MOJ-friend Prof. Richard Stith was kind enough to share with me this short essay, called How "Happy Holidays" Hurts:
Good people are often mystified at the offense taken by many Christians to the salutation “Happy Holidays!” After all, they reason, the word “holidays” includes everyone, instead of excluding anyone, so what’s the problem?
My short response would be that, to the ears of many of us, “Happy Holidays” actually silences all faiths rather than welcoming any of them. In order to explain my point, let’s go back and see what the problem was with “Merry Christmas,” our culture’s traditional December greeting.
As far back as I can remember, Christmas was named and celebrated by people of varied faiths and of no faith at all. No doubt many have just liked the bright lights or the tradition of giving associated with Christmas, but some have surely recognized the irreplaceable gift of Christmas itself to world civilization, in terms not only of art and music but of the radical dignity of the humblest birth.
Unfortunately, some contemporary cultural engineers think that Christmas is tainted by its religious origin and that the best or only way to accommodate the many religions found in today’s America is to reduce them all to their lowest common elements. Since every religion celebrates “holidays” (a word derived from “holy days”), our politically correct mentors tell us that “holidays” are all we may mention. We may not name the specific holiday that each community is celebrating (at least not if that holiday is one celebrated by a majority religion like Christianity).
However, it doesn’t make sense to try to include all religions by excluding every possible reference to any of them. A simpler strategy would be to include by including. This point was brought home in a delightful and profound way in a recent Northwest Indiana Times column by Christine Kraly (“Yes, I said ‘Merry Christmas’”, Dec. 26, 2010). She pointed out that her “Merry Christmas” need not exclude any other greetings. As a Christian about to marry a Hindu, she is also comfortable wishing her in-laws-to-be a “Happy Diwali.” Nor does she take offense when in their exuberance they wish her a “Happy Diwali.” In a multicultural world, we can give one another much joy by sharing our feasts.
By contrast, just repeating “Happy Holidays” is an empty and boring way to live together. It’s really not multicultural at all; it’s just a flat one-size-fits-all unicultural expression. In rightly rejecting domination by one religion, it rejects the content of all religions. That’s why “Happy Holidays” hurts the feelings of many Christians, while “Happy Diwali” (or “Happy Hanukkah” or “Happy Eid”) does not. “Happy Diwali” gives, while “Happy Holidays” takes away.
Those who have trouble seeing this point might consider how many of us would feel irked if there were pressure to substitute “Happy Holiday” for “Happy Valentine’s Day,” on the ground that St. Valentine was a Christian. Wouldn’t that change be felt widely to be a loss, a flattening? People might even gradually become less likely to give candy or flowers; after all, we don’t do so to commemorate most of what we call “holidays”.
Indeed, the merchants who switch to “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” may be cutting their own throats. Christmas calls for the giving of presents far more than any other holiday. Once we have been trained not to think about “Christmas presents” anymore, our felt need to purchase them may slowly disappear.
This isn't Catholic Legal Theory, either, but it's important to those to whom it might be relevant. I just received a notice from a friend (Amy Kuebelbeck) about a forthcoming book which she co-edited: A Gift of Time: Continuing Your Pregnancy When Your Baby’s Life Is Expected to Be Brief, coming out on Jan. 26 from Johns Hopkins University Press.
The description from the notice:
This book is written for parents who learn through prenatal diagnosis that their baby likely will die before or after birth and who wish to continue the pregnancy and embrace whatever time they are able to have together.
Based on material from more than 120 parents from across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, A Gift of Time draws extensively from parent experiences and includes many direct quotes that tell powerful stories of their own. Full of practical suggestions for parents and for caregivers, it also promotes the innovative concept of perinatal hospice and palliative care.
I haven't read this new book, but I have read Amy's memoir about this experience: Waiting with Gabriel: A Story of Cherishing a Baby's Brief Life. That book was one of the most beautiful and profound meditations on love and the value of life that I've ever read. I'm sure this new collection will be just as beautiful and profound.
So there I was on an airplane, organizing my things on an extremely packed flight right before takeoff, when what should pass down the aisle but a woman walking (or maybe being led by) a small canine -- one of those creatures more realistically classified as rodentiform. I looked around for some sort of explanation, but only saw other gaping maws.
I came to find out later on the flight that this is an animal which serves to calm the owner's anxiety -- or, as I've since learned, an "Emotional Support Animal." Apparently if one obtains a doctor's note, one can bring a loose animal onto an airplane packed to the gills with people because one is thereby emotionally assisted in managing the flying experience. Knowledgeable readers, do I have this right?
If I do, it leaves me wondering how much anxiety is sufficient to get you your plane pet, and of what sort. How bad does your anxiety need to be to compel other people to tolerate being touched or perhaps even rubbed by a foreign, hairy beast, with no possibility of moving? And what if the animal defecates or vomits, and one has an anxiety about being trapped in a small space with nothing to breathe but re-processed, dung-scented air? Are there limits to the sort of animal that one can bring that somehow are more restrictive than Mill's harm principle? If you find Bengal tigers emotionally assuaging, probably that wouldn't "fly," but what about my frisky and oh-so-friendly yellow lab?
And how unstable is unstable enough to obtain this privilege? I sometimes have anxieties on planes -- not at all about the flying or the bumps, but about the other people, their personalities, and their proximity to me. I take it this would not be good enough.
Friday, January 7, 2011
I haven't spent a whole lot of time this holiday season thinking about human dignity (unless you count the affront to a parent's dignity that accompanies spending $21 for their child's meal at Disney World). I did, however, just read Gilbert Meilander's wonderful Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person. It's an easy and relatively quick read, but it is brimming with insights. What I take to be his starting point is the apparent contradiction between statements on murderers by Aquinas ("A man who sins deviates from the rational order, and so loses his human dignity.") and John Paul II ("Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity."). The path of reconciliation is to unpack two different concepts of dignity: human dignity and personal dignity. I confess to finding the labels a little confusing as applied in the book, but the underlying ideas are on-target. He's basically trying to distinguish dignity as an attribute to be cultivated from dignity as intrinsic worth. The book is well worth your time.
