merry christmas!

[wavyarms]

In light of the recent Fox News reports about attacks on Christmas, I present to you The Christian Privilege checklist. I disagree with 12 and 24 (both in NJ and MA) but in general it's good food for thought.

The only one missing is: "If I am a classical musician, I can assume that almost the entire western canon is based upon texts of my religion."

I shall now go do some X-mas shopping. :)

In other news, thomascantor had his final graduate recital yesterday, and it was great. Very good, very interesting concert. Special kudos to sen_no_ongaku for his piece, which was extremely effective. I look forward to the recording!

Also, I'm briefly in Boston right now, but not for very long. If I don't run into you, I'll be back for a nice long 3-week stretch starting Christmas Eve, so not to fret!

[EDIT: Since that privilege checklist was so popular, here is a link to a whole bunch more.]

Comments

[cycon.livejournal.com]

The point I was making about those two holidays is that we'd be celebrating them whether they were Christian or not. As for the power of the majority, that goes for any majority anywhere, and is not exclusive to Christians, was what I was saying.

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

The point I was making about those two holidays is that we'd be celebrating them whether they were Christian or not.

Now that is absolutely not true. The whole reason those holidays have entered into common social celebration is because they started out as Christian, and Christians have dominated the religious landscape for the past 500 years! That's why that point is on the privilege checklist - we are the majority, and therefore EVERYONE celebrates our holidays, even if they aren't part of our religion!

[cycon.livejournal.com]

No, they did not. They started out as pagan, and got assimilated by Christianity, which spread them around. Even the date 25 December was picked because it coincided with the Saturnalia celebrations. And the date of Easter differs between the eastern and western orthodoxy (Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter on the Monday after the last day of Passover; Catholics and Protestants — and thus Western Europe and the Americas — celebrate Easter on a Sunday calculated by a wholly different timetable.

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

Yes, the origins of the holidays are true. However, I do not think those holidays would be the dominant, work-force-holiday-dominating forces that they are if it weren't for the Christian influence. I maintain that the relationship of those holidays to Christianity is the reason they are dominant holidays now.

After all, without inter-Christianity-bickering, the Pilgrims might never have come over here, and Native American religions might be the dominant on the continent. I'm pretty sure that they don't have Christmas- and Easter-esque holidays at the center of their religions.

[kmunson779.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that they don't have Christmas- and Easter-esque holidays at the center of their religions.

Possibly not true. Can't say how central, but definately celebrated.

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

OK, I stand corrected. :)

However, (to nit-pick) if Christmas is just a big winter solstice celebration, and merely overlaid on top of older religions, how come we don't celebrate summer solstice?

I think religions that adopt older religions for their purposes only adopt the parts that are useful (i.e. overlapping) and disregard others. It's interesting how that affects the religions being adopted, even by those practitioners who stick to their original beliefs (i.e. Judaism and Hanukkah.) And even if there are similarities, I think the calendar would look very different if any Native American religion had been dominant for the past 500 years. (As would the map.)

[minyan.livejournal.com]

how come we don't celebrate summer solstice?

Agreed. But we do have a summer holiday — it's political, rather than religions, but it happens to fll at the warmest and brightest time of year, and we celebrate it with ripe fruit and summer greens and young fowl and fresh salmon...

Maybe its a coincidence that the 4th of July stuck in the claendar in wyas that Veterans Day or D-Day have't. And maybe its a coincidence that we celebrate strawberry season with shortcake festivals and bazaars, and the Mohicans had an early summer strawberry festival. I think we tend to want to celebrate the seasons of the year in one way or another, and we don't just swipe each other's holidays: if our traditions don't give us a holiday when the rhythms of the year suggest one, then we find one somewhere.

[minyan.livejournal.com]

Apparently the current focus on gifts at Chistmas is about a 150 years old; the powers that were wanted to discourage the singing of th wiats — wassailing, pople showing up at their neighors' houses drunk in the small hours, singing for small ale. So they told people to stay home.

When the puritans came over, they didn't believe in celebrating Christmas. Cromwell forbade it — he thought all that Lord of Misrule gender bending and marchepane and mummery was getting out of hand. So Christmas as people mean it in popular culture is a mixed bag, pagan and secular, elements of medieval, and Victorian protestantism.

I see the point: that people don't publicly celebrate Kwansaa and Ramadan and the feast of lights. Tell you the truth, I find the public celebration of Christmas frustrating — it may be a privilege to watch people take a family ritual or a sacred symbol of worship and string it up on a marquee, but it comes at cost.

I did find these food for thought. 18 confuses me — if you write about th privelegs of Christianity, aren't you putting Christianity on trial by definition? Isn't this list a case in point? Also I've been learning a lot this semester about the influence of Calvinist protestantism on our culture. There's a reason I wrote about paganism for my final paper:-)

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

it may be a privilege to watch people take a family ritual or a sacred symbol of worship and string it up on a marquee, but it comes at cost.

Well, true. And part of the point is that much of the list comes at a cost. If you are making assumptions about other people, that too has a cost.

I mentioned 18 below in my response to ethicsgradient. (Way, way down.) I think it has to do with the amount of subtlety we are able to handle about different religions. That is, everyone knows Christianity has tons of different religions within it, and people can criticize one aspect of their religion without being accused of being anti-all-of-Christianity. But when people aren't as familiar with various aspects and subtleties of Confucianism, for example, criticisms may be taken to be blanket statements.

Admittedly, it's not one of the more powerful entries on the list. :)