Neuter Your Pet, Not Christmas!
Feeling: 
Thursday, Dec. 08, 2005, 8:27 pm
OK. It's been a week, so I'm going to update again. However, I am not planning to say anything about how I've been or what I've been doing...Yes, I have been planning this entry since Monday. I just haven't had the chance to get it up yet. (Poor me.) So here we go. After I finish with my "planned material" for this update, I'll see if I have time to answer the questions Kasey gave me and post this week's Unconscious Mutterings, so please bear with me and read to the end.
In my Worldview Analysis class, every Monday (or nearly every Monday) we do current events; the teacher copies newspaper articles for us (or an article she found on the internet) and we read it and discuss it. Monday we read an article that I'd really like to share with you. One reason I didn't get it up Monday was because I didn't know if I needed to contact the author to see if I needed permission to post it here, so I e-mailed him and asked just in case. He has since gotten back with me (I wasn't really sure if I expected him to...those guys have to be extremely busy, and my e-mail wasn't all THAT important) and now I'm ready to post the article. If I make any typos, I'll try to proofread and correct them, but if any typos remain, it's my fault entirely.
The annual effort to neuter Christmas
by Jeff Jacoby, a Boston Globe columnistWhen a commotion erupted over the fact that the 48-foot white spruce installed on the Boston Common - an annual gift from the people of Nova Scotia - is identified on Boston's official Web site as a "holiday tree," the city's commissioner of parks and recreation sided firmly with the critics. "This is a Christmas tree," Antonia Pollak declared. "It's definitely a Christmas tree."
At least that's what she told the Boston press. According to CBC News on the other hand, she took a rather different line with the Canadian press: "A lot of people celebrate various religious holidays but also enjoy the lights, and we're trying to be inclusive."
Meanwhile, Pollak's boss said he intends to call it a Christmas tree, no matter what it says on the City Hall Web site. "I didn't write the Web site," Boston Mayor Thomas Menino told The Boston Herald. "If I had, it would have said Christmas tree." He must not write the mayor's weekly column, either. The current one is about the lighting of Christmas trees all over Boston - yet not once does the word "Christmas" modify the word "tree."
And so it begins again - the annual effort to neuter Christmas, to insist in the name of "inclusiveness" and "sensitivity" that a Christian holiday celebrated by something like 90 percent of Americans not be called by its proper name or referred to in religious terms. We all know the drill by now. Instead of "Merry Christmas," store clerks wish you a "happy holiday." Schools close for winter break. Your office throws a holiday party.
Sometimes the secularizing impulse goes to laughable extremes, as when the elementary school play is titled "How the Grinch Stole the Holidays" or when red poinsettias (but not white ones) are banned from city hall. Sometimes it springs from clanging ignorance, as with the New York City policy that prohibited the display of Christian nativity scenes on public school grounds, while expressly allowing such "secular holiday symbol decorations" as Jewish menorahs and the Muslim star and crescent. And some of it is fueled by anti-Christian bigotry or sheer misanthropic bile.
But mostly, I think, this attempt to fade Christmas into a nondenominational winter holiday stems from a twisted notion of courtesy - from the idea that tolerance and respect for minorities require intolerance and disrespect for the majority. Better to call the company shindig a "holiday" party, this line of thinking goes, than to risk offending the few non-Christian employees by calling it a Christmas party. Better to ban all Christmas carols from the school concert than to take the chance that a Jew or Muslim or Hindu might feel excluded. Better to remove the Christmas trees from all the dormitory dining halls because a single student complained - as happened last year at the University of Illinois - than to politely inform the student that the trees will be removed after the Christmas season ends.
"We're trying to be inclusive," says the Boston parks commissioner, explaining why the white spruce that was sent from Nova Scotia under a giant banner reading "Merry Christmas, Boston" became a "holiday tree" on her department's Web site. But suppressing the language, symbols or customs of Christians in a predominately Christian society is not inclusive. It's insulting.
