I was thinking about this last night as I was stringing multicolored lights on the six-foot Douglas fir that is now overpowering my living room.
The thing that kills me about this debate is that people use Political Correctness not as a tool but as a weapon, with which they bludgeon the rest of us by being oversensitive and offended by everything. But the true spirit of Political Correctness is to not be offended by anyone else's culture. Being offended by Christmas is not PC!
One of the things you can't quite escape is that America was founded as a Christian nation... not specifically one kind of Christianity over another, and by no means exluding the Jew and the Atheist, but the majority of the citizenry in place at the birth of the nation were Christian and took Christianity for granted. And so Christmas has become enmeshed in our national culture so firmly that it cannot be uprooted.
Nevertheless, ours is no longer a Christian nation. Yes, Christianity describes the majority of religious observance, but religious observance is no longer in the majority; on top of which, our country is made up of people from non-Christian countries, and there are a lot more Buddhists and Moslems converting from Christianity, not to mention an increase in atheists and agnostics.
True Political Correctness would seek to encompass all of these different cultures into our celebrations, not to ban or bar any expressions of culture. And that's what's causing the problem.
Nevertheless, I do think that if public lands are in use, there should be a shying away from specifically Christian motifs. That's all well and good for private expressions of devotion, even up to and including life-sized neon Nativity scenes on your lawn; but our government's public face should be as all-encompassing as physically possible, leaving out anything that might reasonably offend someone... not to avoid offending people, but to be sensitive to other people's feelings (if you see the difference).
A Christmas Tree, because it's called a Christmas Tree, would be inappropriate in a government building. But you can light up and decorate any number of other evergreen objects, or even inorganic objects, without having to resort to a conical tree.
I think a nice generic Winter Festival would be appropriate... lights and evergreens, the more secular expressions of various religious cultures included, with a glossing-over of the more sacred and specific holiday traditions and a focus on eternal human themes like Peace and Brotherhood.
But I guess I'm just a silly old idealist.
The thing that kills me about this debate is that people use Political Correctness not as a tool but as a weapon, with which they bludgeon the rest of us by being oversensitive and offended by everything. But the true spirit of Political Correctness is to not be offended by anyone else's culture. Being offended by Christmas is not PC!
One of the things you can't quite escape is that America was founded as a Christian nation... not specifically one kind of Christianity over another, and by no means exluding the Jew and the Atheist, but the majority of the citizenry in place at the birth of the nation were Christian and took Christianity for granted. And so Christmas has become enmeshed in our national culture so firmly that it cannot be uprooted.
Nevertheless, ours is no longer a Christian nation. Yes, Christianity describes the majority of religious observance, but religious observance is no longer in the majority; on top of which, our country is made up of people from non-Christian countries, and there are a lot more Buddhists and Moslems converting from Christianity, not to mention an increase in atheists and agnostics.
True Political Correctness would seek to encompass all of these different cultures into our celebrations, not to ban or bar any expressions of culture. And that's what's causing the problem.
Nevertheless, I do think that if public lands are in use, there should be a shying away from specifically Christian motifs. That's all well and good for private expressions of devotion, even up to and including life-sized neon Nativity scenes on your lawn; but our government's public face should be as all-encompassing as physically possible, leaving out anything that might reasonably offend someone... not to avoid offending people, but to be sensitive to other people's feelings (if you see the difference).
A Christmas Tree, because it's called a Christmas Tree, would be inappropriate in a government building. But you can light up and decorate any number of other evergreen objects, or even inorganic objects, without having to resort to a conical tree.
I think a nice generic Winter Festival would be appropriate... lights and evergreens, the more secular expressions of various religious cultures included, with a glossing-over of the more sacred and specific holiday traditions and a focus on eternal human themes like Peace and Brotherhood.
But I guess I'm just a silly old idealist.