Question for Merlyn_LeRoy

[eisely]

This ought to be good for a few hundred posts.

 

Merlyn,

 

This may have already come up in different threads. I tend to tune out of some of these discussions, but I thought I would pose a question directly to you.

 

If federal government entanglement with the Boy Scouts of America violates the establishment clause, what is the story on the federal holiday of Thanksgiving? It seems to me that calling a halt to the government on Thanksgiving, and Christmas too for that matter, is a much more serious breach of the idea that the feds should be totally neutral, if not hostile, to any possibility of religious observance. What about it? Let's abolish both holidays right now.

[evmori]

Boy would I love to comment but I'm waiting for Merlyn. I think we all should.

 

Ed Mori

Scoutmaster

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

 

>If federal government entanglement with the Boy Scouts of America violates the establishment clause, what is the story on the federal holiday of Thanksgiving?

 

When the federal government charters a Boy Scout unit, it's running a youth group that excludes atheists; any atheist boy that wants to join will be refused membership, and the government can't do that.

 

If the federal government granted some days off only to theists, your analogy would be more apt, and that too would be unlawful.

 

As it stands, I think companies & government agencies ought to have all holidays as floating holidays and let the employees decide what days they get off; currently, Jews have to take personal holidays for Yom Kippur but get Dec. 25th off, essentially forcing non-Christians to take days off of the majority religion and losing some of their vacation days to take holidays that have real religious meaning to them.

 

It's too bad some people want their religion promoted by the government at other people's expense, but such philistines have existed all through history. I'd suggest working towards a government that treats all people equally, instead of promoting religion, even if that promotion currently matches your own views; the government might not always be promoting your views. If "under god" is constitutional, so is "under no gods"; if you don't want one, fight against both.

 

PS: I happen to work for a company that gets every other friday off, so I get quite a few extra days off.

[berkshirescouter]

Merlyn

 

currently, Jews have to take personal holidays for Yom Kippur

but get Dec. 25th off, essentially forcing non-Christians to

take days off of the majority religion and losing some of their

vacation days to take holidays that have real religious meaning

to them.

 

I have worked on Christmas specifically to allow my Christian Co-Workers to have the day off. To me and Judaism it is a good deed. It is also live and let live, which many zero tolerance activists seem to not understand.

[eisely]

So you seem to be saying that these federal holidays in the current form should be abolished. Is that correct?

[SR540Beaver]

Not to speak for Merlyn, but I don't think that is what he said. He was pretty clear. Companies should give floating holidays in place of established holidays to allow employees from varying walks of life the ability to celebrate the holidays of choice. The idea has it merits, but would be a nightmare for employers, depending on the type of company. When it comes to a holiday like thanksgiving or Christmas, the vast majority of employees would want the holiday. If you only have 1% of your workforce show up, the company can't really function. Banks take the federal holidays because the Federal Reserve is shut down, therefore they CAN'T do business on those days. While the idea looks good on "paper", it would be a logistical nightmare.

[littlebillie]

Even tho Thanksgiving - and I'm just addressing that, here - has religious roots, and indeed for many is still at least a quasi-religious holiday, it can also be a day of appreciation for the non-religious. Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday, meaningful to those whose families came over on the Mayflower, and to those who just got here last week. Granted, it's been a while since the Native American has had a whole lot to be Thankful for, but even that is starting to turn around.

 

It's NOT a holiday to play with explosives, or see how much you can drink - it's a day for family and friends to get together, to pray across boundaries if that is their wont, or to simply enjoy each other in a way that escapes us all too often.

 

Thanksgiving can be religious OR secular, and urges us all to appreciate our blessings and/or good fortune, to celebrate history and tradition, and to find a touchstone at Plymouth Rock and Ellis Island.

 

Do many lack things for which to be Thankful? Certainly - reach out to them. Scouts pretty much ALL have some kind of program this time of year that gets that message thru. Do many misunderstand? sure - invite a newcomer to your Thanksgiving table.

