Sankara Saranam: You're welcome, Bill. Why's that?
BO: Because you've got a lot of nerve showing your face here after writing your anti-Christmas opinions. Aren't you against Christmas?
SS: No, I am not against Christmas.
SS: No, I don't deny that.
BO: Well?! How can you be for Christmas after writing that Jesus never lived?
SS: Because I'm for people celebrating whatever they want to celebrate so long as it does not interfere with my social rights.
BO: Then you must think we're just a bunch of fools for celebrating Christmas.
SS: I think a lot of things are foolish, but I'm also for people behaving like fools if that's what they want to do. It's often the best way to learn something new.
BO: Can you say Merry Christmas?
SS: Are you asking if I can say it or if I can say it and mean it?
BO: Can you tell me, Merry Christmas, Bill?
SS: Yes, I am capable of it.
BO: And you'd mean it?
SS: I can say it and mean it, and I'd probably not say it if I didn't.
BO: How can you say that? You don't believe in Jesus, you think people who celebrate Jesus's birth are a bunch of fools, and yet you say you can say to me Merry Christmas and mean it?!
SS: Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.
BO: How can you mean that?
SS: Whether you celebrate Christmas or your own birthday or my birthday doesn't really matter. The point is you are celebrating something. The only question I then have to ask myself is whether I want you to have a happy time of celebration or not? Since I certainly do, I would say and mean have a Merry Christmas, Bill.
BO: Well, let's say I was gathering some friends for a book burning party, and one of the books we were going to burn was your book, God Without Religion. Could you mean it when you say, Have a jolly book burning party, Bill?
SS: Yes.
BO: Now I know you're lying!
SS: I don't see the point to celebrating the birth of Jesus whether he lived or not. I don't see the point of celebrating my own birthday, which is why I don't and have asked my wife not to mention it when the day of my birth annually rolls around. And I don't see the point to book burning parties unless perhaps everyone is freezing to death and the only thing left to burn are books. But I certainly don't see the point of being unhappy, no matter what the occasion.
BO: For your information, celebrating Christmas makes me happy.
SS: I acknowledge that.
BO: But what do you say to it? Doesn't that happiness validate my celebration and everyone else's?
SS: No, it validates the spirit of the happiness itself, not the the form or vessel you fill with it.
BO: But I wouldn't be as happy at this time of year unless I celebrated Christmas. Isn't that proof that it is the celebration that brings the happiness?
SS: Not at all. It is only evidence that you've conditioned your happiness during this season. If your happiness was more unconditioned, you'd be less inclined to seek happiness in props. But that would require an entirely different world view.
BO: What world view?
SS: An ascetic one.
BO: Why on earth would I want one of those?
SS: True. Fasting, solitude, and silence would put a damper on your celebrations, regardless of your beliefs or lack of them.
BO: How about if I tell you Merry Christmas, does that bother you?
SS: No.
BO: But you don't celebrate it.
SS: That's right.
BO: If you don't celebrate it but I tell you Merry Christmas, shouldn't you be bothered by my presumption?
SS: No. I acknowledge the fact that a majority of people in my geographic location celebrate Christmas, that saying Merry Christmas is habitually said and so is often not meant to have any personal import, that it would take a lot of energy for people who don't know me to ascertain what holiday, if any, I celebrate, and that Christmas might also reference a general time of year and not a religious celebration.
BO: Do you celebrate New Years?
SS: No.
BO: Do you celebrate anything?
SS: No, but my wife does observe her own rituals marking changes of season and the growth and maturity of the children. She sometimes requests my participation.
BO: Has your wife ever called you boring?
SS: When it comes to parties and such, yes, but not in general as a characteristic of my personality.
BO: Well, there's a lot of people out there that are offended by my saying Merry Christmas to them, and calling them party-poopers would be putting it very mildly.
SS: Are you offended when people wish you joy during the celebration of a festivity that you do not observe?
BO: No, I just tell them I don't observe that festivity.
SS: So someone that tells you the same about Christmas would not offend you?
BO: You mean if someone told me they didn't celebrate Christmas after I told them Merry Christmas, would that bother me? No, it wouldn't. I'd just tell them that's their loss.
SS: Is it your loss that you don't celebrate their festivity?
BO: Nope, I've got Christmas.
SS: I see you're point. I've got asceticism.
BO: You're going to compare asceticism with Christmas?
SS: Not at all. There's no comparison. I was just comparing our attitudes towards the things we observe, and how alike they are.
BO: How do you feel about pressure being put on companies and governments to avoid references to Christmas?
SS: I don't know who is applying this pressure, but whoever it is must not have that much public influence.
BO: Are you kidding me?! Everywhere you look you find people who are forbidden to say Merry Christmas!
