John John: Further, when I read it I puked up a big wad of peyote on the keyboard. Now that’s what I would call, “purification”! 
The Spirit was moved to say:
If I may jump in to this discussion, since I had so much a part in its early history. . . .
Spirit, where do you live? I live in Southern California, and I assure you that except for when I was at church I heard NO reference to Nativity. I even had difficulty buying Christmas cards which at least alluded to the spiritual aspect of this holiday.
There are many Christian holydays which have no secular celebrations equivalent to what happens at Christmas and Easter and, to a lesser extent, St. Valentine’s Day. Ash Wednesday (though there is Mardi Gras in New Orleans, I wouldn’t say that that is secular), Good Friday, Epiphany, Pentecost, etc. In the Catholic calendar there are the Feasts of the Ascension and Assumption, and a host of days to honor Mary. You DO know that January 1st is a Mary feast day, right? There’s more discussion about that in the Separation of Church and State thread from which this thread sprang.
What religious significance did the cross have before the Crucifixion? I am not familiar with this history, and so cannot comment thereon.
Certainly a religion can take old symbols and give them new meaning, but that is not what has happened here. Secular tradition has kept things such as trees, wreaths, mistletoe, the Yule log, etc. as part of the winter holiday celebration. They are not related to Nativity – they are not Christian religious symbols.
Again I ask where you live, because I assure you that the issue of Samhain comes up in numerous places across this country every year – admittedly usually brought up by people who wrongly believe that the holiday is Satanic rather than pagan. As I said in an earlier post, in years past my kids’ school has resolved the issue by simply declaring the day a teacher conference day, and thus there is no school for the kids.
And I do commend you and respect you for your consistency. I think what my problem has been with David in this thread, as I have stated, is that he does not have that consistency. His concern has been Christian-bashing. He assigns all the symbols of this holiday time to the Christian religion and complains of them all, but has apparently in the past had no problems with the celebration of Halloween because it’s “just a bunch of kids dressing up in costumes begging for candy.” And he still has never told us whether he has ever exchanged Valentines with anyone, or will allow his son to participate in Valentine’s exchanges in school. And what about bunnies and chicks and eggs at Easter? (Eostre or Ostara – goddess of spring, symbolized by the rabbit.) Someone who complains of paper Santa hats and wreaths at Christmas logically should complain of jack o’lanterns at Halloween, paper hearts at Valentine’s day, and eggs and bunnies at Easter. No May Day celebrations either.
-Melin
Spiritus Mundi wrote:
As one who argued for the constitutionality of observing the secular aspects of Christmas back in the "Should Christmas be a Public Holiday’ thread, I would like to address the above point. I don’t deny for a minute the religious aspects of Christmas (although I do not celebrate in any religious manner myself). Where the difference of opinion between us seems to reside is in determining what is prohibited by the First Amendment- anything with a “religious association” or only those things directly religious themselves. Nobody worships Santa Claus as far as I know, the Church doesn’t grant indulgences for putting up wreaths or outdoor lighting, cutting out snowflakes or making snowmen are not religious rituals.
I believe that extending the restriction to anything with “close religious associations”, but which are themselves not religious activities would be a case of acting on the basis of “guilt by association”. Don’t Saturday and Sunday both have close religious associations? Does government giving employees those days off violate the Constitution? In many families Thanksgiving is closely related to religion- they go to church in the morning, and before consuming the holiday meal they specifically thank an almighty diety whom they believe bestowed blessings on them. Does that make Thanksgivng pageants in schools unacceptable?
Having said that, I do want to add that constitutionally is only a minimum requirement. Certainly schools and other youth programs should try to be as inclusive as possible, and avoid creating unnecessary distress for families, whether on a religious, cultural or class basis.
nebuli: you said,
“Don’t Saturday and Sunday both have close religious associations? Does government giving employees those days off violate the Constitution?”
I never thought of that. That idea might make the whole thing “snowball”!
Phaedrus
For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes.
I would just like to point out here that, in this week’s episode of Family Guy on Fox TV, the main guy screams, grabs a box out of a rabbit’s hand, and exclaims, “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!”
