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And the happy holiday rants start...


BelieveinScience

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I often wonder why Easter was never secularized as much as Christmas. Probably because there's no presents :D

Really? I always thought it was more secularized.... I grew up a Christian, and it wasn't until... MAYBE I was 11, but I kinda remember being a lot older, that I realized that Easter had ANYTHING to do with religion whatsoever. I always had the "Christmas is about Jesus!!!11!!!!11!" pounded into my skull (not by my parents, though. My dad always said that if people wanted to get to the TRUE meaning of Christmas, they'd go worship trees.) But Easter... MAYBE I was 12? I think not though. I think I was more like, 14. And I grew up going to private Christian schools and attending a variety of churches quite regularly.

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Really? I always thought it was more secularized.... I grew up a Christian, and it wasn't until... MAYBE I was 11, but I kinda remember being a lot older, that I realized that Easter had ANYTHING to do with religion whatsoever. I always had the "Christmas is about Jesus!!!11!!!!11!" pounded into my skull (not by my parents, though. My dad always said that if people wanted to get to the TRUE meaning of Christmas, they'd go worship trees.) But Easter... MAYBE I was 12? I think not though. I think I was more like, 14. And I grew up going to private Christian schools and attending a variety of churches quite regularly.

How did you celebrate Easter then? I know lots of non Christian or non-religious people who celebrate Christmas by giving presents, decorating, Santa, having trees. But I've never known any non-Christian person to do much for Easter. The only thing you really can do is buy chocolate eggs, otherwise not much. I actually don't know anyone who wasn't a regular church goer that celebrated Christmas. I think that may be why you didn't realize...if you went to a variety of Christian schools/churches, you wouldn't come into close contact with as many people that didn't celebrate Easter. Since I know very few observant Christians, I know very few people who do much of anything for Easter, other than have a day off. Totally only asking out of curiosity, but what did you think Easter was about? I've just always known Easter was a religious holiday because it was something we didn't celebrate, but everyone seemed to celebrate Christmas by presents, so I had no idea it had any meaning for the longest time.

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Winter Solstice, Yule, Festivus, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah occur in December of this year.

Bodhi Day, on which Buddhists commemorate the Enlightenment of the Buddha, always occurs on December 8. Many Western Buddhist centers will have all night meditation followed by a celebration (eg, a potluck) open to the community.

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How did you celebrate Easter then? I know lots of non Christian or non-religious people who celebrate Christmas by giving presents, decorating, Santa, having trees. But I've never known any non-Christian person to do much for Easter. The only thing you really can do is buy chocolate eggs, otherwise not much. I actually don't know anyone who wasn't a regular church goer that celebrated Christmas. I think that may be why you didn't realize...if you went to a variety of Christian schools/churches, you wouldn't come into close contact with as many people that didn't celebrate Easter. Since I know very few observant Christians, I know very few people who do much of anything for Easter, other than have a day off. Totally only asking out of curiosity, but what did you think Easter was about? I've just always known Easter was a religious holiday because it was something we didn't celebrate, but everyone seemed to celebrate Christmas by presents, so I had no idea it had any meaning for the longest time.

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I wonder if the different between the different levels of commercialization between Christmas and Easter doesn't have something to do with the times of year when they're celebrated. Christmas is celebrated in the depths of winter (at least in the northern hemisphere). It's dreary and cold, not a whole lot to do...people are just itching for opportunities to celebrate and have fun.

Easter, on the other hand, takes place at the beginning of spring. Historically, it's planting season (and thus a busy time of year) for those who work(ed) the land. Plus, the days are getting longer, the temperatures are getting warmer, and the schedule starts filling up--especially in the modern day, there's a lot more on our schedules at that time of year.

Perhaps marketers thought that, rather than trying to compete with the all the "stuff" going on in the spring, the marketers thought that Christmas would be a better bet for getting people to buy products and food, partake in holiday entertainment, etc.?

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Here in NYC we get Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah off every year, and spring break is carefully planned to encompass Passover, Good Friday, and Easter. But we have a very large Jewish population.

It's the same on Long Island as well but I think it's mainly for economic reasons. Because we have such a large Jewish population, there would be no way to hire enough subs to cover for all the absentee teachers and so much state aid would be lost for missing students that it just makes sense to schedule days off. It's only somewhat recent though, if you can call the 70s recent. When I was in school in the late 50s through the 60s I don't ever recall having days off (I definitely remember my mother insisting that I take a matzoh sandwich for lunch in junior high during passover, which I did. With ham on it). We also didn't have mid-winter break in February and Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays were celebrated separately as official holidays, no Presidents' Day.

