[lit-ideas] Re: Christmas Trees

So, if Christmas trees are a religious symbol, does Eric oppose letting them be displayed on government property, including schools?

Mike Geary
curious in Memphis





----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Yost" <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2005 12:02 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Christmas Trees


Andreas quoted the NY Times: Religious
conservatives are using Christmas for a political
purpose: as a cudgel to push the prayers and
displays of their own form of Christianity into
public spaces, including public schools, and to
make America more like a theocracy.

________

That may well be, but it's still no reason to
embrace the global corporate generic "holiday."

Christmas Trees should be called Christmas Trees.
One does not achieve inclusiveness by rendering
everything generic. That only serves the interests
of global corporations.

Inclusiveness, IMHO, involves wishing people Merry
Christmas and Happy Hannukah and Happy Kwanzaa as
the circumstances merit. (At least that would show
you are paying attention to individual differences
and are willing to acknowledge them.) One doesn't
have to be a Christian to enjoy Christmas or a Jew
to attend a Hannukah celebration. Holidays have
nonreligious components which are accessible to
everyone.

Corporate generic style works the other way, to
ignore traditions and throw everything into a
neuter and robotic nothingness as "holiday." The
false dichotomy presented by the NYT article is
that one must be a true-believer or else an
offended secular person eager to embrace the
corporate generic term.

In the corporate route, Christmas Trees would
become holiday trees, Menorahs and Kwanzaa
Mishumaas, holiday candlesticks.  Plus that
Maypole Andreas said he danced around would become
a holiday post. Just as the right-wing is using
Christmas for a political purpose, certain
left-wing elements are using Christmas to advance
the global corporate agenda, only the left-wing is
being more subtle about it.

Eric


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