He then goes on to grumble about how all this rabbit commercialism just takes Jesus out of Easter.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
Spirit, I think we’re getting somewhere.
re your follow-up on point 2:
After reading your post, I think I’ll start by addressing the last line first. My position is not that there is NO association between the secular aspects & the religious aspects of Christmas. My position, rather, is that while an association CAN be made, it does not have to be made. While Tiny Tim chimes “God bless us, every one” in A Christmas Carol, the theme of the book is not that Scrooge redeems his soul from some future Hell, but that he redeems his life from the Hell he has created of his own life (IMO). One can view it as a religious experience, or one can view it as a humanist change of heart. The Grinch story does not depend on a Supreme Being for the Who’s celebration of Christmas, but on the spirit of community and giving. I know a good many people, including practicing Christians of many denominations, who find the mindless chant “Remember the reason for the Season” more than a little patronizing & annoying. I am one of them. The point I am trying to make is that one can have a personally meaningful celebration of the Christmas season without erecting a Nativity scene, having lighted displays of angels, stars, & other figures that do arise from the Nativity, or attending church services IF ONE WANTS TO DO THAT. If one feels that doing so betrays their own Jewish faith, or fuels their anger against a “mindless Christian majority” & chooses not to participate in anything associated with Christmas, that is their prerogative. But as long as a majority of reasonable people do not find a Christmas tree to have any direct connection to the Nativity, and feel that the spirit of giving has taken on a meaning beyond its association with God’s gift to us of his Son, or the gifts of the Magi, then schools including activities related to these aspects of Christmas in their programs does not violate anyone’s 1st Amendment Rights. That being said, I certainly do feel that schools should work with children & parents who take the minority view on this to provide alternative activities, or include activities that have meaning in the way they celebrate this season. But equating coloring wreaths to promoting Christianity is too big a stretch.
As for holidays which have a predominantly/exclusively religious character - absolutely. I have listed Pentecost, the Immaculate Conception, Yom Kippur, & Rosh Hashanah as such occasions. Easter shares a lot of parallels with Christmas - many of it’s symbols are pagan in origin (rabbits, eggs, flowers) & for many, it is an occasion to enjoy the warmer weather, strut out in their new Easter finery, and visit friends & family. For others, it is the most sacred day in the year. And everything in between…
For point 3, you asked:
My point is that different people can reasonably attach different meanings to the same symbol. That some Christians have seen a connection between the red berries of holly & beads of blood from Christ’s crown of thorns does not make holly a purely Christian symbol. Wreathes were hung by pagans long before Christianity reached Germany & England. Catholics, and some other Christians see the circular wreath shape as a symbol of God’s eternity. The purple and pink candles added to make an Advent wreath have their own meaning. None of these, though, detract from the meaning the wreath holds for modern-day Pagans & Wiccans. The meaning of any given symbol is the assigned by the individual using it. Jack-o-lanterns are seen as fun symbols of fall by most Americans. For pagans/Wiccans they have a special meaning of which many Americans are ignorant. For most fundamentalists, who view them as pagan symbols, they symbolize a turning away from God. For a handful of fundamentalists, they become symbols of Satanism. (Satanists consider Halloween THEIR high holy day, pumpkins & jack-o-lanterns are symbols of Halloween, thus jack-o-lanterns promote Satanism. Now where have I seen that “logic” used before?)
And finally…
I also am opposed to requiring students to take part in such an exercise. I guess I don’t see handing out red construction paper, scissors with rounded edges, glue sticks, & cotton balls as requiring students to participate, however. I do think that allowing students to do alternative projects is a good idea, but that it shouldn’t be entirely up to the teachers to come up with 3 different fresh ideas to accomodate 5 of their 25 kids every time.
Sorry this is so long, but I do think we’re finding more & more common ground.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
Several interesting issues.
First, let me state clearly that I am not making the argument that secular Christmas displays or pageants violate the constitution. Whatever my interpretation of that document might be, the voice of the Supreme Court carries a little more weight than my own on the matter. But, as Nebuli pointed out, legality is simply the minimum standard.
Let me also state that my position is very specific to the public schools. I feel that children, particularly young children, are the most vulnerable element of our population to any coersive influence. Therefore I can become quite passionate about what is and is not required in a public school.
