Thank you very much. You say you are a nonbeliever. I am a believer.
Trouble is, I don't happen to be a believer in all the egotistical
mumble jumble about Humans being superior to other life, and being the
special pets of some invisible Thing. But I am a believer. I believe
in all life being connected and part of the entire universe.
And in this framework, I also wish each and every person on this list
a most rewarding Holiday and a very Merry Christmas.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/25/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I Wish You a Merry Christmas-Even Though I'm a Nonbeliever
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/i_wish_you_a_merry_christmaseven_though_
im_a_non-believer_20151223/
Posted on Dec 23, 2015
By Sonali Kolhatkar
Signs of an interfaith holiday: The first flames of a giant Hanukkah
menorah blaze in front of a Christmas tree at the Brandenburg Gate in
Berlin
in 2014. (Michael Sohn / AP)
I've been celebrating Christmas for as long as I can remember. As a child,
I
believed in Santa Claus and was rewarded every December for that temporary
faith with a varied, if modest, set of gifts. But I am not a Christian,
although my mother was born a Catholic.
During Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, I often decorated the
threshold
of my house with fine, glittering powdery "rangoli" in deep colors. My
mother lit oil lamps and made an array of cardamom-laced sweets. But I am
not Hindu, although my father's extended family is considered Brahmin.
During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, my family respected the Islamic
practice of daytime fasting by never eating or drinking outdoors while the
sun was up. And at the end of the month, we celebrated Eid al-Fitr with our
Muslim friends, feasting on stuffed goat and filling our pockets with
foil-wrapped chocolates. But I am not a Muslim, although I was born and
raised in a devoutly Islamic nation, the United Arab Emirates.
My family celebrated the superficial aspects of all three religions we were
surrounded by, if only because it was great fun to do so, and also because
not doing so would have required greater effort. After all, why not? There
was no downside to decorating a Christmas tree or lighting Diwali
firecrackers. But there was an underlying benefit to partaking in the
festivities: a sense of communion and deep respect for religious traditions
that were not ours.
I have no doubt that had my family been exposed to other major religious
faiths such as Judaism or Buddhism, we would have celebrated those too, for
why give up an excuse to celebrate and enjoy the love of friends and
community? (In fact, a few years after I moved to the U.S., I delighted in
attending my very first Passover Seder, learning the songs and tasting the
traditional foods).
While we were quick to adopt religious festivities, no member of my
immediate family ever entered a house of worship to actually practice any
of
the faiths we respected. As a result, I grew up free to explore the major
religions to which I was exposed. While I was enamored of their histories
and colorful customs, I found their tenets wanting in various ways and soon
settled upon an atheist identity, which remained perfectly balanced with my
participation in theist revelry. This remained consistent with how my
family
and friends approached the multiculturalism in which we were steeped: My
Muslim friends never shied away from wishing their Christian colleagues a
merry Christmas, and my Christian friends did not shrink from having their
foreheads smeared red during Diwali by their Hindu neighbors. Although it
sounds idealistic, in truth, we simply did not intellectualize our
interactions-we took them for granted. All over the world, most people, if
left alone by politicians and the media, manage to coexist harmoniously
with
neighbors of different religious traditions.
Given this background, I see the American battle over Christmas as rather
bizarre. It is also part of the reason why we are becoming an Islamophobic
nation. Liberals have responded to the supremacist tendencies of the
Christian right by trying to erase the words "Merry Christmas" and reducing
them to the meaningless "Happy Holidays." The Christian right on the other
hand, has fought to preserve its own religious dominance over other faiths
and claimed that there is a "war on Christmas" in which even Starbucks is
engaged. This desperate need to define the U.S. as a Christian nation goes
hand in hand with attacks on Islam.
The U.S. has always had a serious problem with non-Christian faiths, going
all the way back to the white colonizing of the continent. The national
fear
of otherness has been at the root of the mass enslavement of African people
and the ongoing assaults on African-Americans, the conquest of indigenous
Americans, the internment of Japanese-Americans, and most recently the
persecution of Muslims. History has shown us that the politics of fear have
only led us down the darkest pathways.
So deep is our current irrational fear of Muslims that a new poll by a
pro-Democratic Party firm found that 30 percent of primary Republican
voters
would like the U.S. to bomb the country of Agrabah-a fictional land from
the
Disney animated film "Aladdin." Since the Islamic State attacks in Paris on
Nov. 13, anti-Muslim attacks in the U.S. have reportedly tripled. A Donald
Trump supporter in California was just arrested for allegedly making
explosives and planning to harm Muslims. And, after Trump called for
barring
Muslims from coming to the U.S., Congress passed a law banning visa waivers
for people from a handful of Muslim countries, including Iran, one of the
leading nations fighting the Islamic State. President Obama signed the bill
into law.
But there are rays of hope along the way. Some Americans have subverted
racism and religious bigotry, like this Wheaton College professor who
donned
a hijab in solidarity with Muslims (and paid a heavy price for it).
