Should we celebrate Winter Solstice?

[on_the_hill]

A key problem with what you say is what our current hyper-PC environment deems as “religious.” Several school systems I am aware of - one of which employes my daughter as a teacher - have forbidden the wearing of the colors red and green, as they are allegedly too tied to Christmas to be acceptable in a public school. Really? Christmas trees, for that matter - beyond the obviously “objectionable” name, have a pagan origin and have no Biblical or church significance at all, but have become outlawed due to a kind of “guilt by association.” Realistically no one is expecting nativity scenes in public school, but being able to send a child to school in a red shirt might be nice.

When my daughter was in second grade, her teacher had one of the school’s pianos rolled into the room for a few weeks. The teacher was, quite naturally, holding music class during the day. It was an addition to the school’s regular music class.

And she played, and they sang…Christmas songs. Would it have been frowned upon by the district, if not outright prohibited, had the administration known? Of course.

And there’s no doubt the principal knew what was going on. He simply .

 

[Skadi]

Jefferson did not (as some have reported) pay to have religious missionaries convert native tribes, but he did uphold a treaty of 1803 by which the Federal government paid for a priest and a church for a tribe that was largely Catholic.

“…whereas, The greater part of the said tribe have been baptised and received into the Catholic church to which they are much attached, the United States will give annually for seven years one hundred dollars towards the support of a priest of that religion, who will engage to perform for the said tribe the duties of his office and also to instruct as many of their children as possible in the rudiments of literature. And the United States will further give the sum of three hundred dollars to assist the said tribe in the erection of a church…”

–TREATY WITH THE KASKASKIA, 1803

Jefferson’s concept of the separation of church and state was more one of keeping the state from inhibiting people from their practice or from choosing a religion for them. You’ll not find any instances where he thought the state ought to be interfering with the ability of citizens to practice their religion in public.

This is where the instance of the school prohibiting red and green becomes so out of line. It is one thing to say “We won’t set a child up to choose between cookies with religion or going without cookies in order to avoid participating.” It is quite another to say “A child may not even choose colors in their clothing that could possibly let on what religion they practice.” The latter goes beyond the separation of church and state and all the way to the suppression of religion. I cannot imagine Jefferson wanting the government to have anything like that kind of power!

There was a time when children could have each brought treats from their own ethnic heritage, Christian or not, and each learned about the other that way, but in our times children are also not allowed to bring food to school. Honestly, sometimes I think that those who throw their hands in the air and homeschool purely over the cultural idiocy in public schools are not off the mark.

I totally agree, I do think that being PC has gone to far. We have exchanged reality for a fantasy world where no ones feelings get hurt.

 

[EasterJoy]

I totally agree, I do think that being PC has gone to far. We have exchanged reality for a fantasy world where no ones feelings get hurt.

Someone needs to point out that a “freedom of religion” or a “separation of Church and State” that really means freedom from ever witnessing someone else practicing their religion, talking about their religion, or letting their religion affect their lives or politics is not freedom of religion. That is suppression of religion, and to say that this has a place in a so-called “pluralistic society” is at best a fantasy and at worst a bald-faced lie.

 

[Skadi]

Someone needs to point out that a “freedom of religion” or a “separation of Church and State” that really means freedom from ever witnessing someone else practicing their religion, talking about their religion, or letting their religion affect their lives or politics is not freedom of religion. That is suppression of religion, and to say that this has a place in a so-called “pluralistic society” is at best a fantasy and at worst a bald-faced lie.

I totally agree. We live in a world of bleeding hearts and cry baby’s who make themselves feel better by raining on other peoples parades.

 

[Cojuanco]

I totally agree, I do think that being PC has gone to far. We have exchanged reality for a fantasy world where no ones feelings get hurt.

Heck, forget feelings for a moment, this militates against the fact that our country is a multicultural society. Religion is part of that. We would be worse off were we, like some so called progressives envision, a deracinated, atheistic, homogenous mass.

 

[EasterJoy]

I totally agree. We live in a world of bleeding hearts and cry baby’s who make themselves feel better by raining on other peoples parades.

If the stance is, "I can live with watching your parade go by, as long as you don’t make me march in it, " that seems reasonable to me. On that account, I’m sympathetic to limiting what the school can do. I don’t mind it when people really can’t tolerate something, like banning jingle bells on your shoes because it keeps some classmates from concentrating or banning fragrances because some people literally get sick from having too much fragrance around. All fine and good, if disappointing.

To say that this color or that symbol or whatever is banned when there has been no locally-significant physical or relational violence organized around it, though, or to not allow people to talk about what they like to do on their own time, though, that is beyond the pale. Even in school, children need to learn to be civilized around people who are making their differences clear. It is a skill necessary for democracies to work.

