Monday morning pastiche

[magid]

Does anyone have a copy of the December 5 New York Times Magazine I could have? There's some cool black and white mathy photos that I'd like to hang in my cube. Well, actually, I have some of them up, but I'd like to have the other sides of the pages up too, and no, they don't photocopy well.
(Side note: having them hanging is emphasizing how it can be that my cube is cooler than others, with some of the pages moving in the breezes of air-conditioning.)

I realized that though I don't like being bombarded with carols and such, I don't have a problem with commercial establishments decorating their stores (visually and aurally) for the holiday. It may be a horrible commercialization, but that seems to be where our society is these days. What I do have a problem with is when the government puts up trees and other symbols of (the majority) religion. It bothers me that Boston had a tree-lighting ceremony, for instance, and there are lots of other examples. Decorating trees that are already there with white lights doesn't cross the line for me. Importing a huge tree corpse and decorating that does (though I know the main one is sent from Halifax, in recognition of Boston's help in their huge disaster. Even so.).

Noted: the Mahoney's on Memorial Drive is closing December 31. I think the banner said that it was becoming Harvard (green?) space, and there would be a new location for the store in Allston, but I don't know any more than that.

ETA
My mom gave me some bittersweet chocolate gelt that has the patterns of Israeli coins. The brands I saw at the Butcherie were less interesting, with the brand emblazoned on one side, and something like American coins on the other. For sheer variety, though, the gelt from Trader Joe's wins, hands down: they have gold, silver, and bronze coins in a variety of sizes, including many different coins from Canada (loonies!), the US (quarters and silver dollars, and Europe (euros and English pounds). It's a little odd that there aren't any Israeli coins in the mix, though. And they're milk chocolate, so obviously not as good as bittersweet :-).

Current flavor: Italian R"H fruit-nut cookies, aka sfratti

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

I got stuck in a line at CVS this morning, and had to listed to piped-in carols. Ugh. But, yeah, I definately think that tree-lighting ceremonies are a little line-crossing. Unfortunately, there is a strong tendancy to call folks who think that way "too PC" or just plain "whiners" and the backlash seems to be getting stronger. It's hard to counter people's complaints when they are making fun in such an ugly way.

*Sigh*

[magid.livejournal.com]

*nod*

To me, it fits in the same box as having civil unions* be government approved, and between two adults, while marriage be defined by each religion as they will. In other words, having a separation between church/synagogue/mosque/etc. and state. We don't have a state religion, but some people in the majority religion don't seem to see a distinction.

* "Civil union" and "marriage" being used here more as distinct identifiers rather than suggestions of preferred verbiage.

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

Agreed re: civil unions or whatever. I like how many European countries do it.

I hate how people, even normally fairly ok people, can be so dismissive of the complaints of people who speak out against church/state collaberations. It's hard to argue against patronizing head-patting or look-how-cute-they-are-when-angry-ism. I feel like I'm eight again and mad and people keep laughing at me.

And I even have a tree in my house, which is where it belongs.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I wonder if (a) I don't speak out enough, at least not to people who don't already agree with me, and/or (b) I don't get the patronizing as much because I'm part of a religious minority, so "obviously" I'd feel that way. Or something.

It sucks to be dismissed like that.
(And I like looking at people's trees; they're pretty, though part of me does find it hard to think about all the trees used for such a brief time, then discarded.)

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

At least most towns collect the trees separately and chip or compost them (at least they *tell* us they do, because it's against the law not to)

tree fodder

[magid.livejournal.com]

Wood chips are good, though I know every year I see people put out trees with tinsel and stuff still on them; I wonder if it's like not-clean-enough containers for recycling?

A chipper used to come around my town when I was little, and somehow I don't remember it being January, but more autumn. I wonder...

[scholargipsy.livejournal.com]

You could always come to Japan, where Christmas iconography just as ubiquitous but usually utterly meaningless....

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thanks! At least here I can feel that it's catering to some people's preferences..

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."

Nowhere does it specify a separation of church and state. However, I do believe government should never give preference to any one established religion over another. Perhaps complete separation is the safest route, but it is also the most sanitized, least culturally-inclusive route. I believe governments should be able to have tree lighting ceremonies if they choose, but they need to give equal attention to other religions. Have a menorah lighting throughout hanukka. I'm even less familiar with Islam, but there are things they can do to include Islam in their observances/celebrations. Excluding all religion would, it seems, create more antagonism and bitter feelings than including all. Celebrate them all equally, make observers of each religion feel a valued part of the community. I just think that makes more sense than prohibiting any show of acknowledgment towards religion.