Sticking for now to our original discussion points:
1 & 4) No disagreement. Hey, we are already batting .400. Save us a spot in teh hall of fame.
- Melin states that she had trouble finding Christmas cards with a message that she thought appropriate to her religious belief. She also heard no reference to the nativity outside of her church (and her home?) She mentions catholic feast days not associated with secular holidays and reminds me that New Year’s is also a feast day for Mary.
I am not entirely clear what you are aguing here, Melin. Is your position that Christmas is not a Christian holiday, that it has become so secularized that there is no religious meaning to it at all? I personally celebrate the winter solstice each year by having a birthday party. Does this somehow prevent the date from having religious significance to pagans? Please forgive the sardonicism, but my second point was really quite limited in scope. I am hoping simply to reinforce that point.
Sue’s position is that while Christmas is a religious holiday, the asociations between a secular celebration and the religious meaning are not inevitable. I agree. I also agree that it is possible to have a personally meaningful celebration of the Christmas season without erecting a Nativity scene. I flatter myself that I have one every year. Indeed, I take it further by not only failing to erect a nativity scene but by ignoring all ties to the poorly calculated date for the birth of Jesus. I also agree that such secular celebrations do not violate the first amendment when undertaken by a community since, as Sue points out, everyone is free to opt out of them.
However, school children (at least in the case that David has presented) are not free to opt out of an activity that they dislike. Additionally, children are more vulnerable to peer pressure and fear of rejection than (most) adults. Children also talk to each other. Even if the teacher is assiduous in making no associations of the class activity to the religious holiday, I do not believe that the children will not recognize the connection on their own.
Sue, if I may address you personally for a moment, I really wish you had not capped your position with the remark about equating coloring wreaths to promoting Christianity. It trivializes the concerns of non-Christians on this issue. In a way, it is illustrative of exactly the attitude that many of us fear.
- Melin asks about pre-Christian cross symbolism. Well, off the top of my head:
The tau cross was used as a symbol of life in bith Egypt and Assyria (and perhaps other parts of Mesopotamia).
The equilateral cross, capped swatika) or uncapped, has an extremely wide pre-Christian distribution, dating well back to the neolithic in some areas. It has had religious meaning in Europe, Persia, India, China and Africa. I believe I have run across some references to early crouciforms in the Americas as well, but I can not cite any examples.
Melin also denies that the pagan iconography present in Christmas celebrations has been incorporated into a Christian symbolism. I doubt that most Christians use the symbols would agree, and Sue has given some excellent examples (holly & wreaths) of exactly the type of symbolic incorporation of which I wrote.
Melin also asks again where I live (Florida) and mentions conflicts over Halloween celebrations. I never said that the issue of religion in schools was restricted entorely to Christianity (though Halloween is, of course, also a Catholic holy day). I oppose Halloween celebrations in school as well, whether you call it All Hallow’s Eve or Samhain makes little difference to me.
Melin also cautions that I should also object to Easter egg hunts and jack o’lanterns. I do, but only in the millieu of a required school activity.
Sue reminds me that people invest symbols with a wide range of meanings. I extrapolate her point to be that we are not justified in proscribing the use of a symbol based upon any particular interpretation. My counter is that the swastika was an auspicious icon for Hindus long before Hitler made it a symbol for something else. Despite that fact, it would be offensive to require school children to cut out swastikas and use them to decorate their classrooms. It is true that an individual can decide to invest an icon with any personal significance that he chooses. It is not true that said icon somehow loses all other cultural or religious associations.
- Sue agrees that children should not be forced to participate in these types of exercise, but she does not feel that a teacher handing out materials and designs for construction constitutes forced participation. To me, it sounds like the very definition of an assigned activity.
Finally, Sue apologizes for the length of her reply.
I think that I had better do the same.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Thank you for a fine and thoughtful post, Spiritus. I apologize if some of the things in my previous post were unclear – perhaps I can straighten them out.
You stated:
I mentioned those other holydays in response to your question to Sue:
Many of the holydays I mentioned are strictly religious in character – they have no secular celebrations. Some holydays have secular celebrations which coincide with them, such as Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, etc. I am not aware of secular celebrations associated with Pentecost, Ascension, etc.