 

[Skadi]

If the stance is, "I can live with watching your parade go by, as long as you don’t make me march in it, " that seems reasonable to me. On that account, I’m sympathetic to limiting what the school can do. I don’t mind it when people really can’t tolerate something, like banning jingle bells on your shoes because it keeps some classmates from concentrating or banning fragrances because some people literally get sick from having too much fragrance around. All fine and good, if disappointing.

To say that this color or that symbol or whatever is banned when there has been no locally-significant physical or relational violence organized around it, though, or to not allow people to talk about what they like to do on their own time, though, that is beyond the pale. Even in school, children need to learn to be civilized around people who are making their differences clear. It is a skill necessary for democracies to work.

Exactly, to quote one of my favorite movies “symbols are given power by people, A symbol alone is meaningless.” How you can prevent someone from dressing in red or green is beyond me, a total breach of personal freedom. As long as kids arnt being forced to participate in any Christmas stuff I dont know what is wrong with the school putting up a tree or something. Christmas trees dont bother me at all, I put one up every year for Yule.

The liberals alwase talk about being accepting of other cultures and religions, except of course the predominant one, which is seemingly alwase evil to them. If Muslim students are allowed to leave class to pray at the allotted times then gods damit Christian students can wear red and green.

 

[EasterJoy]

Back to the original question: There is nothing inherently wrong with a Catholic celebrating the physical solstice. It is not pagan to have celebrations that do not explicitly appear on our liturgical calendar or that do not explicitly have a monotheistic presumption behind them. Neither is it “ignoring Christmas” to mark the winter solstice with those who do not celebrate Christmas. The only prohibitions are on (a) attempts to contact spiritual powers, whether benign or not, other than the one true God, except as they are servants to the one true God alone, since we may not participate in anything like divinization, (b) speaking falsehoods about spiritual powers, such as teaching the existence of benign spiritual powers who are yet not explicitly in total service to the one true God, or (c) denying the one true God or any truth about him, such as that he is the Creator and Master of the Universe. As long as a teacher or school is clear about those boundaries, a party to mark the shortest day of the year isn’t a moral problem.

Considering these boundaries and the boundaries that other religions would also have, it is difficult to imagine what kind of boundaries could work when it comes to teaching a cultural awareness of other religions to young children. It would be nice if it could be done, but I’m not so sure how practical it is. It is probably better for parents to look for that kind of educational experience on their own time, where they can supervise it entirely. As disappointing as that is, it is probably a practical reality. That is not the same as not letting kids exhibit their own religious beliefs, though.

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

I think the above poster confuses “public” with “neutral.” This is not the case. America has always been pretty much a Judeo-Christian society, and people will want to celebrate Christmas and will be unconcerned about holidays of tiny minorities. That’s how it goes.

What is the deal with this “Judeo” stuff? Whenever you see conservative talking heads speaking about the “foundation” of the United States, they tend to say things like that: “this is a Judeo-Christian country,” “the heritage of this country is Judeo-Christian,” etc.

Uh… what? The only way the founding fathers could have been considered to have “Judeo-” values or “Judeo-” foundations is in the sense that Judaism was the launching point for Christianity, Jesus was a Jew, etc.

But how many of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were Jewish? Zero. How many of the signatories of the Constitution were Jewish? Zero.

So… *Judeo-*Christian? Why say that? It’s almost as if these conservative talking heads are trying to bolster the role of Judaism in the founding to push the Jews plus Christians vs. Muslims agenda. I’m not sure what other purpose it could serve.

Speaking of the signatories of the aforementioned documents, only 1 Catholic signed the Declaration, and only 3 Catholics signed the Constitution (a mere 1.9% of total signatures).

So to those Catholics who want to use the foundation of the United States as some kind of weapon against those pesky minorities: be careful, you’re playing with fire. Just wait until 50 years from now when the protestants are talking about how “non-Papist” the founders were.

 

[Presurmksdimnds]

Well, this is an opportunity for you to teach your own children a history lesson on how Christmas (which was not even on the calendar until about 273), got to be placed where it is today. No, it is not the calendar date when the Church Fathers actually thought Our Lord was born.

Here is one account of how both the feast an the date were ultimately chosen:
christianitytoday.com/ch/news/2000/dec08.html

The teacher could note that many religions have festivals to mark the turning points of the solar year, which is cultural knowledge that well-educated people ought to have, whether they celebrate these festivals themselves or not.

This is not a bad time to teach your children how our liturgical year is based on the solar year. Christmas is loosely associated with the physical turn of the seasons, but Easter is calculated very directly by use of both solar and lunar calendars. It is quite interesting.

Thank you very much Easter Joy for your perspective. I’ll try my best to explain these points to her. I also really liked the point that was made about John the Baptist being born during the summer solstice, and him “having to decrease in order for Him to increase” (poorly quoted I know :blush ) and it’s parallel to the shorter/longer days.

Merry Christmas and God bless