With Black Friday insanity currently gripping what's left of the American psyche and the battle over a California Christmas display heading for the courts, I have to question the fundamental premise of our approach to holidays, especially religious ones.
In Santa Monica, California, a battle over a nativity display located on public property has brought atheists, Jews and Hindus together to question the preference shown to Christians in celebrating the holiday. If we celebrate Christmas on public property, than why not Dinali, the solstice or Passover? Muslims are not present in this argument because it is against Islam to display any representation of the human form. So the rest squabble about the display with the Christians loudly proclaiming "Jesus is the reason for the season" and "Put Christ back in Christmas." The key word here is "back."
Christ got booted out of Christmas a long time ago. Black Friday, for instance, does not indicated the beginning of a religious fast or period of contemplation. Stores are not open late so that church-goers have more time to shop. Retailers who close on Sunday or give their employees time off to spend with their families will probably go out of business sooner than the ones that cheerfully would keep their stores open 24/7 if they could find a way to do so without having to pay their employees overtime. In the battle between Jesus and Santa Claus, the battle was decided years ago. The same goes, of course, for the struggle between setting aside a day to remember the cooperation and peace between Whites and Indians and celebrating the opportunity to stay home from work and stuff yourself with as much food as you can cram in while sitting in front of the TV. The same goes with the contest between celebrating the most importsant holiday in the Christian calendar and the consumption of vast quantities of candy brought to you by the benevolent Easter Bunny and his/her assistants, all bearing (strangely) chocolate eggs. In other words, profit has won over piety by a large margin.
In the battle between God and mammon, mammon is going into the home stretch leading by six lengths, resurrection is losing on points to the rabbit and giving thanks for what you have is being trumped by telling you what should be buying.
So why the cry about religion for the holidays? When you consider that organized religion, far from bringing people together, as should be the purpose of holidays, has done more to kill, main and disfigure than any other single factor in human history, instead of trying to put more religion into the holidays, I would think that it would be far better to work like hell to keep it where it belongs - in the churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. To that end, I'm working on an organization called GROOPP - Keep Religion Out Of Public Policy. I can quote no less authoritative a source as the Founder of a major religion: "Render unto Caesar," said he, "the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's."
I feel this is another way of saying " Keep the nativity scenes in your church and let Santa Claus take possession of the courthouse square. An extention of this is "Keep discussions about abortion, evolution and climate change in the religious context where it belongs and let science, evidence and reason dictate where the United States should be going."
Start a GROOPP chapter in a community near you.