Someone asked a while back whether I thought that there would be a big celebration here at this time of year were it not for the celebration of Christ’s birth. My answer to that is emphatically yes. Nativity is not by any stretch the most important holyday in the Christian calendar. And in this and other related threads I have posted links to suggest that most of the secular Christmas celebration has no direct link to Christianity at all.
And it’s not my position that Christmas “has become so secularized that there is no religious meaning to it at all.” Rather, it is my position that a holiday which incepted with pagan religious and cultural celebrations has developed some – but by no means exclusive – Christian religious meaning. But that does not mean, ipso facto, that everything associated with the holiday then automatically is Christian.
Just as you celebrate your birthday at the winter solstice, I celebrate my wedding anniversary then (happy birthday, BTW!). If for some reason you were to become a very famous and influential person, and your birthday were to become a national or worldwide holiday, would all of the celebrations and symbols associated with the solstice automatically become Spiritus Mundi symbols? Such that anyone who celebrated solstice would be presumed to be reverencing or celebrating Spiritus Mundi? So if I celebrate my wedding anniversary at that time, I also would be considered to be celebrating Spiritus Mundi?
Hmm, now maybe the difference here is that I have a strong pagan streak and Sue does not, so that I am more conscious of differences.
The wreath is a symbol of honor and victory that goes back to the Greeks and Romans, or even prior thereto. In another thread, I think it is the Separation of Church and State thread, I posted a link to the Encyclopedia Britannica discussion of wreaths, and I think even copied and pasted portions of the article there. I don’t believe, with all respect to Sue, that there is anything exclusively Christian, or even exclusively Christmas, about a wreath.
Pick up any craft book and you’ll see projects involving making wreaths for all seasons, as decorative items. Girls wear them – made of flowers – in their hair as adornments. Wreaths of one type or another are hung all year 'round, whether made of bay leaves or flowers or dried leaves, etc. At Christmastime they happen to be evergreen.
I think that the “pagan iconography” would be here and present at this time of year regardless of whether Christianity celebrated Nativity on December 25 or the first week of April (as I have read some scholars now think is closer to the true date). I think we would have wreaths and Yule logs and feasts and present exchanges and holly and mistletoe and all that stuff. What we wouldn’t have are Midnight Mass, Nativity pageants, and manger scenes.
Actually, Halloween itself isn’t really a holyday for Catholics, and there is no saint’s feast day associated with it. It is the Eve (or day before) of All Hallows, is all (kind of the way that Christmas Eve is the day before Christmas, or New Year’s Eve the day before New Year’s). All Hallows, or All Saints Day, is November 1, and that is what the Catholics call a Holyday of Obligation (attendance at Mass is mandatory). (November 2 is All Souls Day, but it is not a holyday of obligation.)
I respect that you object to jack o’lanterns and egg hunts in schools (what about paper hearts at Valentine’s Day?), because that shows that you have thought about the issue, taking a reasoned and principled approach, and are consistent, rather than simply Christian bashing. I do disagree with you, because I think that the things that we have been discussing are or have become sufficiently divorced from religious belief that are simply secular and fun. Just as you say you can and do celebrate Christmas without any religious connotations to it, I think that schoolchildren can cut out wreaths, jack o’lanterns, paper hearts, and bunnies and eggs without any religious connotations. They are simply fun to do, and can and do reflect the popular culture without teaching religion in the schools.
Do remember that in the first page of this thread I told David that if at school they had been doing the Nativity story, or if at Easter they were to do the Passion and Resurrection, I would be right there with him to complain. But I have not yet been convinced that Santa hats and wreaths, jack o’lanterns and colored eggs, or even paper hearts, are anything more than good art projects and a lot of fun, without threat of having religion even discussed in connection with them. I guess this is where we must agree to disagree.
Oh, and thanks for the info about the cross – I plan to do some research on it once I have a little extra time.
