Holiday Season in the Workplace

December 18, 2001

Source: The Providence Journal

http ://p rojo.com/cgi-bin/story.pl/opinion/06719201.htm

On December 18, 2001, The Providence Journal featured an editorial on holidays in the workplace. "Many bosses decide, with a wink and a nod, to recast their Christmas parties as 'holiday' parties, but then still decorate in green and red and play Christmas carols. Such watering-down seems to work. The Christians can see their tradition in abstract form, and non-Christians find it less directly offensive. But it's not a real solution... One step forward for us all would be acknowledging that the American calendar and culture are still stacked in favor of Christianity. The best way to find out what Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and others want to celebrate is to ask them and to learn from their stories... There are no simple answers to the December dilemma, but a fresh perspective could help. Religion isn't a problem to be solved or avoided. A lesson Americans learned this fall is that religion -- in its diverse forms -- provides rich resources to anyone seeking comfort and mutual understanding."