Filmmaker Michael Moore declared "We Are All Muslim" in front of the Trump
Tower. And this Canadian church put up a meaningful sign reading
"Christmas:
A Story About a Middle Eastern Family Seeking Refuge," drawing a poignant
link between Muslim refugees escaping war and Joseph and Mary.
While the U.S. remains a deeply religious and majority Christian nation, it
has an uncomfortable relationship with the vast multitude of other
spiritual
faiths. The same nation that nurtures Trump and Carly Fiorina, who has said
she believes that people of faith make better leaders, has produced
vehemently anti-Muslim atheist thinkers like Bill Maher and Sam Harris. The
rabidly right-wing Fox News in 2013 excoriated religious scholar Reza Aslan
for writing a laudatory book about Jesus Christ. Apparently they could not
fathom the idea that a Muslim academic might appreciate the life story of
Christ.
We have too much religion in the U.S., and we have too little-too much in
the sense that we infuse all our festivities with exclusionary and
faith-specific rhetoric, and too little in that we remain in our separate
enclaves during our traditional festivities.
To be fair, there are some interfaith alliances in the U.S., but they are
relegated to the margins. But perhaps we need fewer formal relationships in
general. Our intolerance of other peoples' religious faiths comes from
ignorance and fear and a lack of informal mixing during festivities. Jews
are expected to eat out at Chinese restaurants on Christmas Day rather than
be invited to their Christian friends' homes for a traditional dinner. Most
non-Hindu Americans have no idea what Diwali is, yet they flock to their
yoga classes each week.
We need to develop healthier relationships with the religions practiced in
the communities all around us. We need to start asking questions, and
inviting our friends and neighbors over for celebrations. Atheists need to
stop turning up our noses at religious faiths and enjoy the varied cultural
practices around us while being confident that we can retain our beliefs
without trampling on those of others.
Maybe then we can start wishing one another a "Merry Christmas" on Dec. 25
regardless of how we identify and simply because some among us consider the
day sacred. That is as good a reason as any to celebrate a holiday without
feeling threatened or like an imposter. Wish me a "Merry Christmas" and I
will wish you right back with gusto, even though I have no desire
whatsoever
to see Jesus Christ as my lord and savior-but am perfectly comfortable with
yours. And come Eid, I'll merrily wish my Muslim friends Eid Mubarak
("blessed Eid"). In the meantime this Friday, I'll delight in lighting up
my
Christmas tree and watching my kids open their presents.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
I Wish You a Merry Christmas-Even Though I'm a Nonbeliever
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/i_wish_you_a_merry_christmaseven_though_
im_a_non-believer_20151223/
Posted on Dec 23, 2015
By Sonali Kolhatkar
Signs of an interfaith holiday: The first flames of a giant Hanukkah
menorah
blaze in front of a Christmas tree at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in
2014. (Michael Sohn / AP)
I've been celebrating Christmas for as long as I can remember. As a child,
I
believed in Santa Claus and was rewarded every December for that temporary
faith with a varied, if modest, set of gifts. But I am not a Christian,
although my mother was born a Catholic.
During Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, I often decorated the
threshold
of my house with fine, glittering powdery "rangoli" in deep colors. My
mother lit oil lamps and made an array of cardamom-laced sweets. But I am
not Hindu, although my father's extended family is considered Brahmin.
During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, my family respected the Islamic
practice of daytime fasting by never eating or drinking outdoors while the
sun was up. And at the end of the month, we celebrated Eid al-Fitr with our
Muslim friends, feasting on stuffed goat and filling our pockets with
foil-wrapped chocolates. But I am not a Muslim, although I was born and
raised in a devoutly Islamic nation, the United Arab Emirates.
My family celebrated the superficial aspects of all three religions we were
surrounded by, if only because it was great fun to do so, and also because
not doing so would have required greater effort. After all, why not? There
was no downside to decorating a Christmas tree or lighting Diwali
firecrackers. But there was an underlying benefit to partaking in the
festivities: a sense of communion and deep respect for religious traditions
that were not ours.
I have no doubt that had my family been exposed to other major religious
faiths such as Judaism or Buddhism, we would have celebrated those too, for
why give up an excuse to celebrate and enjoy the love of friends and
community? (In fact, a few years after I moved to the U.S., I delighted in
attending my very first Passover Seder, learning the songs and tasting the
traditional foods).
While we were quick to adopt religious festivities, no member of my
immediate family ever entered a house of worship to actually practice any
of
the faiths we respected. As a result, I grew up free to explore the major
religions to which I was exposed. While I was enamored of their histories
and colorful customs, I found their tenets wanting in various ways and soon
settled upon an atheist identity, which remained perfectly balanced with my
participation in theist revelry. This remained consistent with how my
family
and friends approached the multiculturalism in which we were steeped: My
Muslim friends never shied away from wishing their Christian colleagues a
merry Christmas, and my Christian friends did not shrink from having their
foreheads smeared red during Diwali by their Hindu neighbors. Although it
sounds idealistic, in truth, we simply did not intellectualize our
interactions-we took them for granted. All over the world, most people, if
left alone by politicians and the media, manage to coexist harmoniously
with
neighbors of different religious traditions.
