Happy Yom Kippour. The Jewish Day of Atonement. Basically, Yahweh’s got a book of Life, in which he places all the names of people that will live for the next year. On Rosh Hashanah, he opens the book, and on Yom Kippour, he closes it.
Isn’t that special? As an aside, the Book of Life is not in any way related to the Cereal of Life or the Game of Life.
In NJ, the population is 4% Jewish. Let’s pretend that 75% actually believe in God and give two-bits about Yom Kippour, so let’s say 3%. My kid’s school has about 500 kids, so in the whole school we have 15 religious-enough Jews.
For those 15 kids, the entire school shuts down. You see, Christmas is a Christian holiday that is also a national Holiday, so we all HAVE to take it off. The Jews complained, and now, even though they are a huge minority, we all have to take their “High Holy” days off too. This means people MUST take the day off from work to care for their kids, who are home for no good reason. Ergo, Christians are being forced to celebrate someone else’s holiday, whether they like it or not.
Merry Christmas.
The RIGHT thing to do is to float all holidays, and make Christmas a religious holiday and not a national holiday. Yah. That’ll happen real soon. But making MORE religious holidays to keep schools politically covered starts them down a slippery slope. Who is next? Moslems? Hindus?
Darwin Day?
I’ve got a book, too! Why don’t I get a freaking day off??!!
People should take MY birthday off — at least mine is a documented and verifiable point in history. Ancient history, but nonetheless. . . . .
I have celebrated the holidays at the time of the winter solstice since I can remember. Whether or not it was winter solstice or called Christmas, as it is before the end of the year, I find it a time of reflection. I will continue to celebrate this time of year, regardless of what some label it.
Atonement for what?
Atonement for the sins commited in the past year. Many orthodox jews practice religiously sanctioned animal cruelty as part of yom kippour. Just one more reason to despise judaism and its followers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/6233634/On-a-wing-and-a-prayer-Jews-prepare-Yom-Kippur.html
seig heil!!! (Chuckle)
NeoWolfe
Must be a relatively local thing, as no one in the state of Colorado had Monday off.
I think it’s probably best to adopt a holiday policy wherein each individual student or worker picks which days they’d like off, according to their religion, or other method of celebrating certain days. That way no one could say their holiday wasn’t recognized by them being off, and the holidays could be staggered a bit, to keep enough workers on the job, and keep enough students in the schools, so that more could get done.
In the US of A, we’ve not only had lots of holidays, we’ve also had lots of interraction with each other in the course of making time off fair for everyone involved. By acknowledging new holiday ideas, and allowing folks to determine for themselves what’s worthy of celebrating, and what’s not, our society would be more co-operative. At least I think so.
As it is now, everyone at a school or a company is told they’re off for x number of days because of this religous holiday or that religious holiday, and sometimes secular holidays. (The secular ones never seem to mean as much to the masses though.)
Just to use myself as an example, my company is giving us Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks off with pay. But every other holiday of the year that has fallen on a weekday, we have worked all day. I feel pidgeon-holed into a Christian timeframe that seems to treat those chosen special days with reverance beyond reason, and the other holidays as irrelevent. That’s just one company, and I don’t plan to say anything about it, but it’s very typical of jobs I have had. Not AA, of course.
I think our society is evolving towards being more inclusive of small religions, and less widespread secularist attitudes. Just very slowly.
They’re also asking us to give out Christmas cards to our customers, which the company will provide. I’m scared! I don’t want to make waves. The owner knows I’m an Atheist activist, so this’ll be a test of our ability to co-operate. I sure as hell don’t want to give anyone any f’n Christmas card!! Ack!
For several years, I’ve given out winter solstice cards. Most cards given out by business that I’ve ever seen are very generic, “season’s greetings” type of thing, not specifically “Christmas.” Hopefully you can work something out.
I am shocked! I had no idea that some public schools closed for Yom Kippour.
How many kids are home ill on the typical school day? Maybe NJ should close down the schools whenever the number of ill kids exceeds 3%. Ridiculous.
Joe Z said:
“I think it’s probably best to adopt a holiday policy wherein each individual student or worker picks which days they’d like off, according to their religion, or other method of celebrating certain days.”
Response: As usual, Joe is a smart guy with a common sense solution. But, it must be obvious that school is somewhat different from work. If you schedule a day off from work, someone can be slated to fill your position. If you are a student, and you miss scheduled classes, you have to make up the work, and in the case of subjects like math, where one layer of understanding is built upon the last, make-up work needs to be completed immediately, not over time. Like the poor garbage collectors, they get the legal day off, but, spend the next week trying to catch up and get back on schedule. My point is that it’s a good idea, but it has some flaws.
NeoWolfe
With all the religious holidays I think it would get crazy to have kids choose the days they take off especially during test days. And as NeoWolfe says it might be easier for companies, but not for small companies. I have 5 employees and if they all decided to take off different holidays there would be people constantly taking off. If two people took off on the same day, we could not operate.We just take off the week between Christmas and New Years. We put up purely secular decorations in the office (because I am the boss) and would never offend a good part of our population by considering giving out Christmas cards. I do send Solstice cards. I used to buy them from American Atheists but the disclaimer on the back (about Jesus being fictional and all) I think goes to far. Does anyone really send them to friends who happen to be believers? I would imagine a friend getting one being offended and the I don’t want to make such a statement during the holiday season. That I sent them a Solstice card is enough of a statement.
Enjoy the holiday’s, approach them as our forebears did as a respite from the hard labor and harsh reality of life.Enjoy your cultural heritage and do it with the people you love.You don’t have to give up your atheism to do that.I saw fake christmas trees and a halloween spider together at lowe’s today-only in America.Students might as well take off all holidays since every year they are subjected it seems to a new fad that is supposed to improve education.