Venture onto any bleeding-heart liberal forum, particularly on the internet, and you'll be assaulted with cheery holiday greetings. Ranging from a simple and inclusive "Happy Holidays!" to "Happy Wednesday (if you don't celebrate Christmas)!", it raises the question as to what exactly is the appropriate greeting for one to use in a society where very few people actually celebrate Christmas for what it is - as opposed to using it as an excuse to exchange gifts, get trashed, eat far too much and argue freely with family members (don't forget to cut Auntie June off after sherry number 3, or be treated to long-winded rants as to why the local gypsies are menaces to society).
The question of holiday greetings does seem to be one that is very subjective, in that I personally would not be offended if someone wished me a Merry Kwanzaa today or a Happy Hanukkah at the beginning of the month. In the end, they are all expressions of well-wishes and happiness. However, I can understand coming down on the other side of this. The society I live in preaches tolerance and open-mindedness to a relatively large degree. I choose to accept the well-wishes and do not linger over the precise sentiment. But if one were not raised in such a pick'n'mix society, then one may feel differently about this. I can understand the frustration that would arise from being constantly subjected to the traditions of a culture that was unlike my own, and may have, in the past, even oppressed mine.
This is where the all-inclusive holiday greetings seem to arise from. An effort to discard the "shove it in your face" element of Christmas in so many Western countries. While this does seem fair, it does also raise the question of free will, freedom of expression and on the flip-side, of whether or not an inclusive greeting is quite enough.
Being a liberal myself, I am always keen to defend the freedom of expression and the freedom to do as you wish within the constraints of the harm principle. However, I do recognise the problems that arise from such a principle. For example, although the oppression experienced by women, particularly in England today, is of a very intangible quality, it causes harm in ways which cannot be quantified. Situations such as this highlight the slightly finicky nature of the principle. In the context of tolerance and secularisation, it begs the question of how free people should be allowed to be with their religious behaviour. It has been suggested that religion has become more privatised in recent years - that people are far more inclined to keep their religion to their private rather than in the public forum. However, does this mean that it should only be private? Here arises a battle between tolerance and freedom.
To what extent should we tolerate peoples' religious expression and how much harm must come to an individual or a collective before we are justified in removing freedoms?
In a society so ideologically divided, our options seem limited. Shall we continue to adhere to our state's religion, enjoying the public holidays dictated by Christianity? Or shall we attempt to create a more cohesive society that allows people to take the religious holidays they deem necessary to themselves and not only to the majority? And in this case, should atheists be awarded days off to observe their faith in a lack of God?
Inclusive greetings seems appropriate at the given time, but they do raise questions as to how we structure our society. As a person raised Catholic, but who now practices no faith, I wonder at the extent to which our society is Christian-centric. It is the product hundreds of years of law and tradition, but in such a multicultural society, with religion either becoming more privatised, disappearing or at least differentiating to allow for multiculturalism, then should we not begin to change things more radically?
Photo attributed to AForestFrolic