Given this background, I see the American battle over Christmas as rather
bizarre. It is also part of the reason why we are becoming an Islamophobic
nation. Liberals have responded to the supremacist tendencies of the
Christian right by trying to erase the words "Merry Christmas" and reducing
them to the meaningless "Happy Holidays." The Christian right on the other
hand, has fought to preserve its own religious dominance over other faiths
and claimed that there is a "war on Christmas" in which even Starbucks is
engaged. This desperate need to define the U.S. as a Christian nation goes
hand in hand with attacks on Islam.
The U.S. has always had a serious problem with non-Christian faiths, going
all the way back to the white colonizing of the continent. The national
fear
of otherness has been at the root of the mass enslavement of African people
and the ongoing assaults on African-Americans, the conquest of indigenous
Americans, the internment of Japanese-Americans, and most recently the
persecution of Muslims. History has shown us that the politics of fear have
only led us down the darkest pathways.
So deep is our current irrational fear of Muslims that a new poll by a
pro-Democratic Party firm found that 30 percent of primary Republican
voters
would like the U.S. to bomb the country of Agrabah-a fictional land from
the
Disney animated film "Aladdin." Since the Islamic State attacks in Paris on
Nov. 13, anti-Muslim attacks in the U.S. have reportedly tripled. A Donald
Trump supporter in California was just arrested for allegedly making
explosives and planning to harm Muslims. And, after Trump called for
barring
Muslims from coming to the U.S., Congress passed a law banning visa waivers
for people from a handful of Muslim countries, including Iran, one of the
leading nations fighting the Islamic State. President Obama signed the bill
into law.
But there are rays of hope along the way. Some Americans have subverted
racism and religious bigotry, like this Wheaton College professor who
donned
a hijab in solidarity with Muslims (and paid a heavy price for it).
Filmmaker Michael Moore declared "We Are All Muslim" in front of the Trump
Tower. And this Canadian church put up a meaningful sign reading
"Christmas:
A Story About a Middle Eastern Family Seeking Refuge," drawing a poignant
link between Muslim refugees escaping war and Joseph and Mary.
While the U.S. remains a deeply religious and majority Christian nation, it
has an uncomfortable relationship with the vast multitude of other
spiritual
faiths. The same nation that nurtures Trump and Carly Fiorina, who has said
she believes that people of faith make better leaders, has produced
vehemently anti-Muslim atheist thinkers like Bill Maher and Sam Harris. The
rabidly right-wing Fox News in 2013 excoriated religious scholar Reza Aslan
for writing a laudatory book about Jesus Christ. Apparently they could not
fathom the idea that a Muslim academic might appreciate the life story of
Christ.
We have too much religion in the U.S., and we have too little-too much in
the sense that we infuse all our festivities with exclusionary and
faith-specific rhetoric, and too little in that we remain in our separate
enclaves during our traditional festivities.
To be fair, there are some interfaith alliances in the U.S., but they are
relegated to the margins. But perhaps we need fewer formal relationships in
general. Our intolerance of other peoples' religious faiths comes from
ignorance and fear and a lack of informal mixing during festivities. Jews
are expected to eat out at Chinese restaurants on Christmas Day rather than
be invited to their Christian friends' homes for a traditional dinner. Most
non-Hindu Americans have no idea what Diwali is, yet they flock to their
yoga classes each week.
We need to develop healthier relationships with the religions practiced in
the communities all around us. We need to start asking questions, and
inviting our friends and neighbors over for celebrations. Atheists need to
stop turning up our noses at religious faiths and enjoy the varied cultural
practices around us while being confident that we can retain our beliefs
without trampling on those of others.
Maybe then we can start wishing one another a "Merry Christmas" on Dec. 25
regardless of how we identify and simply because some among us consider the
day sacred. That is as good a reason as any to celebrate a holiday without
feeling threatened or like an imposter. Wish me a "Merry Christmas" and I
will wish you right back with gusto, even though I have no desire
whatsoever
to see Jesus Christ as my lord and savior-but am perfectly comfortable with
yours. And come Eid, I'll merrily wish my Muslim friends Eid Mubarak
("blessed Eid"). In the meantime this Friday, I'll delight in lighting up
my
Christmas tree and watching my kids open their presents.
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/a_conversation_with_greil_marcus_2
0151225/
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/a_conversation_with_greil_marcus_2
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ed_to_immigrate_to_the_us_20151224/
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ed_to_immigrate_to_the_us_20151224/ http://www.truthdig.com/
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