Well, it's starting tonight, so I better get back to cleaning the house (actually, all posts today are pre-scheduled). Kids are excited (hey, eight days of presents instead of just one and nobody mentions any Invisible Friends in the Sky all evening!). Posting will resume tomorrow early morning.
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Yes, this is a science-related post, just a little off topic. We don't talk about religion much around these parts because my Catholic school upbringing and torture by nuns gives me PTSD. But I grew up in a place where your family was either Catholic or Jewish - equal-opportunity guilt.
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So.... Celebrating Hannukkah isn't a religious activity for you? Why celebrate it at all, then?
It's fun, we fix good food and kids get the presents (at the same time their Christian friends get Christmas presents) so they do not feel left out. We celebrate Passover as well, for the same reasons - great rationale to meet friends, eat, drink and be merry!
Amanda and PZ explain it well.
It sounds almost as if holidays function as cultural events.
Interesting.
Yup, always did, always will, despite efforts by religion to insert itself into holidays.
This is not religion inserting itself into your culture, it is you inserting yourself into a religious festival! (Note: the origin of the word "holiday" should be self-evident). You want a non-religious day off? Celebrate Thanksgiving, Boxing Day, or Mother's Day and stop claiming that "religion" is attempting to co-opt Hannukkah!
Seriously, this is in the top five of "silly" I've heard this week - and I read a bigfoot sightings blog yesterday. Want to claim religion is inserting itself into politics? OK, that's a discussion. Is religion 'intruding' on science? OK, that's a potentially-legit complaint (depending on particulars). But claiming that religion is intruding on holidays? Silly.
Hannukkah has never bin a big holiday, or particularly religious holiday - one of many around the onset of winter.
Thousands of years ago, before there was religion, there were holidays celebrating various events, e.g., a good hunt, or a baby being born. Religion, as it evolved and became more an dmore oragnized, took over the holidays and invented more of them. Holidays invented by early religions were then overtaken and modified by newer, monotheistic religions, etc.
When the kids were very little we did Hannukah at home, then went to my in-laws for Christmas. Afterwards, we asked the kids which holiday they would prefer to celebrate in the future. They easily picked Hannukkah. That is what weve been doing ever since. My wife takes the Christmas shift (you cant believe how much that pays at the hospital!) and I used to go to the lab on Christmas. Also, we go eat at a Chinese restaurant and go see a movie on that day. And I still say Merry Christmas to people I know are Christians.
Oh, and growing up, the whole country celebrated New Years by using all the Christmas themes and paraphernalia - the New Years Tree, the New Year's music, the New Year's greeting cards, the Grandpa Frost and his reindeer pulling a sleigh with presents, the whole shebang. Then, most people would leave the tree standing for a few more days because Orthodox Christmas is right after (14 days after the Christmas celebrated by Catholics and their vaurious later offshoots like Protestants), so the whole big feeding frenzy can be repeated.