I don’t think she gets the irony. While crying about false comparisons between one holiday (Hanukkah) and a so-called pagan, made-up, stereotypical holiday (Kwanzaa), she posts an article that proves her point about Christmas taking a backseat to other holidays. Except there’s only one such holiday that is mentioned, and it’s the one that she values as real and important and worthy of being appreciated. Not the one her and her kid are blowing a gasket over. The pagan, made-up, stereotypical one.
I’m trying to figure out why someone would intentionally undercut their own argument like this.
And she also doesn’t seem to get the difference between teaching about a holiday and celebrating it either. Which is strange since she is a teacher.
I didn’t say anything about Jewish kids attending private day schools. I’m really puzzled about this remark.
Who is the “they” in the “They get it; why can’t we?” The question I’m asking is, “If it’s alright for Hanukkah to get air time in schools, why shouldn’t Kwanzaa?” You have done a poor job at answering this simple question, and now I’m starting to figure out why. You don’t distill other people’s arguments well.
You are showing yourself to be very defensive and shrill in this thread. Kwanzaa ISN’T important to me. Never once have I said that I am a regular celebrant. My participation in this thread has only been to counter the mantra that no one celebrates it. In my experience, this is not true at all. Unlike you, I do not have to resort to distortions and exaggerations to make my point. So you can take your whiny “holiday war” somewhere else. It has no place here.
Since I’m the one who said ‘in the curriculum’, I’m pretty sure I know what teaching versus celebrating is. (Although it’s very hard not to ‘celebrate’ a holiday in class when you’re ‘teaching’ about it in elementary school).
It was Kolga who morphed teaching into celebrations.
I think classrooms should be tailored when need be and religions can be taught about as part as a specific curriculum. And just because I resent that mishmash of winter magic that’s taught in public schools doesn’t mean you have to. Clearly you don’t, what with your politics and all.
I just learned about Las Posadas during this thread. I’m sure it will make its rounds to this part of the Southwest soon enough.
Yeah, and you haven’t done a good job with it. You really need to work on how to argue and hold a consistent position. You provide a good foundation for us to discuss the place of holidays in our culture, but the defensiveness and disingenuity (“I don’t hate Kwanzaa, but it just isn’t a real, respectable thing that I want being taught in schools!”) makes you hard to take seriously.
For instance, you’re now trying to make it seem like you resent not just Kwanzaa, but other winter holidays. What other winter holidays are there besides Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa? Occasionally Ramadan joins the others, but this doesn’t happen often. Do you not wish for any holidays to be taught in school? OK, but why has your ire been directed at Kwanzaa? Do you think it’s just Kwanzaa that should be kicked out of the club? OK, but then why this sudden focus on “mishmash of winter magic”*.
You are all over the place. It’s hard not to see you as a weak debater trying to cover her ass.
*Again, the irony is flying over your head. Out of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, which holiday is NOT religious? Which requires no belief in the supernatural? The only magical holidays are the two you have not expressed negative feelings about.
You see I read that announcement and think that someone who does not actually know a lot of American Blacks is being given inaccurate information by it, much the same as the schools give inaccurate information about the place that Chanukah has in Jewish culture, but even more so. It reads to me more as an attempt to sell Kwanzaa to Blacks who do not celebrate it. And I do not think that creating the critical mass of celebrants is the job of the public school.
Knowing that a smallish subpopulation of American Blacks, mostly those specifically interested in Black Consciousness, celebrate Kwanzaa, is an interesting bit for kids to know, I guess, and could be addressed along the way in that manner. But teaching Kwanzaa (promoting its celebration really, not real education about it) as a required part of the curriculum to be repeated in a fairly major way every year? Really? Sorry but I do not think that giving inaccurate impressions and promoting a newish holiday is serving the goal of making people knowledgeable members of society.
Indeed it is low low low on my list of annoyances.
Although, come to think of it, Christmas isn’t the major Christian festival either, Easter probably should be more important[1]. So maybe all our cultures and religions are in the same boat of over-emphasising whatever festival falls near the winter solstice[2]
[1] Maybe we should say “Happy holidays” at Easter? No-one can deny Easter and Passover are usually at the same time of year
I read that announcement and heard my mother’s voice saying, “Ooh, this sounds like something we should go to. Do you want to go?”
And of course, I’d say no.
I do not see it as an advertisement for Kwanzaa, though I suppose one can view it that way. I see it as an event that those who already DO celebrate Kwanzaa can attend. And a place where they can take their kids so that they too can get into the spirit. Like the million other holiday events that are going on right now. It’s just another “wholesome” thing to do.
For classrooms to celebrate the holiday, they’d have to have a kinara and focus on the special tenets of each day. There would be gift-exchanges and a recognition of lost loved ones. Singing a Kwanzaa song that distills the holiday’s purpose down into a catchy hook doesn’t, IMHO, qualify as “celebrating” it. Giving kids outlines of kinaras to color and tape up on the wall also doesn’t qualify as celebrating it.
I’m going to sidestep the whole “should they teach it or not” debate for a second and make a suggestion.
CitizenPained, if you dislike how your son’s class was taught about Kwanzaa, can you set up a meeting with your son’s teacher to find out exactly what was said in class and express your concerns?
If the teacher said something along the lines of “Kwanzaa is celebrated in December by African Americans …” an adult would have the life experience to be able to insert the “some but not very many” into that sentence. A kid your son’s age is going to believe what the teacher says simply because he has had no occasion to learn otherwise. If the teacher didn’t realize how misleading the statement was, if s/he’s a good teacher s/he’ll want feedback to avoid confusing kids in the future.