SS: Who is forbidding them?
BO: Their employers!
SS: That's the right of the employer, though, is it not?
BO: It may be their right, but that doesn't make it right. It is a concerted attempt to wipe Christmas out of our lives.
SS: Perhaps, but only for the people who work 24/7. But for people like that, I don't think a day off to celebrate Christmas and finally be able to say Merry Christmas to friends, family, and perfect strangers is going to do much of any good for their happiness.
BO: I walk up to someone as a customer of theirs and say, Merry Christmas. They reply with some secular Happy Holidays B.S. Don't I have the right to be angry?
SS: It's your heart and mind. Sure you have the right, but your expression of that feeling must be kept within the parameters of everyone's social rights.
BO: I don't slap them or anything, but I do make sure they know I am upset and I will not be patronizing their establishment in the future.
SS: That's your right. If enough people respond as you do, it is likely that the employers will change their rules.
BO: Plenty of people respond the way I do!
SS: Then you have nothing to worry about.
BO: I do. I have to mobilize people to respond the way I do.
SS: Is Christmas a Holiday?
BO: What kind of question is that? Of course it is! It is the holiest of holidays!
SS: Then when someone wishes you Happy Holidays, does that include Christmas?
BO: It might, but I want people to respect my beliefs and religion and wish me a merry time during the holiday I'm celebrating.
SS: Do the people that know you personally wish you a Merry Christmas?
BO: Obviously, yes.
SS: So we are only talking about the people who don't know you personally.
BO: Everybody knows me.
SS: That is probably not true. And it is certainly not true that everybody knows you personally. Even people that know you from your work might not know what you truly, personally, believe. So the question that remains is, why do you expect people that don't know you personally to wish you a merry Christmas when they don't know your personal beliefs.
BO: They do know them, even if they don't know me professionally or personally, because I just told them Merry Christmas a second ago.
SS: And they told it to you back in the impersonal, generic form of Happy Holidays, which is no less habitually uttered by them than is your form of seasonal good wishes.
BO: Why can't they habitually utter Merry Christmas?
SS: They could and would if that was what their employers requested while they are on the job. As it is, their employers prefer the more generic and neutral greeting.
BO: And that's the problem!
SS: Only if their potential customers make it their problem.
BO: You think I'm wasting my time.
SS: I can't properly judge your use of time. It's your time, so you decide. But it would be a waste of my time. I'm not that interested in altering the incidental habits of inattentive speech of people. And if I were, I'd probably work to inspire the broader seasonal greeting because it is more inclusive.
BO: Don't you respect my right to be told Merry Christmas?
SS: No, I do not, because you do not have that right. Even if you economically force every employer to insist that their employees say Merry Christmas, you have not won a right. Even if it becomes the law of the land, you do not have the right. In fact, the opposite is true. I have the right to not say to you Merry Christmas no less than does a mute.
BO: But if your employer says you have to, and you don't, then you'll be fired.
SS: It's my right to take that chance.
BO: If it's the law, you'll be thrown in jail.
SS: That's my right too, in resisting an unjust law.
BO: That would be crazy to pick that hill to fight and die on.
SS: Maybe you're right. We can't all be as dedicated as you.
BO: What about governments?
SS: Depends on the government.
BO: Our government.
SS: Our government has clear boundaries dividing religious expression from public service. As much as those boundaries have eroded, the Constitution hasn't changed.
BO: Christmas is a national holiday, Mister.
SS: And it is also a religious holiday, and one need not have much to do with the other. You're exactly right.
BO: Christmas is one thing, not two things.
SS: Even Christianity is not one thing, with numerous sects and denominations, so how can the religious observance of its holidays be one thing? In a matter of speaking, the nationalization of Christmas as a holiday worked to secularize it by providing an entirely nonreligious social facet to that date on the calendar.
BO: So you're saying that Christmas should have been kept as a religious holiday?
SS: No. Make it a national holiday, or not. I personally don't care. But if I were a Christian such as yourself, and wanted to maintain the sanctity of a religious holiday, I might not have wanted it be normalized, nationalized, standardized, commercialized, and the like. My point is that your argument that it is a national holiday actual works against your feeling that the government should then respect the religious import of the holiday. It already smothered its religious implications in making it a national day off.
BO: Do you think Christians should work to reverse that ruling?
SS: At this point, I doubt you'll find too many Christians that would work toward that. And for all that would, as many or more Christians would resist. For whatever reason it is given, a day off is a day off. That is historically the ultimate holiday anyway and employees will fight for that.
BO: Thanks for joining me, Sankara. Merry Christmas.
SS: Merry Christmas, Bill.
BO: Do you mean that?
SS: I do.
