Thoughts On Christmas & Religious Freedom (If There Are Such Animals)

I’ve never liked Christmas, especially the way it’s played out over several weeks throughout America, as if it were THE ONLY important holiday in the calendar year in the world that mattered and to some, rightfully so it is THE ONE that counts.

Not celebrating the Catholic or Christian faiths, I would certainly have no clue as to how Christmas is celebrated, but there is a movement afoot by some of the bigger, more super-mega churches in America, including Willowbrook Church in South Barrington, Illinois to change the way people worship, primarily by changing the worship day to just Christmas Eve services.

For some odd reason, their philosophy believes that Christmas Day should be spent with the family and not at church. How are other churches and denominations viewing that concept, not very well apparently.

It’s enough that families spend the time together on Thanksgiving and Easter; these sorts of things I don’t know much about, myself being Jewish, but experiencing these sorts of actions through friends of mine who do celebrate the holidays with the immediate family, I can understand the philosophy to a degree.

Usually, on Christmas I am by myself anyway. Most of my non-Jewish friends are spending time with their families and worshipping or whatever they do within the 48-hour period.

December 24 and December 25 are slow news days anyway. There’s not much going on in the world other than the usual rubbish of reports of seeing Santa Claus after midnight and by the time morning arrives, there are presents galore being opened by millions of children and adults who are either extremely happy or extremely sad that they received a gift they really wanted or a gift that could care less about.

I honestly believe if these super-mega-styled churches want to start changing around what days to worship they can, but also there comes with it a sort of instant karma; once they try to change something, other problems will creep in, what problems they are, I really don’t know or can’t begin to guess, but they won’t be good, that’s for certain.

Telling others when or how to worship is almost as bad as the Pilgrims who fled England in the mid 1600s who were seeking religious freedom and now here we are 385 years later, with the same kind of orders being given.

Sure America is the land of the free and the home of the lawsuit, but along with that freedom comes a price; a price that most aren’t willing to pay for and usually the ones who are paying the price for those freedoms, which include religion aren’t even aware what their true rights are until someone tells them what to believe or how to behave.

That’s nothing new; it’s been going on within the hills of America for several years already and if someone doesn’t like what’s happening say within religious communities, they go and start their own communities and practice what they believe in; that’s the true beauty for freedom of religion in this country.

So for something like a conglomerate church corporation to be suggesting to its parishioners when they REALLY need to pray, is beyond belief! It’s really the beginning of the end of a good and solid foundation of religion.

It’s almost as bad as those powerful right-wing Christian groups that made those insane demands on Wal-mart nearly a month ago to “cease-and-desist” from taking the “Christ out of Christmas” for Wal-mart’s decision to wish everyone “Happy Holidays,” as there are more holidays in December (and January for that matter) than just Christmas.

Of course, Wal-mart relented and the corporation just decided to keep everybody happy they will just wish everybody a Merry Christmas; for after all, money talks and bullshit walks.