So let me be sure I understand you - it does not count as “celebrating” unless you have the class do, excuse the expression, the whole megillah? To make the parallel with Christmas in the schools, having the class singing:
“Away in a manger,
no crib for His bed,
The little Lord Jesus
laid down His sweet head;
The stars in the heavens
looked down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus
asleep on the hay. …”
and
“Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart and soul and voice;
Give ye heed to what we say:
News! News!
Jesus Christ is born today:
Ox and ass before him bow
And He is in the manger now.
Christ is born today!
Christ is born today! …”
are, in your mind not celebrating Christmas, unless there are also presents, a tree, and maybe a midnight mass?
See, I think that most of the major religions based their primary holidays around the winter solstice. Not sure exactly why, but I still consider that time of year to be primarily winter solstice, surrounded by lots of fun holidays. I don’t have a problem with this. I’m not a Christian (in fact I have serious negative issues with that particular religion) so don’t accuse me of being a sneaky Jesus-Christmas person. I’m not. I just think there is a reason BESIDES Christmas that the holidays are clustered then. [Note: pagan holidays put a pretty big emphasis on the winter solstice and I spent some years of my adulthood in a pagan religion, so that has colored my view some, no doubt.]
Let’s see - Christianity? Yup, one of it’s big two. Admittedly not as seriously big from a religious POV as Easter, but pretty close behind.
Islam? Nope. Holidays cycle seasons.
Judaism? Nope. Chanukah is a winter solstice holiday but it is a nowhere close to a “primary holiday”. Very very minor from a religious POV.
I don’t believe that Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Jainism, and so on have a winter solstice holiday as one of their two or three “primary holidays” either.
Wicca? Well we are out of “major” I think. But sure there is Yule. Does it count as the major or one of the two or three major Wiccan holidays? You imply it is.
Adding it up we got Christianity and possibly Wicca with primary holidays based on the winter solstice. Not quite a “most” other than the fact that Christianity is, by itself, so big, encompassing so many variations.
So why do you “think that most of the major religions based their primary holidays around the winter solstice”?
Well, of the religions that do have a winter-solstice based holiday I think it’s because a lot of people have historically placed importance on the solstices and equinoxes. I think Christianity probably did it because it was already a celebratory time so they could merge their religion in with others. That could be a misunderstanding, but that is what I was taught in school.
Perhaps I misspoke with the word “primary.” But there are a lot of festivals around the Solstice. Some religious, some not. And in anything like recent times it’s frequently a time when people don’t work (be it because of Christmas or whatever–I really don’t care) and so it’s a good time to place a “new” festival/holiday.
No, that’s right. Christianity probably set the date of Christmas to coincide with the Roman pagan festival of Sol Invictus.
I think the winter solstice might be a good time for someone in an agricultural society to have a festival, at least in the temperate zones. You’re not busy with plowing or harvesting, like you probably are at other times of the year.
Winter isn’t really a good time for a pilgrimage festival, though. The major Jewish holidays started out as pilgrimage festivals, where you were supposed to travel to Jerusalem. It doesn’t snow that much in Israel, but it does rain in the winter, which makes travel difficult (the climate is not too dissimilar to California’s). That’s probably why Judaism doesn’t have any major festivals in the winter.
Well the real miracle of Chanukah is that we have eaten all that greasy stuff for so long and still live!
OpalCat,
Yes, no doubt that it was chosen as the day celebrate the birth of Christ because a variety of peoples already had extant winter solstice celebrations already - keep the tradition, just do it for another reason. Likewise probably for Chanukah and the story of the oil lasting eight days (the putative miracle and the cause for eating all that fried food), was probably a late addition to the story, above and beyond the real history of the war, to explain the winter solstice candle lighting that everyone was already doing.
Yes, sure, a “new” holiday makes sense to place then … after all that is exactly what the early Christians had done when Christmas was new.
If that was what you meant then I misunderstood your point, and my apologies.
I’m on very good terms with his teachers and I will bring it up in casual conversation. The thing is, my son did come home with a reason WHY we have Kwanzaa - as in, black people created it because of oppression. So he got most of the equation right. Actually, I’m glad they put in that part. I’m glad it got my son thinking about civil rights issues. Their Social Studies unit is actually impressive for 1st grade. In general, I love it. There probably isn’t much the teachers could’ve done differently, given Kwanzaa is something they’re expected to teach (unofficially, but that’s what is taught in the area). And to my son, “Some black people” may have been translated as “most black people”, because what teacher is going to say, “Hardly anyone does this!” ?
Again, it being a very minor celebration and all in general, I’m raising an eyebrow about the nationwide trend, but of course they’ll talk about it in his school. All schools do.
It makes sense for elementary kids to learn about new things as the calendar year progresses, but I am not convinced that Kwanzaa belongs in the winter mishmash of holiday teachings. Kwanzaa belongs to a discussion about civil rights and identity and culture, not a fledgling afro-centric semi-political holiday that few people celebrate. It’s not something we toss into our big multicultural pot like a dash of pepper so we can say we’re egalitarian, liberal, responsive, and worldly.
(Oh, and obviously he is not going to come home with a coloring page of a Nativity scene. That would raise a stink. The Chinese New Year booklet was fine, I’m sure.)
They do? My daughter’s been to four schools since Kindergarten (and two more for Head Start) and I’m pretty sure none of them have. I know she’s never mentioned it or come home with any Kwanzaa stuff. Or Hanukkah or Christmas.
She actually knows black people (and is in fact black herself), so of course she wouldn’t have gotten the idea that it’s a much bigger deal than it is, but she probably still would have mentioned it if they’d talked about in school, considering her habit of mentioning every single thing that she ever sees, hears, or thinks about.
The Chinese New Year booklet was fine, I’m sure.)