-Melin
I have decided not to participate in this thread any longer due to the OP’s dishonesty. For someone to start a thread, raise a topic, and only answer certain posters, while avoiding answering legitimate, polite questions by other posters, constitutes dishonesty. I also find it fraudulent that other people were answering questions that were politely directed to him. I will let you decide whether that was collusion or not.
This inaction and selective silence by the OP is not an honest attempt at debate, but, rather, a desire to make an uncontested, negative statement. There are other boards to do that on. Certainly, you would hope that the moderator of the Great Debates board would know the difference and at least have a working conception of what constitutes a debate.
Y2K, BFD
SPIRITUS MUNDI says the discussion should focus on what is “right” instead of what is “legal,” and I have no problem with that. In my defense, I would only point out that the question of legality was raised by David, not me, when he started waving the flag of the First Amendment around without justification. In fact, that was what prompted me to join the discussion in the first place. You say:
Really? Because, as a life-long Christian, this is news to me. Could you please tell me the Christian religious significance of burning a Yule log? Even if you do, you must concede that the origins of that tradition are pagan, not Christian. So would the imbuing of it with religious significance by some few Christians truly serve to make it a Christian symbol, when the majority of people (and the majority of Christians) do not so consider it? What if I decide that my religion imbues sacred meaning to the use of paste – can I then demand that three-year-olds not use paste because I happen to consider it sacred, even if, demonstrably, no one else does? The irony here, of course, is that the parties attempting to make the symbols in question religious – David and, apparently, you – do not personally consider them religious. But you must make them religious in order to have reason to object to them. You think they are, I think they are not; maybe we’ll simply have to disagree.
I do not believe, and your historical references have not convinced me, that the Christian cross had any particular wide-spread religious symbolism before being adopted as a Christic symbol. The ankh and the swastika are other types of crosses, but they are not the same symbol as the Christian cross. In any event, the question is not whether certain symbols can acquire religious meanings but whether, in this particular case, the symbols in question have acquired such meaning. I do not believe they have.
“Saint Nicholas” may be a religious symbol to some; Santa Claus is a religious symbol to very, very few. He is, in fact, a “jolly old elf” – more supernaturalism! – who is almost entirely divorced from the religious celebration of Christmas. And, as pointed out above, even if some few people considered Santa Claus a profoundly religious icon, that would not justify banning the coloring of Santa Clauses from public schools, when the vast majority of the public do not associate Santa Claus with any particular religious view-point. If Santa is a bad example, then substitute wreaths or presents or what have you – my point is that anything may have religious sybmolism to some few; that does not serve to convert it to a “religious symbol.”
Why? I don’t see this and it is, for me, the key point. If I raised my children to celebrate only the non-religous aspects of Christmas in an effort to promote festive feelings and as an excuse to focus on the needs of others for a change – leaving out of it entirely the birth of Christ – why would that celebration have “overtones of religious association”?
So what? That is hardly the fault of the iconography. A wreath or a Yule log does not become religious just because it may have become, over time, associated with Christmas. Why would you be obliged to seek out entirely new symbols, unknown to society at large, for your “Winter Festival” in order to clearly demarcate it from the holiday (not your own) that is close to it? This doesn’t strike me as your responsibility. If you paint your face blue in celebration of your festival, and society comes to associate that with Christmas, does that serve to make blue face-painting a religious act associated with Christmas? I don’t see that it does.
The idea that people of reasonable intelligence cannot separate a major holiday, celebrated by some secularly and some religiously, into secular and religious components is, to me absurd. Surely we are smart enough to do so.
For what seems like the hundredth time, not every aspect of the holiday in question is associated with the “mythological birth date of a religious leader.” Wreaths are not; commercialism is not; Santa arguably is not; “Sleigh Ride” is not. I fail to see why it should be so difficult to distiguish between the secular and the religious in these circumstances, and I frankly see nothing wrong with some low-key, rigorously and consciously non-religious recognition of the holiday in school. Should other holidays also be recognized? Yes. Recognizing and studying the holidays of many religions and cultures seems to me to lead to more well-rounded and more tolerant children. I just do not agree that removing all reference to Christmas from the schools is justified on the grounds that every Christmas trapping is by definition a Christian symbol.