As far as keeping Christ in Christmas, hey fundies, I've got a deal for you. I'll let you scream Merry Christmas until you're blue in the face and I won't say a word. All you have to do in return is butt the hell out of everyone else's business, which means you STFU about reproductive freedom, marriage equality and all those other things. K?

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Every year, I wish my Christian friends a Merry Christmas.

ON DECEMBER 25.

Because it's NOT the whole month. Duh.

I wish people happy Thanksgiving, happy Eid, happy Rosh Hashanah, etc., on the appropriate dates. And happy New Year on--you guessed it--January 1.

I am so tired of the whiners. As if there aren't more important things in the world to be upset about...

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Every year, I wish my Christian friends a Merry Christmas.

ON DECEMBER 25.

Because it's NOT the whole month. Duh.

I wish people happy Thanksgiving, happy Eid, happy Rosh Hashanah, etc., on the appropriate dates. And happy New Year on--you guessed it--January 1.

I am so tired of the whiners. As if there aren't more important things in the world to be upset about...

Word. I do celebrate Christmas, but not until Dec. 25. I like Advent, dammit. (And it's not Advent yet, either.)

I think of secular Christmas (gift exchange, baking cookies with The Partner, decorating the tree) as being distinct from religious Christmas (going to Christmas Eve service with my family, setting up the creche, considering what new beginnings my life needs).

I'm Puritan enough to have kind of a complicated relationship with secular Christmas. Show me an amazing light display, and I will fight an impulse to say something rude about how many starving children could be fed for the cost of the resulting light bill. I do fight that impulse, both because I recognize that it's rude and Maxwellian, and because I know people (The Partner, for one) who will see the same display as festive, not wasteful-- people who are not inattentive to human suffering.

Also, I suspect a rigorous distinction between secular and religious Christmas wouldn't hold up all that well. (Is caroling secular because it's basically wassailing with cocoa instead of rum, and the Puritans would have banned it? Or is it religious because we're not singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or "Frosty the Snowman" unless someone requests it?)

Though I am a little sad about the commercialism of secular Christmas, I don't think it's commercial because it's secular or insufficiently Jesus-focused. I think it's commercial because the society we live in is capitalist, and it will make a marketing opportunity of anything.

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The whole 'war on Christmas' thing is a reaction to the increasing religious diversity we see in this country. Back when everyone was at least nominally a Christian, nonChristians who knew what's good for them kept quiet, so fundies had nothing to complain about. Now, there are Jews, Buddhist, Muslims, and nonreligious people who all use the winter seasons for various celebratory reasons. I think this reduced focus on Christmas upset fundies who feel their monopoly is being threatened (which is true). What they don't understand is that when someone says "happy holidays", it's not because they hate Christmas, but that they assume some people aren't Christians, and using a generic greeting is more appropriate. However, whenever the status quo is changed, some within the dominant group will always feel threatened. I see this phony "war" as a backlash to the increased religious diversity they see.

Frankly, if someone gives me grief for saying "happy holidays", I'll be glad to educate them on *my* family's nonChristian side, and also the nonChristians that I know personally to explain why "Happy Holidays" is just a lazy way to greet the diverse people I know.

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Whiners gotta whine, I guess.

I wish people happy holidays. So do my kids. We're cultural Catholics, so we say Merry Christmas to our family members. My five year old knows enough that if someone is wearing a pentagram, you say "Blessed Yule" rather than any of the other options. It's just.....POLITE, to acknowledge that other people might believe something different than you do. The idea that it's OPPRESSIVE to have to keep in mind that not everyone is exactly the same is batshit.

Older kid attends a VERY multicultural school where the second language they teach is Arabic, so she's learning about Islamic holidays and I couldn't be happier. It's a public school, even. I like the idea of my kids growing up understanding that while our family may believe X about God/the Divine, lots of people believe lots of different things and none of it is wrong because it's different than what we believe. Younger kid goes to a Catholic preschool, just like older kid did, but that has more to do with the fact that the Catholic schools offer a full-day option and the public schools don't.