 

One can give thanks or simply appreciate a number of different ways - doesn't matter how it's done.

 

Many nations celebrate their own Independence Days, and the various religious holidays - Thanksgiving as we know it is a truly American holiday, and can stand outside the arguments about religion, thank you very much.

 

 

[slontwovvy]

I agree with kwc57. There are too many things now dependent upon or using the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays to make it worthwhile.

 

The retail store at which I work cannot possibly implement this system. The reason: on Yom Kippur, people shop. On Christmas, they don't. It's that simple. People would be working at a closed store, with nothing to do or sell. It would be a horrific waste of money. Merlyn's "solution" would cause a lot more problems that it would solve.

[evmori]

kwc57,

The Federal Reserve is closed on Sunday & banks are still open. That might have been the original idea but no longer applies.

 

Since our country was founded on Christian values, why would we want to abolich Christian holidays? Makes no sense to me.

 

Ed Mori

Scoutmaster

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

 

[littlebillie]

the Consitution is not "closed on Sunday".

[SR540Beaver]

Evmori,

 

The bank Lobby may be open and cash checks, take deposits and make loans. All of the other departments are closed and not functioning. All of the checks, deposits and loans accepted will be processed on Monday night along with Monday's work. Banks transfer funds back and forth thru the federal reserve as a central bank. The bank may "appear" open on Sunday, but it is for customer convenience. The actual "work" of the bak is done when they can communicate with other banks and the Fed. My wife and I have been in the business for over 20 years. Most people have no idea how the banking systm works or what goes on behind the scenes.

 

Those Christian holidays were not government recognized holidays when the founding fathers began this country. Government recognition came later and there were many Christian people that wanted to abolish Christmas because in the late 1700's and thru part of the 1800's, Christmas was a pretty rowdy drunken holiday. I can't offer any supporting evidence right now, but I have read this before in more than one place. When I have time, I'll see if I can find a reference. Time and perception change.

[evmori]

kwc57,

Been in the banking business for as long as you & I understand very well how the system works. Your post stated that banks couldn't do business on those days. Well, they can. Banks can take deposits, cash checks, allow access to safe deposit boxes, make loans, etc. That was my initial point. Banks aren't open on Christmas & Thanksgiving so they can give their employees time to spend with their families on the holidays.

 

Ed Mori

Scoutmaster

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

 

 

 

[rlculver415]

Well, shucks, I guess I do live in a backwater town. Banks are open on Sunday?! Down here they're all closed, even the lobby and drive-thru. Most are closed on Saturday, too. Golly!

 

As a person of Native American descent, I'd like to go on record for my family: We have much to be thankful for. The gifts of life, love and family are enormously precious. We also have enough material goods for comfort.

 

Two pet peeves (out of many, probably): Sweeping generalizations about any ethnic group, and equating Native Americans as a whole with the plains/southwestern tribal cultures. It is not a single culture, but many cultures that are native to the Americas. I apologize in advance if my touchiness has offended anyone.

[ScoutParent]

I automatically think Seneca/Iroquois Indians. Not to clump all people of Native American descent together--just the nations around my home town area. Here the kids are not allowed to sing Christmas songs but halloween songs flourish--imagine that.

[SR540Beaver]

I'm having a really really lousy day at work today, so I only had time to find one source. It is:

 

http://www.cedarlane.org/98serms/s981206.html

 

II. Christmas in America During Colonial Period

 

During this time of turmoil in England, English settlers arrived in America. The English who settled in the south were those who enjoyed drinking in excess as the way to celebrate December 25. For example, Maryland-bound passengers aboard a boat in 1633 so immoderately drank wine on Christmas that the next day thirty sickened of fever and about a dozen died.

 

Up in New England the Pilgrims were Puritans. They spent their first Christmas at Plymouth building a house. Later, the Puritan Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony attempted to suppress the holiday.