It's discriminatory, too. Hanukkah menorahs are never referred to as "holiday lamps" - not even the giant menorahs erected in Boston Common and many other public venues each year by Chabad, the Hasidic Jewish outreach movement. No one worries that calling the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by its name - or even celebrating it officially, as the White House does with an annual "iftaar" dinner - might be insensitive to non-Muslims. In this tolerant and openhearted nation, religious minorities are not expected to keep their beliefs out of sight or to squelch their traditions lest someone, somewhere, take offense. Surely the religious majority shouldn't be expected to either.
As a practicing Jew, I don't celebrate Christmas. There is no Christmas tree in my home, my kids don't write letters to Santa Claus, and I don't attend church on Dec. 25 (or any other date). Does the knowledge that scores of millions of my fellow Americans do all those things make me feel excluded or offended? On the contrary: It makes me feel grateful - to live in a land where freedom of religion shelters the Hanukkah menorah in my window no less than the Christmas tree in my neighbor's. That freedom is a reflection of America's Judeo-Christian culture, and a principal reason why, in this overwhelmingly Christian country, it isn't only Christians for whom Christmas is a season of joy. And why it isn't only Christians who should make a point of saying so.
I would appreciate any comments you might have on the article.
Unconscious Mutterings
Amazing:: Bob Parr: What are you waiting for?"
Little Kid: I don't know. Something amazing, I guess.
Delights:: I don't remember the exact quote, but in the Bible it says God will Give us the delights of our hearts.
Inspired:: The Bible is the inspired word of God.
Disgusted:: I'm disgusted with the filthy language that has become so prevalent among Christians today.
You:: "You are the light of the world."
Palm:: A palm-reader. I think they're fakes.
Sweetheart:: Do you have a sweetheart? Aw, how romantic. LOL.
Guilt:: He was overcome with guilt and shame.
More to come:: To be continued...
Before I answer Kasey's questions, I need to explain what happened today, so one of her questions (or two of them, I think...) will make sense to you. Snow was forecasted for today. We were supposed to get between 2 and 6 inches. So we got out of school at 1pm today (2 hours and 15 minutes earlier than usual). My mom had to work today, and I knew that she was going to be pretty busy, so Kasey's mom agreed to drop me off at the hospital where my mom works. I spent the rest of the day there until my mom was ready to leave. (I would have had Kasey's mom take me home, since they live close, but I left my keys on my dresser this morning, thinking I wouldn't need them.) So, now I'll answer the questions; all of them should make some sense now.
Kasey's Questions:
1.) Was Mr. Whitcomb or Mr. Darcy hotter in Pride & Prejudice?
Darcy.
2.) What does one do with herself when they have a half day of school?
Chill. Relax. Maybe do some homework, if one feels like it.
3.) Do you think school will get cancelled tomorrow? Do you want it to?
No, I don't think it will, and...no, I don't guess I do, since I'll have to go down there anyway for Madrigal.
4.) What does one do with herself when they have to go to the hospital after school on said half day? LOL.
Well, for a while I played Tetris on my phone. Then I finished Psychology vocab. It's not homework, but if we do it she gives us a grade for it; it has to be in by test day. I have no clue when that will be for this chapter, but I decided to go ahead and work on it, since I had the time. And I finished it! I brought my stuff for that zoo essay in Worldview, but I didn't work on it. After I finished the vocab, Mom had to go get a patient and take them to where they could catch a shuttle to the hospital's hotel, so I walked with her. Then I went and got some Oreo's out of the machine, and after I ate them I played on my phone some more. By then, it was time to go. (Is that a detailed enough answer for you? LOL.)
5.) Tea or Coffee?
Tea, most definitely. Coffee is so extremely nasty, I don't ever want to taste it again. (The only time I tasted it was that time Caleb used it in his science fair experiment...I think it was Caleb...)
6.) Survivor or Lost? If you were FORCED to chose between them.
Lost.
last - next
My Last 5 Updates
Andy & Sally # Saturday, Jan. 26, 2008
Explanation # Monday, Jan. 21, 2008
Uncertainty # Sunday, Jan. 20, 2008
Pain # Friday, Jan. 18, 2008
Reflections # Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008