This Christmas I noticed for the first time the use of the term “Happy Holidays”. I cannot find who created this term. It is closely related to the term “Happy New Year”, so I suspect it came from that.
Ideas often take some time to make it to Australia. It seems this trend started in the US in the 1990s. So as not to offend non Roman Catholic derived faiths, the religious aspect is evacuated from all references to the holiday.
The history of the Christmas Holidays
The reason I say Roman Catholic is, that it was brought to my attention in the Sunday service at St John’s Anglican Cathedral (which welcomes all denominations and faiths) that Christmas fits into the ancient Roman festive season of Saturnalia. This festival started as a celebration of the winter solstice and then expanded to the latter part of December. Romans would give good-luck gifts and place trees with candles in their halls.
5 January Anyone?
Orthodox and Eastern-rite Christians don’t celebrate Christmas on 25 December, but rather the 5 January. Why? They still follow the Julian calendar. In their calendar our 5 January is their 25 December. The history of calendars is itself fascinating. In my blog entry The metric system: a case study in technical standard setting I discuss how hard it is to change standards once they are in. The Gregorian Calendar standard still has it’s holdouts.
Enter Multiculturalism
The western liberal democracies enshrine in their constitutions freedom of religion. Christians should be able to publicly say Merry Christmas to each other. As should others with of Ramadan, Sarvasham Eakadashi and so on. Secularists can say “Happy Hoidays”.
Secularism
A key idea behind western liberal democracies is the separation of church and state. Religion and governance should be completely separate. Where the water gets muddied is when there is a majority of one religion in a democracy. Then the flavour of that democracy follows from that religion. Contrast India with Australia, or Malaysia with USA.
Perhaps the problem is that in a secular system, there should be no holidays for religious festivals at all.
The politically correct thing
What seems to be getting played out in Australia is the systematic banning of all Christian symbols from our schools and public life. Santa Claus is banned from our local play group and school. Christmas becomes Happy Holidays and so on.
The French have come under attack for banning headscarves in schools. However they actually banned all religious symbols, whether they be Christian, Islamic, Jewish or others. They are motivated by a desire to integrate their various cultures and faiths into a peaceful country.
So, I think either all religious symbols and references should be barred from public life, or I am going to keep saying “Merry Christmas”.
I don’t want to see religious symbols banned. Culture and religion frequently go hand in hand; banning their visible presence simply suppresses them, which can lead to fundementalism. Fundamentalism is, IMHO, a bad thing, especially when it makes people want to blow stuff up in the name of freedom.
I’d rather see tolerance for and understanding of all religious paraphenalia increased.
PS: I believe the French didn’t ban all symbols, just the more ostentatious ones. Small crosses are still permitted. Headscarves, skull caps and turbans are out. What a happy coincidence that the majority religion doesn’t require the wearing of anything ostentatious.