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Wednesday, December 19, 2007
This time of year offers common themes to celebrate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s that time of year.
Shopping, meal preparations, holiday specials and Christmas plays. Families travel all over the world to be with the ones they love on Hanukkah, on Christmas and for Kwanzaa.
It’s also a time when people feel so strongly about their own beliefs that they work hard to suppress the beliefs of others. In America, annual battles wage against references to Jesus or Christmas on cards and presents, the displays of Nativity scenes. “Why can’t we? Why should you?”
I am reminded of two quotes that usually surface this time of year.
The first is from Ben Stein, a political satirist and former speech writer for Richard Nixon: “I am a Jew…It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, ‘Merry Christmas’ to me. I don’t think they are slighting me … in fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year … if people want a crèche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away. I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution, and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.”
The second quote is from Thomas Jefferson: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
My point is that the two things we have in common with the 5 billion others of us in the world are that we want to provide for our families, and we want to live in peace. That is what this holiday season - to me, at least - should mean.
No one can know the true nature of God, or whether or not he even exists for that matter. But we can know that, without our friends, families and neighbors, our lives are hollow and empty. And so, before we begin arguing about who should display what and how they should do it, let us instead devote our energies to making the world a better place for us and for our children to come.
If you do that, it doesn’t matter what your faith is. You will be doing what your Creator asks of you, and what you ask of yourselves.
In that light, I wish for all of you peace on earth, good will towards men.
May the holidays bring you hope, comfort and love. Happy holidays!
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