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I'm surprised how much commercial Halloween is now a thing in Japan though. When I was a kid hardly anyone had even heard of it, now at least the decoration theming seems to be all over merchandise and toys for kids (though as far as I know actual trick-or-treating or dressing up still isn't a thing). I guess "commercial" seems to be the common theme in all this :D

On a related note (because everyone has already said everything that needs to be said about the Christ in Christmas bullshit), my father's family had an Italian exchange student live with them for a year. According to my grandmother, she had no idea what Halloween was. We were in Italy this past November and we saw Halloween decorations everywhere from the big cities to small, rural hill towns. So, I think it's really taken off all over the globe in a way that would have been very surprising 40 or so years ago.

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My reply to anyone bitching about the "War on Christmas"- Got over yourself. The world doesn't revolve around you and your pagan-origined, celebrating-at-the-wrong-time-of-the-damn-year holiday. There are other holidays that non-Christians celebrate at that time and there is another holiday that Christians celebrate as well.

Well said, Valsa. I'm especially fond of the bolded statement.

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That's awesome! But a rarity in a public school. No idea why a school would give off Yom Kippur without giving off Rosh Hashanah. Teacher's were always understanding, but I've never heard of a school that gave a day off for either. It's a very nice idea

In my home town we got off on Yom Kippur and the first day of Rosh Hashanah, but not the second. However, their are a fair number of Jews who live in my home town including the teachers. As far as I understand it, they school district gave off on days that they felt not enough teachers would come in, rather than caring about whether students would come in or not.

I went to Jewish day school until 7th grade and my first few years of public school I stayed home on chag. I remember trying to explain to one teacher why I wouldn't be in school on sukkot, which she had never heard of (not that she doubted me, it's just weird to think that Sukkot is an important Biblical holiday and Hanukkah is not even Biblical and yet everyone has heard of the latter, not the former.)

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Every year, I wish my Christian friends a Merry Christmas.

ON DECEMBER 25.

Because it's NOT the whole month. Duh.

I wish people happy Thanksgiving, happy Eid, happy Rosh Hashanah, etc., on the appropriate dates. And happy New Year on--you guessed it--January 1.

I am so tired of the whiners. As if there aren't more important things in the world to be upset about...

This is exactly what I do, and I wish the whiners would STFU already!

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Every time someone says merry christmas to me this year I am going to say Happy Chanukah. It's basically the same thing, plus it's my own hilarious, personal war on Christmas.

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And of course she's acting like of COURSE everyone celebrates Christmas. I have never celebrated Christmas in my life, and Christmas has become such a commercialized secular holiday anyway. If she's giving presents or decorating a Christmas tree, she's celebrating the non religious part of Christmas too.

I hate how some people act like Hannukah is such a big deal though, just because it's around the same time as Christmas. It's an extremely minor holiday, and it was only made to be more important than it really is just to have some competition with Christmas and so that Jewish kids didn't feel bad about not getting presents. I don't even get hannukah presents anymore, because it's really so children don't feel left out. Does anyone know if there are particularly significant holidays of other religions around the same time as Christmas? Or were those exaggerated too to make it feel like a more inclusive "holiday" season? Hannukah isn't important at all in terms of religion, but no one had better take the Han out of Hannukah ;)

Yeah, that. I'm actually fine with saying that the holiday season is about Christmas, because it's not being driven by Hannukah, Yule or Kwanzaa.

That said, I had no idea that Christmas was NOT Jesus' birthday until our former nanny informed us that her church didn't celebrate Christmas, because the date was wrong and it was really a Pagan holiday. (We had some cool religious discussions)

I remember seeing a local business wishing its customers a "happy holiday season" a few years ago....in September. It was the year that Rosh Hashana coincided with Eid al-fitr. :lol:

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Yeah, that. I'm actually fine with saying that the holiday season is about Christmas, because it's not being driven by Hannukah, Yule or Kwanzaa.

That said, I had no idea that Christmas was NOT Jesus' birthday until our former nanny informed us that her church didn't celebrate Christmas, because the date was wrong and it was really a Pagan holiday. (We had some cool religious discussions)

I remember seeing a local business wishing its customers a "happy holiday season" a few years ago....in September. It was the year that Rosh Hashana coincided with Eid al-fitr. :lol:

The holiday season IS about Christmas, and I think it's silly to pretend otherwise. It's important to recognize that all religions have important holidays, and it's a good idea to know when they are. And that they aren't around the same time as Christmas. A lot of my friends in university from tiny towns thought that Hannukah was as important as Christmas, and had never heard of the holidays that were really important, because that's how it's marketed. Pretending December is some big holiday season for all religions seems like false inclusiveness to me.

