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Originally Posted by onetwo_threefour
Exactly. Schools should be calling it a winter holiday to emphasize that the school isn't dictating to any one what they will be celebrating during their holidays. Students and students' families can and should refer to the holiday according to their own traditions, but in what way is it sensible for a public school board to give primacy to Christianity by identifying a two week holiday at the beginning of winter as a celebration of a particular religion when they have students from across various faith and cultural traditions. If you want your school to call the holiday, a "Christmas" holiday, then send your kids to a Catholic or Christian school where it is entirely appropriate for the school to address its homogeneous body of students according to their shared tradition in this regard. I honestly don't understand people who can't grasp this and call it a war on christmas. It's not like Christmas is a bloody two week celebration even within Chritianity, it's a one day thing. The rest of the holiday is quite aptly referred to as a winter holiday even if you are Christian.
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One of the problems I have with arguments about whether or not to call something a Christmas break, or a Winter Holliday, is that the argument is compeltely semantic, and ultimately irrelevant. Saying we're calling it a Winter Holliday so that we include everyone is about as effective as putting a cartoon character in your facebook page to fight child molesters.
Malls for example say happy hollidays because they don't want to come off as being pro-Christmas and anti everyone else. Well if that's the case where are all the decorations to represent all the other hollidays? And for that matter what do those decorations have to do with Christianity?
At this point Christmas has outgrown it's Christian origins, and I'd argue is now largely a secular holliday, so why can't we call it Christmas?
Why no uproar over Easter? We still have the Easter bunny, and the stores say Happy Easter? Why not "Happy spring holliday"? Probalby because most people realize that Easter has become a secular holliday, and the Easter bunny and chocolate eggs have about as much signifigance to the origin of the holliday that reindeer and a fat dude in a suit do to Christmas.