I loved this suggestion from the thread on Chrismahanukwanzakah:
All Mixed Up – i sort of have a soft spot for christmas trees… i think they’re fun. when i have kids i’m going to decorate my tree with Om ornaments and little sita, ganesha, and ram ornaments…and my tree is going to be topped with a flute playing krishna. [okay i probably won’t do that…but it was a fun picture to paint in my head]. Not mixed up after all – I actually did that last year. Put up a tree with ornaments and bulbs and topped it with a silver idol of Krishna playing the flute…My “Krishmas” tree 🙂
The Christmas tree already was up when I went home at Thanksgiving, and was quite pretty except for the hideously oversized red bow at the top. What to do with the top of the tree is an annual problem. Many years we’ve just stuck a random ornament, or left it bare. This year, I suggested that Mom replace the aesthetically distressing ribbon with a big gold OM that was gathering dust on a high shelf in the kitchen. This way we could avoid distressing the Christmas fanatics by not secularizing our tree, without having to put an angel or star in which we don’t believe there. Manish, this doesn’t fall into the schlock category of a tree in the shape of an OM, does it?
Yes, despite what you might have thought after reading my grumping about the made-up “discrimination” against Christians, I celebrate Christmas and have done so for years. My mom claims that when we were very little, she would give us gifts on Diwali instead (supposedly some people do this for Pancha Ganapati), but we would cry at Christmas because we didn’t get presents then. As they couldn’t easily afford two gift-giving seasons back then, my parents opted to assimilate a bit more and get in on this Christmas thing, and now that they’re better off, we go for the full materialist extravaganza of gifts, food and travel.
But thanks to William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and the man who got Wal-Mart to fire the poor schmuck who knew about Christmas’s pagan origins (and now is launching a boycott of Land’s End), I might have to give up Christmas.Donohue’s latest way of getting his name in the news is to complain about the White House holiday card sent to 1.4 million friends and supporters and funded by the Republican National Committee. (My barely-Hindu and not-at-all-Christian father likely got one of these, because Jesus doesn’t donate to the GOP and Dad does.) When told that “holiday” is the government’s and retail sector’s way of including everyone, Donahue is not mollified. “Ninety-six percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. Spare me the diversity lecture.”
That’s likely true, even though the 2001 census found that 20% of Americans do not identify as Christian and almost 50% are not adherents to a Christian church, because the U.S. has done such a thorough job of secularizing and universalizing the holiday that non-Christians feel like they can participate. If Donohue et. al succeed in their crusade to force everyone into their narrow conception of what the holidays mean, fewer people will want to be part of it. Nearly every American may exchange gifts and take the day off from work, it being a federal holiday and all, but a much smaller number go to church or otherwise advert to the religious nature of December 25 — which is not even approximately the day on which historians believe Christ to have been born.
The idea of having George W. Bush track which Americans are Christians and which are of other religions, though not of Ashcroftian levels of creepiness, is nonetheless disturbing. The Kennedys and Johnson briefly attempted to send Christmas cards to Christians and Happy New Year cards to everyone else (perhaps being aware that Hannukah is such a relatively minor holiday on the Jewish calendar, that to send Hannukah cards without noting Yom Kippur would be obviously pathetic). Because doing so required keeping track of Christian and non-Christian recipients, however, they gave up.
Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss. and boycotter of Macy’s and Target, excuses President Bush for the cards by assuming that they are “just political correctness run amok.” He makes what almost sounds like a plausible argument when he says, “It bothers me that the White House card leaves off any reference to Jesus, while we’ve got Ramadan celebrations in the White House.” Hey, maybe we really are giving more time to minority faiths than to the majority one.
hehe being the ultimate manipulator that i am [or maybe it’s my brother?], we have managed to score diwali and christmas gifts… hows that for materialism?
well..except that all my diwali gifts arent really ‘gifts’ they’re more like things my mom wants to add to my wedding trousseau–so i now have something like 20 saris and a couple necklaces.
my new question is: was my family the only one who ‘celebrated’ easter and had the easter egg hunt complete with a basket?
i’m beginning to think my parents would’ve celebrated hanukah, kwanza, and any other holidays if we’d asked.
My parents lucked out on Easter because it falls near Vaisakhi 🙂
We used to totally do the dyed egg/egg hunt and candy thing, but not formal baskets or Easter bunny stories or Catholic mass. You are not alone! 😉
Aren’t there actually people who have speculated on the biographical similarities between Christ and Krishna? (Similar-sounding names, prophecies, kings killing first born sons…)
Did I read about that on this blog?
From blogger Ron Franscell at http://underthenews.blogspot.com …
As if a lurking bid-flu pandemic, Armageddon in the Middle East, and the hurricane carousel in the Gulf of Mexico weren’t important enough … we now have people who worry that the word “holidays” is murk-ifying the righteous Christian concept of Christmas.
Religious conservatives have their panties bunched tighter than an alcoholic elf on Christmas Eve. Why? Because the White House’s official 2005 Christmas card doesn’t use the word “Christmas” … which is to say, they think George Bush is afraid to use the word “Christ.” “This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture,” said William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
Humbug!
The President of the United States represents a wide spectrum of beliefs, from atheists to Muslims to Catholics to Budhhists to the most devout evangelical Christians. His personal religious beliefs are hardly a closely guarded secret — just ask the Radical Left. But he leads everyone, and in this case, he’s trying to be inclusive, not exclusive.
“The reality is you have people in Beaumont (Texas) that think the United States is a Christian country; it’s not,” a source recently told my newspaper. “It is a country that is founded on freedom of religion, but the truth is, if you look at what happens at Christmas time, there is very much a sense of Christianity.”
Anybody who’d elevate the pathetic “Christmas-vs-holidays” tiff to a major issue needs to go to church for a time-out.
Donohue is a foolish man with too much time on his hands.
Something that came up on The View (yes, I unashamedly watched it). I didn’t know that the mistletoe was used by Celts to signify fertility. Apparently the inside of a mistletoe fruit is very similiar to semen, and thus the whole uncomfortable puckering under it at parties – a subdued extrapolation of its suggested virility by association.
I know what I want for this Holiday/Christmas season – A JOB!
Well, that really kills the holiday mood.
Tell a wingnut that Muslims believe ‘God’ and ‘Allah’ are same people – they just love that 😉
I know what I want for this Holiday/Christmas season – A JOB!
Considering the prior statement regarding the inside of a mistletoe fruit, this is an unfortunate juxtaposition.
The Colbert Report does a very funny take on the so-called ‘war against Christmas.’
good for you. i really dont understand some parents who are hesitant about christmas trees or easter eggs. it’s just fun and participation in a societal tradition. plus, even us older folk like coloring eggs and going on easter egg hunts 🙂