brique wrote:
> wrote in message
> news:1166397775.768615.205630@79g2000cws.googlegroups.com...
> > brique wrote:
[...]
> > > So, your solution is that everyone should become christians,
> > > if not, they should at least pretend to be christians. So, will
> > > you return that respectful gesture by fasting during Ramadan?
> > > Will you synbolically bath in the Potomac in solidarity with
> > > the Hindus bathing in the Ganges? Will you don a kippa and
> > > recite the Torah at Seder? Will you light candles at your
> > > ancestors graves and bang drums all night to keep the
> > > shintoists happy? Or is it all one-way traffic, as usual?
> >
> > Off the top of my head, I can think of major community-inclusive
> > celebrations in San Francisco for St. Patrick's Day, Chinese New Year,
> > the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival, Dias de los Muertos, Cinco de
> > Mayo, Carnaval, Pride, and others, where probably a majority if not an
> > overwhelming majority of the celebrants are not culturally or
> > religiously affiliated with that of the celebration, or even really
> > know in any detail what the original cultural or religious significance
> > of the celebration is.
> >
> > If somebody's going to throw a party, why not take advantage of it? If
> > the Hindu community had a big Diwali celebration that was open to the
> > whole community, people would go and celebrate. They probably do in
> > the south bay.
> >
> > What I would view as odd, distasteful, or even possibly deranged is if,
> > say, some part of the Irish community, rather than have an inclusive
> > St. Patrick's Day celebration, threatened to sue the city to revoke its
> > licenses if the Chinese New Year parade did not include shamrocks and
> > green beer.
>
> The matter here is that james has stated that not celebrating christmas is
> the act of a bigot.
The closest statement of James's I could find in this thread that
matches your claim is:
: No one must celebrate [Christmas], but any one who not
: only does not celebrate it, but gets upset and offended by
: other people celebrating it, is indeed a bigot.
which only "matches" in the sense of partial text matching, and
semantically bears nothing like the meaning you attribute to it. I
presume that this is the statement to which you refer, since you make
the same incorrect interpretation in your response to it. I suggest
you re-read.
James's immediate point in this subthread seems to be that rather than
complain that a traditional festival in which communities and families
participate has historical Christian symbolism, minority religions or
ideologies should take an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude of
co-opting the holiday's symbols with their own religious significance.
The same way that the Christians did to end up gathering all their
presents under a pagan Germanic religious symbol on an old Roman feast
day dedicated to the father of the Gods, himself co-opted from the
Greeks.
The original Kwanzaa holiday was apparently intended as a substitute
for Christmas: "Kwanzaa is not an imitation, but an alternative, in
fact, an oppositional alternative to the spookism, mysticism and
non-earth based practices which plague us as a people". This
confrontational tactic was apparently re-thought or abandoned, however,
and more recently has been recast as a complement to traditional
religious observance: "Today, many African-American families celebrate
Kwanzaa along with Christmas and New Year's. Frequently, both Christmas
trees and kinaras, the traditional candle holder symbolic of
African-American roots, share space in kwanzaa celebrating households.
To them, Kwanzaa is an opportunity to incorporate elements of their
particular ethnic heritage into holiday observances and celebrations of
Christmas." A process that has a long line of historical precedents,
and which tends to be successful precisely because for many if not most
celebrants, the main point of the holiday is family and community unity
and tradition, not theology.
[...]
- Nate
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