Is Nothing Sacred?

 

Maybe you have religion. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you celebrate certain religious holidays. Maybe you don’t. 

Your celebration of those holidays could be deeply rooted in faith. On the other hand, they might be more of an affirmation of family connection. Or perhaps you observe them in a secular way, as seasonal cultural festivals. 

You may have a spiritual practice that I know nothing about which may or may not have recurring holy days. You may be completely areligious. 

First things first: whoever you are, you’re welcome here. 

I’m writing this not because I want to pry into the religious lives of my readers but rather to address the brouhaha surrounding the proposed HCPSS 2027-2028 calendar. 

Howard County Board of Education approves 27-28 school calendar with shortened spring break, Kiersten Hacker, Baltimore Sun

There has been some vocal criticism to the new calendar because of the reduction of spring break. And some folks have drawn a straight line from that to the incorporation of non-Christian religious holidays into the calendar. 

“I liked it the way it used to be…”  When we could ignore everyone’s religion but my own?

Now, to be clear, I do not follow the work of the calendar committee and I do not compare and contrast each calendar from year to year. I do know that it is immensely complicated. It is not simply about picking a start day and end day and counting out the required number of days. 

Do you remember when the former Governor and former Comptroller stuck their oars in to reshape school calendars statewide? That was, if you’ll forgive the expression, an unholy mess. 

There are so many variables involved, not the least of which is the issue of snow days and how to make them up. Which I believe is a big part of why next year’s calendar looks the way it does. 

But rather than looking at how all the important elements come together to make a school calendar, some folks have decided that it’s other people’s religions that are the problem. It seems to be the low-hanging fruit here. 

A cheap target, if you will. 

“No more of these religious holidays on the calendar.”

Okay? Then that means no Christmas, no Good Friday, no Easter Monday. And you do know that Thanksgiving was originally a religious observance, right? Maybe we should cross that one off, too.

That’s when you discover that they don’t really mean that. In their minds there exists a world where their religion is the norm. Everything else is extra and it carries less weight. Or they may couch it in terms of numbers. We should only close schools if the numbers of students and staff that would be out is above a certain amount.

Is that what makes a day holy? Numbers? What if you moved to a community that was predominantly Jewish, or Muslim, and they didn’t close for Christian holidays because the numbers really wouldn’t impact instruction? Would it make your religious holidays feel any less holy to you?

Can you even fathom that? 

Probably not, because Christianity is so deeply imbedded into our national institutions that people just point to it as “normal.” It may have become the norm but that was by choice. Well, lots of choices, many of them biased and exclusionary.

We don’t have to like the new school calendar. We can be honest about what parts would be difficult for us as parents, or teachers, or staff. But I feel very strongly that any solutions do not come from invalidating the religions of people within our community. 

They aren’t the problem, and diminishing them isn’t the answer.

Village Green/Town² Comments