Sunday Musings

I was reading postings on Facebook this morning from friends far and wide and some of the content got me thinking.

We've just crossed the Thanksgiving threshold into the holiday season, "Black Friday" has expanded to a weekend madhouse of shopping (pushing, shoving trying to get the 'door buster' specials) and we will soon be bombarded with holiday "cheer" every which way we turn. There will be those insisting that there is a campaign out there to kill Christmas - how DARE you say "Happy Holidays" after all, it's "Merry Christmas" damn it.

Personally I find that rather amusing since Christmas isn't the only holiday that occurs this time of year. There's the celebration/observance of (in no particular order) Guru Tegh Bahadur Martyrdom, Samhain, Eid-al-Adha, the Ascension of Abdu'l-Baha, Hanukkah, the sacred month of Muharram begins mid-December, there's Kwanzaa, Boxing Day (okay not religious but it is a holiday), the Winter Solstice, Bodhi Day, Zarathosht Diso, Ashura, Advent, and the Feasts of the Holy Family and the Immaculate Conception.

And since there are so many other faiths out there celebrating this time of year doesn't "Happy Holidays" actually make more sense if you have no idea whether or not the person you are speaking to actually celebrates Christmas? If you know that they do then by all means 'Merry Christmas" the way to go but I wouldn't expect an Hasidic Jew to be thrilled with the greeting, nor a young Muslim woman wearing a hijab to find "Merry Christmas" appropriate let alone a Buddhist monk.

Some postings today were wishing us all blessed Sundays, there were Bible quotes and assorted good-wishes and expressions of thankfulness... not unusual for a Sunday. But there were also postings pertaining to an atheistic perspective that I found interesting.

There was the usual calling of the Christian (and others) faith a "superstitious fairly tale" which was probably to be expected at this time of year when those without such a faith must be feeling assaulted by the trappings of the season. The thing that caught my interest though was something that can be applied to those of faith as easily as those without:

Be willing to stand up and shout back about what you believe.

In the context of the post the individual was speaking of how difficult it is to have an argument with a person of religious conviction, that such conversations seem to come down to whomever shouts the loudest is "right" and that you can't argue facts with a religious person.

That is true (the facts part) and it is the beauty of faith. Faith is a belief in something that you can't prove or even disprove with facts. It simply is.

Maybe "shouting back" isn't the appropriate manner to have conversations on the subject of faith but when your faith is attacked, when you are attacked because of it, when you see something happening that offends your beliefs, when your beliefs are distorted... you should have the courage of your convictions and be willing to stand up and "shout back" about what you believe.

Faith is a private/personal matter but there is an obligation to follow the tenants of that faith if you are going to claim to adhere to it. And one of those obligations may very well be to stand up for what you believe... and not just at this time of year.