minister) that this was unconstitutional, he assured me he was keeping out the “wrong kind” of ministers to provide church services. One day a client confided in me that in group therapy he was told he had no hope of ever overcoming alcoholism, as long as he remained an atheist. Now those familiar with AA know that this idea is common, but AA is a religious cult, and a state-supported treatment facility isn’t a religious body, or at least shouldn’t be.
So every Christmas at the treatment center, decorating the Christmas tree was a mandatory therapeutic activity. This made me very uncomfortable, but one has to choose one’s battles wisely. I wasn’t able to stop Christmas from being celebrated in a public facility, but I could tell all the clients in my Orientation Group that no one had to participate in any activity that violated their sense of religious freedom.
So here’s my beef. Why does every private business or enterprise also assume everyone celebrates Christmas? Why, beginning as soon as Thanksgiving is over does everyone have to endure an incessant stream of watered-down Jesus-free Christmas Muzak—even in the grocery store? After the fortieth time, Jingle Bell Rock becomes nauseating. The answer is simple: Money! That is the real reason for the season—to make lots and lots of money. To get customers worked up into a frenzy of buy, buy, buy; until all their savings are gone, gone, gone. And every year presents are expected to be more and more expensive. A generation ago, a bicycle was the ultimate Christmas Gift. (Of course a generation before that it was a B-B gun that could shoot your eye out.) Today, if you don’t buy a Lexus or Mercedes for Christmas, you are obviously lacking in the Spirit of Christmas.
Thanksgiving is no longer a national holiday (with obvious religious overtones) in which we gather with family to give thanks. It is the first day of the orgy of compulsive shopping to amass materialistic goodies. If you live in America, where there is nowhere to hide (unless you join a clan of Hassidic Jews)—you will be deluged with the national commercial obsession with Christmas. And if you don’t merrily go along, instead of being respected as being a Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, Muslim, or atheist—you will be vilified as being an Ebenezer Scrooge or a Grinch who wants to steal Christmas.
One Christmas Eve I had a first date with a woman who was Catholic. She asked if before we went out for dinner, if I would mind attending Christmas Mass with her at her Church. I readily consented. I was surprised how comfortable I felt in the Church. The Church was decorated beautifully and tastefully with white Christmas trees on every column. The music was beautiful, too, and the whole atmosphere was uplifting. I wondered why in the Church I could appreciate all the trappings of Christmas, and not only it didn’t bother me, but it was a positive experience. Then I realized, the difference was coercion. I chose to participate in the religious service inside the Church. It wasn’t forced on me in the public square where I couldn’t choose not to be smothered by it anywhere I went. Moreover, in Church, Christmas was treated as it should be, a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus, not a cover for consumerism.
I am sure most readers agree that Trump insisting people say “Merry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays” does nothing to support or erode religious freedom. Or how ridiculous it is to get worked up if Starbucks uses coffee cups that aren’t “Christmas enough.” The real War on Christmas is the secularization of Christmas—morphing it into a secular national holiday sans any religious meaning.
So here is a bizarre idea: Separation of Church and State is desirable, but is impossible unless there are churches and other houses of worship to meet our religious and spiritual needs. I do not believe that Church and State are incompatible. We need both. Problems arise when one encroaches into the territory of the other. If you choose not to attend church, fine, that is your right. But don’t expect the government, public schools, and private businesses in business to make money to provide your religious and spiritual needs. People need spirituality, faith, rituals, and perhaps even belief in God. But government and the state should not even try to provide these needs, as any study of medieval history will reveal, when Church and State were one, things were a mess and religious wars were the order of the day. We should not depend on the government to provide our religious principles and rituals. State-supported prayer in school is wrong because the state shouldn’t decide what kind of prayer is appropriate. State-supported Christmas celebrations are wrong because the state shouldn’t decide what kind of Christmas celebrations are appropriate.
So please don’t think of me as a Grinch or Scrooge who wants to get rid of Christmas. I simply believe Christmas will thrive best when and where it can be celebrated as a meaningful religious holiday—in the home and in the church, not saturating the public media and in the shopping mall.
Below are links to other thought-provoking essays on this subject:
Your comments are welcome. And by the way, Happy Hannukah!