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EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago“If God truly does exist, He more so loves the atheist who questions the world around him than the Christian who blindly follows.” -Thomas Jefferson
More than half of the Founding Fathers were agnostic/atheists. They specifically wrote the Constitution to keep (any kind of) religion out of the government. The idea that America has ever been a “Christian nation” is rooted in a false history meant to deny the right of religious freedom to others. Pushing Christian holidays and religious rights while ignoring equal treatment of other religions is definitely antisemitism, just not the blowing up temples kind. It’s also anti-every other kind of religion as well. “Equal but different” wasn’t equal in regards to gay marriage or segregation, and it certainly isn’t in regards to religious freedom.
Our history is full of “little” lies like this designed to shape our perception of the country. Such as the fact that we’re never told that the Puritans were a bunch of religious extremists who came to America because they were exiled from England after trying to assassinate the king and replace him with their own puppet to force their religion on the rest of the country. Or that Hitler was inspired by America’s treatment of the Native Americans when it came to dealing with the Jews, immigrants, and LGBTQ people in Germany, and considered the US a “sister nation” with similar ideals to his (he even talks about it in one of his books). The entirety of Europe hides the fact along with us that the Nazis had a lot of support and that most leaders at the time didn’t want to get involved in fighting Germany right up until they invaded their country specifically. Did you know there’s a statue in Ireland honoring the various Native American tribal nations for their humanitarian aid during the Potato Famine because they were some of the only groups to provide any aid? Or that there wasn’t even actually a famine at all? There was a food shortage, but there was plenty of food - if you were British. The British tried to starve the Irish in an ethnic cleansing so they could take their land.
I ain’t here to say you’re bad or stupid or some nonsense because of your opinion, but as Thomas Jefferson said, question why it’s okay to put a statue of the Ten Commandments on display at a state capitol building but not a statue of Baphomet teaching kids science next to it, because you’ll often be surprised to find that the history we’ve been taught isn’t the whole story. I know I keep being surprised the more I learn. There’s tons of little things we take for granted in our daily life that are rooted in systems built with malicious intent. I’m still disgusted by the fact that one of the architects building the highways in New York designed the bridges around where he lived to be too low for buses to go under specifically so black kids couldn’t take the bus to the beaches near his neighborhood.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
I agree with you completely. That’s doesn’t change the fact that we celebrate Christmas. It doesn’t need to religious for everyone but most people in the US want to celebrate Christmas and not necessarily Hanuka.
I have full respect for people are Jewish or Islamic or something else.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Maybe, but Christmas (as in the day of, December 25th) is still a Christian holiday. It’s a pretty safe assumption to make that the majority of people celebrate Christmas, especially the commercialized version that’s ingrained into our culture, but it’s still an assumption made with Christianity as the default/majority that doesn’t take into account anybody else. Unconsciously assuming everybody is one thing because the majority of people are that thing can silence/oppress those that aren’t.
This is why the big stink every year over Merry Christmas vs Happy Holidays is inherently antisemitic/anti-other religions. Because it refuses to acknowledge that there are other people in this country who practice other religions with other holidays (or don’t practice any religion at all). If you make an exception for one (making Christmas a federal holiday), but not for the other (Passover in this case), then they’re being treated unequally and therefore you don’t have freedom of religion and are biased against the second one. Because the followers of Judaism in that example cannot practice their religion and celebrate their holiday to the same degree as Christians can.
For true equality you either accommodate all religions by making every single religious holiday a federal holiday or you accommodate none of them. Obviously, the first option is impossible, so you limit federal holidays to days of importance outside of religion, and allow enough vacation days to ensure people can celebrate at least most of their holidays. Days like the 4th of July, voting day(s) (a big one that we don’t do), etc should be federal holidays, but not Christmas or Easter. Outside the government, this is how it’s handled. Businesses are free to choose what holidays they close to celebrate or stay open for, and cannot get in trouble for what holidays they decide to give off or not give off for their employees. This is why the Jewish and Chinese communities are historically so close in the US - neither celebrates Christmas, so Jewish people go to Chinese food restaurants and other Chinese businesses that would otherwise not get much business on the holiday. It’s also why retail stores can make their employees work on Christian holidays, regardless of whether or not they’re Christian (speaking of which, you never hear an outrage about people being forced to work on Christmas day, yet there’s a guaranteed frothing of the mouth over the Happy Holidays thing every single year).
That’s the antisemitism inherent in our culture. That people are willing and want to support allowances for Christian religious institutions and values like holidays and prayers in school, but would not be okay with the same allowances for Judaism or other religions. In the same way that the architect I mentioned making the bridges too low so black kids couldn’t go to the beaches near his house was an act of racism.