I think I actually saw the same thing once :) Probably in the same year, and potentially the same business. At the time most of my friends were either Jewish or Muslim and it was fun. I only figured out Christmas wasn't Jesus' birthday when I decided to research why people have Christmas trees and got a whole bunch of extra info. That being said I love Christmas because I get a day off but there's no pressure to be with family or actually do anything. I generally go to a movie and eat Chinese food, either with some non Christmas celebrating friends (mostly Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu friends), or with my immediate family. The way people celebrate Christmas seems so stressful, especially with all the present buying for family and the decorating and the family time. I'm glad I don't do it and have no pressure to :) I get presents for a few close friends, but none for family since there are no small children anymore, so no more Hannukah presents. I absolutely love Hannukah foods so I make sure I have lots of those (yay oil!) but we never actually do anything for the holiday, because it's not an important one.

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How did you celebrate Easter then? I know lots of non Christian or non-religious people who celebrate Christmas by giving presents, decorating, Santa, having trees. But I've never known any non-Christian person to do much for Easter. The only thing you really can do is buy chocolate eggs, otherwise not much. I actually don't know anyone who wasn't a regular church goer that celebrated Christmas. I think that may be why you didn't realize...if you went to a variety of Christian schools/churches, you wouldn't come into close contact with as many people that didn't celebrate Easter. Since I know very few observant Christians, I know very few people who do much of anything for Easter, other than have a day off. Totally only asking out of curiosity, but what did you think Easter was about? I've just always known Easter was a religious holiday because it was something we didn't celebrate, but everyone seemed to celebrate Christmas by presents, so I had no idea it had any meaning for the longest time.

I don't mind the questions :) For Easter my dad would pretend to be the "Easter bunny" (my parents never led me to believe in things like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny) and hid plastic eggs with candy, which I would then go find. My mom and I would decorate real eggs, and then have fun eating them the rest of the week. Sometimes we got together with the extended family and had a big egg hunt on grandma's farm.

I grew up Seventh Day Adventist, so I only ever went to SDA schools except for kindergarten and 7th grade (7th grade was when I begged my parents to let me go to public school, but by then I'd been too sheltered to handle it.) Maybe Easter is just not a big deal to Seventh Day Adventists?

I did grow up going to a variety of Seventh Day Adventist schools (which is unusual.... most people don't move around that often) but ultimately I discovered "the true meaning of Easter" from reading things on the internet. And going, huh?

I don't even remember ever having a big dinner for Easter, and of course, being Seventh Day Adventists, we did not eat ham, so I was unaware of that tradition until adulthood.

Yeah, pretty much just candy, eggs, and bunnies.

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The holiday season IS about Christmas, and I think it's silly to pretend otherwise. It's important to recognize that all religions have important holidays, and it's a good idea to know when they are. And that they aren't around the same time as Christmas. A lot of my friends in university from tiny towns thought that Hannukah was as important as Christmas, and had never heard of the holidays that were really important, because that's how it's marketed. Pretending December is some big holiday season for all religions seems like false inclusiveness to me.

I think I actually saw the same thing once :) Probably in the same year, and potentially the same business. At the time most of my friends were either Jewish or Muslim and it was fun. I only figured out Christmas wasn't Jesus' birthday when I decided to research why people have Christmas trees and got a whole bunch of extra info. That being said I love Christmas because I get a day off but there's no pressure to be with family or actually do anything. I generally go to a movie and eat Chinese food, either with some non Christmas celebrating friends (mostly Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu friends), or with my immediate family. The way people celebrate Christmas seems so stressful, especially with all the present buying for family and the decorating and the family time. I'm glad I don't do it and have no pressure to :) I get presents for a few close friends, but none for family since there are no small children anymore, so no more Hannukah presents. I absolutely love Hannukah foods so I make sure I have lots of those (yay oil!) but we never actually do anything for the holiday, because it's not an important one.

I'd love to make a "happy Chinese food and movie day" card.

It's actually the most boring/least stressful day for me, as long as my clients don't try to kill each other over Xmas access. Hubby works, along with all the other Jewish, Muslim and Hindu doctors at the hospital.

I think the ad was from Zellers at Centrepoint.

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