Every time I am invited to a Christmas party, I have to decide whether I should go. If it\u2019s a friend asking me to share their celebration of their Christmas, I accept with joy. If it\u2019s a public or professional event that\u2019s called a \u201cChristmas Party\u201d, one of the implications is that if I don\u2019t accept Christmas as a part of my life, then I am not really acceptable as I am, with my own views and culture, in that environment.<\/p>\n
Not that the organisers articulate it in this way. Recently, when I asked a professional group what they meant by \u201cChristmas\u201d they explained that it was secular. While this was perfectly acceptable for them, they demonstrated that a secularised version of a religious celebration was seen as acceptable for all shapes of religion and belief because they explained to me (and they know I\u2019m Jewish) that it was secular for me, too. This tells those of us without Christian backgrounds that there is a certain way we should live our lives.<\/p>\n
How the lead-up to Christmas is depicted in Australia is related to this. There is an \u201cAdvent\u201d book box being advertised right now. It takes the word \u201cAdvent\u201d (which refers to a very particular coming birthday) and one can open one wrapped book a day from 1 December until Christmas Day. I\u2019m told it is, also, not religious. But there are never any book boxes for the festivals of other religions. Instead, we are all asked to accept the redefined religious words for Christianity.<\/p>\n
Whether these explanations work for me, for you, for someone else, depends on our background.<\/p>\n
For me, it creates a disjuncture between the home and the outside world. The values in my home are Jewish, and my parents taught me that I should not celebrate others\u2019 festivals for myself. Why? It\u2019s an acceptance that their religion takes precedence over my own. In their<\/i> homes, that\u2019s a sign of respect. In my<\/i> home, why don’t my own traditions and belief take precedence? In public events and shared places, explaining that a thing is secular not only sets the Christian festival as something that is shared by everyone (when it, frankly, is not) but it also rubs it in that my views do not matter.<\/p>\n
The fact that someone explaining Christmas to me as secular shows how they set their own atheism in a cultural context. It also demonstrates that they\u2019re not listening to people who have different contexts.<\/p>\n
Cultural respect and religious respect involve understanding how the person we\u2019re talking to sees the subject we\u2019re talking about. This entails accepting multiple interpretations of an event. Do you leave someone out of a group because they can\u2019t eat peanuts? Or do you make sure that there is shared food everyone can eat?<\/p>\n
This is my annual rant on the subject. Shorter than usual because it\u2019s 1 am here and bed beckons.<\/p>\n
I shall skip the Christmas party, because I\u2019m not convinced the person organising knows much about Christianity. Also, I won\u2019t buy the books. Instead, on the day of the party, I shall tell anyone who wants to hear my two favourite miracles for St Nicolas (the children and the bones, for anyone who has had to suffer my tale-telling) for the party is on his holy day and he\u2019s the bloke who became Santa Claus. I need to practise what I preach, in other words. If you who want to hear about the pickled children and how they are Santa\u2019s backstory, please ask.<\/p>\n
On the book-front, I\u2019m doing my own thing. I will send book parcels on behalf of anyone who wants to give presents to friends and family in Australia. This is actually not my response to the religion issue. It\u2019s my response to books being a bit difficult to buy and to international mail being a lost cause. If you know anyone wants to give presents to anyone in Australia over the next few weeks, check here: https:\/\/gillianpolack.com\/sale-until-18-december-or-until-the-books-run-out\/<\/p>\n
I have nothing against presents (I adore presents), after all. My objection is to people who insist that my own background doesn\u2019t matter a jot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every time I am invited to a Christmas party, I have to decide whether I should go. If it\u2019s a friend asking me to share their celebration of their Christmas, I accept with joy. If it\u2019s a public or professional event that\u2019s called a \u201cChristmas Party\u201d, one of the implications is that if I don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,17,184],"tags":[112,171,371,26,175,76],"class_list":["post-1599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-experiences","category-rants","category-selling-books","tag-australia","tag-books","tag-christmas","tag-gillian-polack","tag-holidays","tag-mental-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1600,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions\/1600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}