Amercan Holidays, not Religious Ones

"Let's side with Mayor Bloomberg on this one. Common sense says that we have enough religions to make more holidays than we have time to celebrate."

Let's not, particularly since you go on to demonstrate how the whole Christian calendar, particularly anything that happens on *any* Sunday, just so happens to be the *weekly* 'day of worship' Christians get, anyway.

What's that leave us with? A couple Jewish holidays that Jewish kids at least get off, anyway? A couple Muslim days, maybe?

Pagan ones, certainly, tend to be a calendar correction's couple days away from the seasonal/Christian ones based on them, anyway, not too many actually falling in the school year, anyway: Samhain falls on Halloween, when the day's generally a wash, anyway, either with kids having fun or being told how scary Pagans are... All good fun, if not exactly doing deep honor to the ancestors, but it's kids, anyway..

Yule sometimes falls the last day before the 'Christmas break' when it's all very similar bits of fun, anyway...

So, what even *if* a population as small as Pagans got a day off for, what's left, what you call 'Groundhog Day' and the autumn equinox? Let's throw in Diwali and a Ba'hai' celebration or two...

It would actually be really hard *not* to be able to fit in a couple holidays for every religion of, say, over a million Americans by rearranging the academic year a little, if you so desired.

This is about certain people enjoying what they think is a state endorsement of a majority privilege ...and not wanting to share it: claiming it somehow takes something away from them if they aren't the *only* ones to receive a practical consideration.

I'm using the term "hyper-secularist" in this instance to refer to those people who naively think you can somehow extricate every trace of "religion" from the public square or from government institutions. As I mentioned before, Santa Claus is a figure who has clear roots in the Christian tradition. So, get him out. Even our academic calendar is built around certain Christian holidays. Should it be scrambled so as not to demonstrate and influence by "religion"? Should Halloween symbols be banished because they often have reference to the supernatural? What about the Easter bunny? They all need to go if the hyper-secularist really wants to be consistent.

I think it might be interesting to watch the hyper-secularists here actually try to remove every trace of religion from the public square.

POSTED BY: MANDERSON7 | JULY 10, 2009 6:08 PM
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It might be, if it were true. What is a hyper-secularist anyway? Is that the opposite of a fundamentalist Christian?

I think it might be interesting to watch the hyper-secularists here actually try to remove every trace of religion from the public square. They could begin by suing every state institution that has a Santa Claus display, a figure who clearly has connections to the Christian tradition. Be sure to be consistent!

What a solution! Find a middle ground by......keeping it the way it is!

You are shameless, Leith! It is bad enough that you are delusional to believe in a three-in-one god born of a virgin he impregnated himself, who then killed himself on the cross to spare his own creation from his own wrath, but to attempt this stupid move?

Fitting that the humanly insane worship the divinely insane!

Great solution, let's talk about middle ground but leave things as they are. Not even hilarious, why doesn't Mr. Anderson just show his hidden agenda?

There is no way to universally decide what holidays to observe and which to not. It depends on the community and the population of certain faith groups there. In a predominately Muslim community, Muslim Holidays should be observed, but in a community where there are few to none, those families have the right to take their child or children out of school to observe the holiday. It is not as cut and dry as it seems.
About Christmas and Easter: you can't call them American holidays because they are first and foremost Christian celebrations. Many schools no longer call winter holidays "Christmas Break," recognizing that some students may not observe the holiday as a Christian celebration. However, Haunakah is often celebrated around the same time as the Winter break, although the dates are not always the same.

Once again Leith the Huckabee tries to justify religious holidays for some but not others by implying his religious holidays are "American" and theirs are not. Some middle ground Leith.
Is this the "middle ground" we can expect when you and your Huckabees change the Constitution to "God's Standards"?

Is there a middle ground? Perhaps the better way is to keep the holidays already established and make reasonable and practical efforts to accommodate religious students to take their special holidays with the families.
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Then you are not setting aside Mayor Blumberg. I don't know where or how you got the idea that most schools don't close during Easter and Christmas weeks, but they do, throwing away at a minimum ten full days of education.

This is a secular society, and religion belongs in the private domain. I think we need to dispense with school and other civil service closings during these religious holidays. Workers can be allotted a certain number of days that they can use for religious observance if they so desire. Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim students, et al, who decide to miss school in order to honor religious holy days should not be penalized.

Time for the US to separate "church" and state.

Have year-round schooling and let children and their parents decide which days to take off as holidays.

New Year's Day is taken off to keep school buses off the road with so many hung over or drunk drivers.

4th of July is a National Holiday, as is Labor Day, Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

President's Day, MLK and Columbus Days can be personal choice holidays.