And I object to this as well – vociferously. But I am not persuaded that asking a three-year-old to cut out and color a Santa constitutes advancing any particular religious view as right. Actually, the stronger argument in such a situation, IMO – and the one I would have made if it were my child and I was in that situation – is that not every child in the class will be visited by “Santa,” and that to present him as a jolly sprite who will bring presents to good children is insensitive to children for whom he will not bring presents, no matter how good they are. The difference, of course, is that this objection is grounded in the realities of the situation, the feelings of the children, and simple common sense, and is not constructed around the contention that coloring Santa constitutes practicing Christianity – which, IMO, it does not.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
Jodi, I just wanted to make you aware that this is almost exactly what I said to you way back when, when you argued in support of the idea that the phrase “In God We Trust” had a secular purpose and meaning, and I argued that it was not and could not possibly be secular in intent. I’m curious as to why you appear to be taking the opposite position now?
“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather
You lost me, Phil. My position then (as now) is that the symbolism of a particular phrase or thing must, at some level, be interpreted as the symbolism that the simple majority of people give it. Under such a rationale, a phrase such as IGWT can serve a secular purpose if most people recognize that it does serve such a secular purpose, and can point to the secular purpose it does in fact serve – regardless of the fact that it mentions God. Similarly, the idea of Santa Claus – mutated into “jolly old elf” from whatever significance the original St. Nicholas (who cannot even be documented) may have had – is secular in our modern society regardless of its extremely speculative “religious” origin. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying the Yule log, specifically, couldn’t become a religious icon simply because it wasn’t one originally – I’m saying that, as a matter of widely practiced belief, it hasn’t. I’m also saying that what some few may deem it to mean cannot change what it means to most. I see no contradiction in my position now as opposed to in the IGWT thread; I’d be happy to respond further if you can explain in more detail the contradiction you see.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
Spiritus, I had to laugh when I read this part of your post:
NOT, I hasten to add, because any of it was crazy or stupid. No, the reason I laughed was because it sounded so much like what I was saying on another GD thread (so it must be insightful, well-reasoned, & logical ), only from the apparent opposite position from what I’m saying here.
Here’s a link:
http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000814.html
That being said, there is some internal consistency in my position. I think the feasability of offering alternative art projects is far greater than of offering alternative songs (simultaneously, anyway). Also in this thread, I am saying that having the class sing non-religious Christmas songs is OK as long as kids (at their own behest, or at their parent’s behest) can opt out; on the other thread I am arguing that the class shouldn’t sing religious songs (because opting out is not all that simple), and that kids MUST be allowed to opt out. But the justification for my argument there sounds very like your justification quoted above…
I think we’ve both stimulated each other to refine our positions & give more consideration to the other side. I’m sorry that you wound up holding up your side of the argument alone - you did so admirably. But I think we’ve reached the point at which we either keep repeating ourselves, or agree to disagree, but with a better appreciation of other perspectives. Thanks for keeping things cool.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
Then let’s simply ask most people whether they feel the phrase, “In God We Trust,” constitutes a secular expressions or a religious expression.
“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather
Anybody mind if I declare this particular point moot until,say, November of 2000?
No Slythe, that’s the whole point.
I do think it could stand to rest until oh, say, around February 7 or so.
-Melin
You do that, Phil, and get back to me with the results. In the meantime, Happy Totally Secular New Year, everyone!
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
jodih wrote:
It represents Jesus’s big flaming weenie.
Actually, I think it represents your ability to make a constructive comment going up in flames. No, wait; you’d actually have to have that in the first place in order to lose it.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
Or maybe it represents your sense of humor going up in smoke. Geez, lighten up a bit; it was a wildly irreverent comment that I, personally, thought was so funny I had to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from cracking up at work. Even Christians sometimes think “God things” needn’t be so serious; I know all the people buying the South Park Christmas aren’t just atheists. And if we banned non-constructive comments, half my posts would be deleted, not to mention your just above.
“I believe it is easy to loose sight of the fact the the Lord has created athiests for a reason…to test our faith. They tempt us with reason and facts… Embrase agnostics!! I would cry it from every rooftop: ‘Embrase an agnostic!’” --“Bell”, on the LBMB