http://news.yahoo.com/kindergarten-trip-to-visit-santa-1326217319448630.html


christmas is for christians. hanukkah is for jews. diwali is for hindus. ramadan is for muslims.

except only at the dawn of the millennium have things become so deliciously (read: alarmingly) simple. political correctness, at least in this instance, is a perfect example of western cultural imperialism, in the form of essentialism. for those of you who don't know, essentialism is basically the idea that any construct--religion, culture, nationality, political ideology, etc.--has some sort of core or "essence" that makes it what it is. so, in this case, christmas, with all its attendent traditions, including santa claus, is, in essence, a christian holiday. ergo, a christian is someone who celebrates christmas, and a christmas celebration will always be at odds with the values of anyone who is not a christian.

the logical problems with essentialism should be obvious to anyone. beyond the inherent logical problems, once a person begins to look at the historical details of how religions have interacted, the essentialist view falls apart quickly. to preserve it, one has to look at religions in a vacuum, apart from their historical contexts, in which case we're looking at religions that literally no one follows.

in the case of holidays, throughout human history, and even today, people of various religions have celebrated each other's holidays, observed each other's customs, and even made offerings to each other's gods. in 20th century america, the rule for most middle-class jewish families was to celebrate christmas, even having a christmas tree in their homes. of course, religiously, they were not celebrating the birth of christ, and that is yet another essentialist view of christmas: christmas is a holiday celebrating the birth of christ. so it has always been, so it shall remain. yet for so many people, including secular atheists, it isn't. essentialists can protest till they're blue in the mouth that these malcontents aren't "really" celebrating christmas, yet anyone with a modicum of experience in the field of linguistics will tell you that, on a very real level, if someone tells you they're celebrating christmas, that's precisely what they're doing, and "how" they're doing it is irrelevant.

recently, i was having several beers with my doctoral advisor in bratislava, and we began discussing hindu/muslim interaction in maharashtra. this is his field of expertise, and he has a hindu marathi wife. he spoke of one marathi muslim family he knows, and said while the young son in the family wears the muslim skullcap, goes to mosque faithfully and reads the quran in arabic, you would never be able to tell the father apart from any other marathi, hindu or muslim. traditionally in india, both hindus and muslims have visited each other's shrines, and even a pious muslim shopkeeper might keep a shrine to lakshmi or ganesha, just to keep his bases covered. hindus will visit the tombs of muslim pirs who are said to have had exceptional powers, and vice-versa.

to the politically correct, this kind of messiness is anathema. muslims believe in one god and one god alone, and we must respect that by making sure they are never confronted with even a hint of any other god. not only do the politically correct believe this, so do the radical islamists and the muslim politicians, whose agendas are served by an essentialist view of both islam and hinduism. the "this they are" and "this they are not" of the politically correct becomes the "this we are" and "this we are not" of the radicals. thus, while a muslim marathi father is indistinguishable from his hindu compatriots, perhaps even stopping at a temple to perform a few circumambulations on his way to or from mosque, his son, under pressure from radicals who want an orderly world, rejects all things that are not "really" muslim.

and so, bringing us to our news story, we have a concerned, politically correct mother in california (i agree with her that her jewishness is irrelevant) who believes christmas in any form, even openly pagan (remember, many evangelical christians have a horror of santa claus as well), should not be observed in a public institution because it is "part" of only one religion. it is textbook religious essentialism, and it opens the door to partisanship and even radicalism. the message she is sending her child, and the other nonchristian children, is "this is not you, and you should never have to endure it." the child has not yet had a chance to develop an opinion on the matter.

may the jewish and hindu children sit on santa's lap. may the christians of the world keep a shrine to lakshmi. may the hindus sing hymns to jesus (they already do). and may the atheist children go to jesus camp and eat the prasad of rama. hail chaos. hail messiness. hail syncretism. hail cherrypicking. it may be our only hope.