Merry Christmas, everyone

Yes, I wrote "Merry Christmas" — and not "Happy Holidays" or something more generic.

Even though I'm not a Christian, I think there's nothing wrong with wishing someone Merry Christmas or having someone (Christian or not) wishing me the same. People who avoid saying the word "Christmas" because of its religious connotation are just being silly.

Regardless of what one calls it, it's still a Christian holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Yes, I'm aware that many aspects of Christmas (including its date) originate in pre-Christian European pagan beliefs and practices. The exact same argument can be made of Vesak Day, the Buddha's birthday, with respect to the pre-Buddhist customs and religious beliefs of the Asian cultures for which it is now a holiday. If we can't refer to a holiday by its name because it borrows elements from pre-existing customs or because it might be perceived as exclusive, we'd have to refer to most holidays by generic names.

In the spirit of the season, here is a link to a list at fanpop! of 101 Classic Christmas videos which can be viewed online.

南無阿彌陀佛

Men excluded from Montreal neonatal clinic to accommodate religious sensibilities

From CBC news:

A Montreal community health clinic has come under fire for excluding men from their neonatal classes to accommodate the sensibilities of Muslim, Sihk and Hindu women.

ADQ Leader Mario Dumont said the prohibition exceeds the limits of common sense. He said it's unreasonable that a Quebec taxpayer is barred from joining his pregnant girlfriend at a health clinic because his presence would offend others.

The article doesn't make it clear how the "sensibilities of Muslim, Sikh and Hindu women" are accommodated by the exclusion of men. Is it because they're non-relatives?

I also find it interesting that the paraphrase of Dumont uses the word "girlfriend" rather than "wife" (or, more inclusively, "wife or girlfriend"). Does no one in Montreal (presumably outside of the Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu communities) get married any more? And is it the presence of unmarried couples (who have obviously had sexual intercourse) that is offensive to religious sensibilities?

And I wonder if it's really the sensibilities of the Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu women that are being accommodated, rather than those of their husbands. (Or should I have written "husbands or boyfriends"?)

Religious and cultural accommodations in light of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms no longer makes sense, Dumont said ahead of a weekend convention of l'Action democratique du Quebec.

He pointed as well to a suggestion by Montreal police that female officers call male colleagues to avoid offending male Hasidic Jews.

And will police completely leave anarchists alone in order to avoid offending their sensibilities?

"We are completely moving to misusing the Charter and that is starting to worry me."

Dumont said it's not racist for a majority of citizens to defend their own values. [...]

That a "it's not racist" defense is needed at all shows just how confused Western societies and politicians are about the distinction between race on the one hand and beliefs and culture (in particular, religion) on the other.

The article has mentioned nothing about race. Now it may very well happen that the majority of the "Muslim, Sikh and Hindu women" at the clinic are of East Indian/South Asian descent, but that's completely beside the point. If the complainants had been white, the response should have been just the same. It's unfair to the other women in the clinic to exclude their husbands or boyfriends on the basis of not offending the religious sensibilities of some of the participants.

People should not be afraid to criticize culture or religion in a free society. Racism is wrong because a person neither chooses his genetics nor is he able to change it. (Some belief systems, such as Tibetan Buddhism, hold that certain people can influence the circumstances of their births, but even then such people are rare exceptions.) However, culture and religion are matters of choice (assuming that one does not believe in strong predestinarianism). A person can always in principle choose to hold values and beliefs contrary to those with which he was raised, even if his society or other circumstances might make it difficult in practice.

Because religion involves choice, it doesn't belong to the same category of things as race, but should rather be classed with other systems of belief such as Capitalism, Communism, Nazism, geocentrism, etc. And in a free society, all systems of belief must be open to critical scrutiny. Irrational or outdated beliefs and practises should not get a free pass merely because they are part of a culture or religion.

南無阿彌陀佛