A new article in TIME magazine today opines that Christmas should not be a holiday and that, in fact, no religious observance should be a federal holiday.
In so doing they fail to look at what established Christmas as a holiday in America in first place.
It was not an outcry of religious fervor. Christmas had been celebrated on American shores since 1620 — and yet it took all that time for the federal government to establish Christmas as a holiday.
Why did it happen?
It happened because of a labor dispute. Culturally most private sector companies of the time gave their workers Christmas day off — and federal workers didn’t like it. They petitioned for the day off and, as the official declaration making Christmas a holiday shows, the government declared it so with a proclamation absent of any mention of religion or even observance.
Ironically, President Obama just declared the day AFTER Christmas in 2014 a holiday for federal workers for the very same reasons. Religion, then and now, had NOTHING to do with it.
What TIME appears to want to do is to punish people for using federal holidays for religious purposes.
What other reason could there be for such a suggestion?
After all, it isn’t like the USA is setting any attendance records at Church. Yes, Christmas is still plenty religious. But Christmas, as everyone knows, is dominated by secular celebration.
The writer of the article wants Christmas banish for the simple reason that it isn’t religious to her.
Well, by all means — go ahead and work. Nobody will stop you. But learn a little history. Christmas was never establish as a religious holiday. If you’re looking for one, look no further than Thanksgiving. That’s a holiday who’s declaration is filled with references to God and frequently is observed by the President of the United States calling the public to prayer. But Christmas as a federal holiday is about nothing religious.
The real purpose of editorials like this from TIME is to squelch religion, to make any kind of acknowledgement of religion by the government a bad thing.
But in the case of Christmas faith based people never asked for acknowledgement from the feds. They had enough of that in England, which is why the Puritan colony of Massachusetts didn’t even celebrate Christmas.
The argument can be made that the writer of TIME’s article is merely looking at Christmas through the lens of the 21st century.
And in that argument, she is still wrong.
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