Monday, December 26, 2005

Last Thoughts on Christmas

(at least for this year).

The Christmas/Holiday question seems to break on party lines. Liberals are quite happy changing the name, conservatives and libertarians think that the holiday should be called by its real name. This is an interesting split and shows that the issue is part of a larger culture war.

On the conservative side, the argument is simple - the holiday is Christmas. Call it that. The defense from the other side are varied. One is that this is an attempt to commercialize Christmas even more. This is silly. The commercialization is there regardless.

The best argument for "holidays" is that we are increasingly becoming a multi-cultural society and we need to amend our customs so as not to offend our new citizens.

This sounds great in theory but that theory includes a couple of assumptions. One is that the Christian element of Christmas offends most non-Christians. If this is so then the anti-Christmas people should be fighting against American Mosques broadcasting prayers over loudspeakers several times a day. If a Christmas tree on public land is offensive then a call to prayer audible in the same public land must be even worse. Funny thing, though. The anti-Christmas people fight for the rights of Muslims to blare out prayers.

Many liberals look to Europe, especially France, as a guide for modern society. The Europeans are mainly secular. Most are Catholic and most are non-believers.

So what does a secular society do about Christmas and how does its 10% Muslim population react? It turns out that they celebrate Christmas, even the Muslims.

If secular France doesn't have a problem with Christmas then why do we?

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