Secularizing a Holiday

I got into a short discussion with an acquaintance on whether or not the effort to secularize holidays was a good thing. I had mentioned to him that the movement to remove the Christian aspects from Thanksgiving and Christmas has not died, rather they have nearly completed their work.

I cannot count how many Happy Turkey Day signs I have seen in the past few weeks, and every time I see on of those signs I am somewhat disappointed. While I understand that some nonreligious people don’t want to be exposed to religion at all, I think the trend has gone overboard. The history behind Thanksgiving—as a national holiday—is relatively recent, the colonial roots of the celebration are important and religious in nature. Even for atheists, agnostics, and the non-religious can it really be such a bad thing to take a moment and remember the history of this nation, can it be so awful to step back and cogitate on what the individual has to be thankful/grateful for? Giving thanks is one of those two-way gifts that benefits both the giver and receiver. We could stand to do much more of it.

My acquaintance mentioned that some national holidays are maintained because such a large number of the population would request the day off, that it makes better sense to regularize observation. He pointed out that if people of Jewish cultural origin were of greater numbers in America, we would probably nationalize their holidays similar to what is done in Israel. I responded that I would be fine with that if we did. I certainly wouldn’t try to remove all religious references from Rosh Ha-Shanah.