[cellio]

I believe governments should be able to have tree lighting ceremonies if they choose, but they need to give equal attention to other religions.

That sounds like a lot of work, because someone has to research them all and make sure no one gets left out. It would be far easier, and cleaner from a church/state perspective, for private parties to have equal access to public land for such observances. (This access can include use fees.) So the government never puts up a tree, or a creche, or chanukiyah, or status of Isis, or whatever, but any citizen who does the paperwork may do so (within specified and consistent limits of space, time, public safety, etc).

From the bureaucratic perspective, this reduces it to the problem of keeping any one person/group from hogging the good spots. That's solvable, though.

By the way, somewhere along the line didn't the Supremes exend the "Congress shall make no law" parts of the bill of rights to also apply to other governments? So while putting up a city tree doesn't involve making a law, it gets kind of close to that line. Where does law stop and policy begin? What about laws concerning expenditures? Could get messy.

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

It's a tricky situation, but I think your solution is very workable. If there were only more people who think like you in public office.... ;)

First thoughts

[magid.livejournal.com]

I'd rather not have displays of religion by our government.

I don't see how it would cause antagonism and bitter feeling for no religion to have rituals put on by the government. It would still be up to the religious groups themselves to do whatever is appropriate for their festivals, as it is now for every group except Christians.

How should we determine which practices are done through the government? Should there be a sukkah built in October where the holiday tree is now? Should there be open-air communal prayer? Does it make a difference if the prayer gathering has people encouraging passers-by to join in? What about observances that offend other people? Some religions include animal sacrifices, for instance.

On a practical level, I don't want to have the extra people in city/state/federal government it would take to coordinate all the different rituals for all the different religions (as if it were easy to figure out a practical definition of 'all' for these purposes).

"Equal attention", too: does that mean each religion gets whatever it needs to have this public observance, or is it linked to what percentage of the population is that religion? (If there are x% Christians and 1% Jews, for instance, are there x Christmas trees and one menorah? Or are they put side by side everywhere? I don't like the latter, myself, because it's equating the two, which I don't agree with. Christmas is an important holiday for Christians, while Hannuka is not even in the top five in importance to Jews, except that it has proximity to the other December holiday, added to an increased rate of intermarriage and interfaith families.

Re: First thoughts

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

It's certainly not an easy situation to which there is any clean solution, and I don't claim to have the answers.

You don't see how exclusion would cause antagonism because it wouldn't antagonize you, or me, or most reasonable people. But reasonable people seem to be in a minority in this country! Trust me, there are plenty of people (Christian fundies, for example) who would feel antagonized if religion were completely excluded. I may be wrong, but I don't think they would feel quite the same way of gestures were made towards the other major religions.

I don't propose catering to absolutely everyone, either. For practical purposes only, the line must be drawn somewhere. Who knows where? I live it for wiser people to determine that.

I would never propose displaying, for example, a cross and a menorah side by side. I think equating the two is insulting to both groups of people. We currently have Christmas tree lighting ceremonies and Easter egg hunts. I don't think it would be wrong to have a menorah lighting or to do something appropriate for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur or Rammadan or the other holidays significant to the major religions. And trying to determine percentages is just silly! If only a quarter of us are Jewish, do we only light candles on two of the nights of Hannuka? No, you say, it's Rammadan, so we are doing so-and-so in observance. It's Easter, so we're doing an Easter egg hunt. It's September, so erect a sukkot in the Rose Garden. Etc. I don't think it's unworkable, and it is appropriate.

But government is better off doing nothing than observing only Christian holidays while ignoring the beliefs and cultural traditions of significant portions of our citizenry.

tree corpses

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

While as I got later, the idea of killing a tree to use it for a few weeks' decoration began to bother me, but I take some consolation in the fact that the trees my family cut down were taken from areas of the forest that needed thinning (so said the Forest Service - as I have gotten older and _more_ cynical, I wonder just how true that was . . . ).

Re: tree corpses

[magid.livejournal.com]

It's not that cutting trees is always bad or anything, it's just that it seems wasteful, even though most of them were raised for just this purpose. As Ruthling points out, a lot of them become woodchips, but it still seems like a lot of energy expended. Of course, it's not *my* holiday, so my calculus of worth and energy is rather unlike the statistically average American.

On the other hand, far too many of the 'fake' trees are not nearly so pretty as real ones.

On the third hand, why not pine trees in pots? (Ack! Sudden vision of a tiny bonsai pine with Xmas decorations!)