A friend of mine sent out an e-mail about attending a recent HumanLight celebration in the Philadelphia area. It was hosted by another friend who had been a member of my local Humanist group here in Ohio. HumanLight is a positive secular humanist take on the winter holiday season so full of theistic religious symbolism. My friend Martha Knox was interviewed for Tuesday the 23rd on Morning Edition on NPR about the celebration.
Tag: holidays
Robert Meyer tries to make a case that businesses expressing “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” are being offensive to and exclusive against Christians.
“Free exercise of religion isn’t realized by an exclusion of all. This is an attempt at negative neutrality that publicly squelches the free exercise of religion, but does nothing constructive to ultimately avoid conflict. It amazes me how the First Amendment, which protected the public’s free religious exercise from intrusions by the government, now is twisted so that the Establishment Clause is used to sanitize the public square from any mention of God.”
Find out why and how he is SO wrong on the next episode of Secular Left…..
Cal Thomas, a conservative columnist, has gone against his conservative brethren. Both in a recent column and on the FOX News Channel, Thomas complained about the efforts in support of “Merry Christmas”. In his column titled “Not so silent night”, Thomas writes:
“The effort by some cable TV hosts and ministers to force commercial establishments into wishing everyone a “Merry Christmas” might be more objectionable to the One who is the reason for the season than the “Happy Holidays” mantra required by some store managers.
I have never understood why so many Christians feel the need to see and hear “Merry Christmas” proclaimed to them at stores by people who may not believe its central message. While TV personalities, junk mail letters and some of the ordained bemoan the increasing secularization of culture; perhaps some teaching might be helpful from the One in whose behalf they claim to speak.”
So we may not agree with everything Cal has to say but at least on this issue he gets it.
The holiday season always causes a frenzy with the religious right. From installing Baby Jesus on courthouse lawns to chastising businesses for not expressing Merry Christmas, political and religious conservatives are hell bent to force everyone to remember why we have Christmas.
The Liberty Counsel and James Dobson are on the front lines in the “war” on Christmas and Bill O’Reilly has gone crazy.