Whose day is it anyhow?

Merry Christmas (smiling warmly and shaking hands with love); God bless you and your family (beaming with joy and sharing a hug); May the peace of Christ be with you (looking deeply into one anothers' eyes). Those are some of the ways we share our emotions following the annual Christmas Eve candle light service; we feel great; we feel the love of friends, of family, of the Lord surrounding us and filling our lives. It is a wondrous time.

And here is thing: I feel good sharing my good feeling with people that I meet in shops or at the CO -OP, or at work--just wherever I am. And I hope that people will know that I am expressing a sincere best wish to them in words that are most meaningful to me. At least that is how I used to feel. Now, I am hesitant. I haven't changed: I still want to share what I have in my heart, but now the word is out that I am being offensive to some people of different beliefs. Now, I really do care about the integrity of belief, and I have the greatest respect for how everyone deals with their spirituality. So, I hesitate to offer greetings and end up mumbling, "Happy holidays." And then I feel as if I have let everyone down by being insincere.

To solve my problem, and that of anyone offended by cheery Christmas greetings, I have a proposal. Lets' abolish extended vacation time associated with religious celebrations. No more Christmas holidays, no more Easter holidays. Instead, let's take mid-term breaks in the fall and in the spring semesters. we can still focus the break on the grade school year. The rationalization of the dates would benefit the education system providing opporunity for balanced semesters and exams at the end of the instruction period (with no intervening Christmas holiday, for example). But the big pay-off is in terms of equal recognition of all religions.

In this system, everyone gets an entitlement to four days of religious celebration time. So, the Christians can choose time at Christmas and at Easter; the Muslims can choose Eid and Ramadan; the Jews can choose Passover and Hanukah, for example. Or they can anme whichever religious festival they prefer. The atheists can go to work and feel righteous! God won't mind their use of a religious term. The point is, every world religion has days that are important in the calendar of their worship year. Observants should be accorded the dignity of their faith by our society. For all I know, there may be a "There is no God Day" and a "I believe nothing day" so that such folk could gather and curse rather than pray.

The point surely is, if Christians deserve time away from work to worship, so to do beilevers of every faith. And, just think of the benefits to Christians of not having everyone else taking time off for our festival days. We won't be complaining about hypocrites nearly as much; we won't whine about commercialization or about nobody recognizing the "real message" of Christmas. all of us who are celebrating Christ's birth are doing so because we really get that message. And anyone who wants to come and share our joy will be welcomed with open hearts. And wouldn't that feel good?

Then, if we really get into the spirit of equality that is at the heart of most religions, we might just decide that nobody will get a recognized religious festival time off. Because we are faithful, we will live it every day and special celebrations will be part of our routine day. After work, we will go home or to church and celebrate, just like people of faiths other than Christian do now.

Then, what we believe will be revealed through our actions and not just a repetition of something that our society does every year at those times in order to boost retail sales.