With the holiday season underway, spotting holiday-themed merchandise or hearing holiday music when out becomes more and more inevitable. However, most, if not all, of this merchandise, music and more is focused on the Christmas holiday, thus overshadowing the various other holidays that occur at this time of year.
The disproportionate focus put on Christian holidays, especially Christmas and Easter, is unfair to those who celebrate other holidays.
At this time of year, the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah, the African American celebration of Kwanzaa, the Wiccan/Pagan celebration of Yule and many other holiday celebrations take place. This year, Hanukkah takes place Dec. 18-26, Kwanzaa takes place Dec. 26-Jan. 1 and Yule takes place Dec. 21-Jan. 1.
However, unlike for Christmas, most of these celebrations are not the largest ones for the groups who observe them.
For Jewish people, the celebrations of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah are the greatest, for Islamic people, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha are the biggest holidays, and other religions and groups have their own observances, some of which are celebrated by multiple groups.
However, unlike Christmas, for these holidays, a big deal is not made out of their celebrations. A 2022 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) shows that, today, about 67% of Americans identify with some denomination of Christianity. The poll also shows that about 27% of people do not affiliate themself with a religion. This leaves about 6% of Americans celebrating holidays that aren’t Christmas. This may not seem like a lot, but, as of Dec. 17, the US Census Bureau estimates the US population at about 337,571,000 people. So, about 20,254,260 Americans belong to a religion other than Christianity.
For these holidays, there is not mainstream music made, stores don’t dedicate aisles to merchandise and, in general, those who don’t observe them don’t know what the celebrations are. This is not entirely the person’s fault, however. There is no education on these holidays, whereas, for Christmas, there is.
In schools, Christmas movies are shown, students make Christmas gifts and ornaments and much more is done to commemorate the holiday. Most know the “reason for the season” when it comes to Christmas. The same cannot be said for holidays celebrated by other religions.
More needs to be done to educate about other religions, or less focus needs to be put on Christian traditions. While it can be argued that, in recent years, steps have been made in the right direction for the inclusion of other religions during the holiday season, the miniscule impact of these steps is obvious when looking at the outrage in the switch from “merry Christmas” to “happy holidays.”