 

A Puritan minister wrote:

 

It can never be proved that Christ was born on December 25. Had it been the will of Christ that the Anniversary of his Nativity should have been celebrated, he would at least have let us known the day.

 

South of New England, Dutch, German and Swedes settled the areas of New York and Pennsylvania. They celebrated Christmas and New Years by drinking hard cider, masquerading, card playing and the firing of guns. In Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas, the non puritan English settlers enjoyed dancing, card playing, cockfighting, ninepins, and horse racing.

 

In the lives of people in the mid Atlantic colonies and the southern colonies, Christmas was not a major holy day. Thomas Jefferson rarely mentioned Christmas. George Washington frequently spent Christmas hunting and settling year-end financial matters. In the 18th century Americans celebrated few holidays before independence and even fewer after our revolutionary war. At the time of the birth of our county national holidays as we know them today did not exist. The only consistency was that where and when people celebrated a holiday, drinking, fighting, and squandering of money was the routine way to behave. All of this changed as the culture of our new nation developed.

 

III. Christmas in the New Nation

 

Anthropologists and sociologists say that special religious and civic days, interspersed among ordinary days, temporarily release us from the everydayness of life. Holidays establish a rhythm in a calendar year and help us describe and give significance to units of time. They help us renew social, religious, and civic commitments, and in this way they give us a national cultural identity. So as our new nation matured, we gradually created holidays such as Thanksgiving, Independence Day, New Years, and Christmas.

 

In the early 19th century loud explosions were popular on Christmas, as they were on the Fourth of July and New Years. Shooting guns and exploding gun power was the most common approach, but people created explosive noise any way they could. One man in Missouri recalled that in his boyhood his brother took the bladders of freshly butchered hogs and blew them up tightly. Christmas Day they lay the bladders down on the ice and struck them with a big paddles making a noise louder than a popgun.

 

The practice of drinking as a way to mark Christmas was also popular. According to a newspaper, in Philadelphia on Christmas eve 1833 young men wandered in packs, drinking in taverns and fighting on street corners.

 

IV. Starting about 1823: A Transition

from Explosions, Drinking and Gambling to Home and Family

 

Gradually nineteenth-century Americans recast Christmas. Slowly our foremothers and forefathers molded Christmas into something new. It became a celebration of the family and the home as a spiritual sanctuary from the world.

 

The central scripture of this new American Christmas was a poem attributed to the Episcopalian, Clement Clarke Moore. An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas was first published in 1823. Soon it appeared each year at Christmas in newspapers throughout the nation. The poem about Santa Claus celebrates home and family instead of gambling, firing guns, and getting drunk.

 

A central focus in the home became the Christmas Tree. A pagan symbol of fertility and regeneration, the practice of bringing an evergreen branch or a small tree into the house and placing it on a table became popular in German speaking areas of Europe about 1600. The Pennsylvania Dutch brought the custom of Christmas trees to the United States. One of the earliest documented references is in 1821. In 1832 Rev. Charles Follen a Unitarian and professor of German at Harvard College, put up a tree in his home in Cambridge and decorated it. Because of this, Unitarians like to claim that we were the first to introduce Christmas trees to America. These first trees were small and sat on tables. Soon Americans started bringing trees that went from floor to ceiling into their homes. They decorated the trees with candies, toys and candles, transforming this ancient fertility symbol into a symbol of the home as a spiritual sanctuary from the world.

 

Slowly the popularity of the day grew. Louisiana was the first to declare Christmas an official holiday, in 1837. By 1860 fourteen states had done so. The need for a national holiday to celebrate religion, family happiness, childlike mirth, and generosity increased during the Civil War. By 1865, 31 states and territories officially recognized Christmas, and in 1870 the Congress in Washington voted Christmas a federal holiday.

 

V. Christmas in America after the Civil War

 

Christmas after the Civil War came of age as the most important American holiday. The old Christmas of drinking, card playing and shooting guns had disappeared. A national celebration of home and family replaced it.