 "The Secularization of Christmas in New York: How Religious and Cultural Diversity is Redefining the Holiday Season")
Christmas in New York, as in the rest of the great metropolises of the world, has almost completely lost its original religious meaning and is reduced to little more than a pine tree decorated with inconsequential figures and lights, as well as plant wreaths, although In this city, political correctness reaches somewhat peculiar extremes.
This example is useful: films like ‘Home Alone’ or ‘Christmas Cabin Fever’, from the Wimpy Kid saga (‘Greg’s Diary’, in Spanish) no longer pass the filter of what is acceptable. in a public school in New York, where both students and teachers have diverse backgrounds and religions.
And although Christian references to Christmas are anecdotal in ‘Home Alone’, the management of this Upper West Side school considers that “it may hurt the religious sensitivities” of some students and has vetoed those that could be seen as Christmas movies. , according to the testimony of a student collected by EFE.
‘Happy Holidays’ sounds better than ‘Merry Christmas’
The traditional greeting of ‘Merry Christmas’ has already fallen into disuse: in this city populated by people of all races and religions, the more neutral ‘Happy Holidays’ has long been opted for, and schools They no longer give ‘Christmas holidays’, but ‘winter holidays’.
In the English language, the word ‘Christmas’ (the mass of Christ, in its origin) necessarily refers to the figure of Jesus Christ, just as in Spanish Christmas means the date of the birth (nativity) of Jesus, a celebration which many New Yorkers may not relate to.
It is estimated that 1.6 million Jews, 800,000 Muslims and 400,000 Hindus live in New York, and at least in these last two cases they are populations with exponential growth in the coming years, although it is difficult for them to endanger the majority. Christian of 4.8 million people.
The phenomenon is not exclusively New York, since something similar happens in London, Paris or any other large city that for centuries has been fundamentally Christian and now has large communities that profess other faiths, while Christians – Catholics as well as Protestants – live a growing process of religious detachment.
Christmas pines and Jewish Janukas
The date of Christmas usually coincides on the calendar with the Jewish Hanukkah -beginning of December-, which in New York is visible by the display of the menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum that becomes nine on these dates.
Menoras can be seen in numerous places in New York, next to the Christmas pines, but even these trees have lost their Christian symbolism, and it is difficult to find among their lights and dolls anything related to the birth of Jesus, be it the Baby Jesus himself, the Virgin Mary, the animals in the manger or even the star of Bethlehem.
It is true that New York, a city founded by Dutch Protestants, lives in general alien to the Christian imagery associated with Catholicism, and therefore only in some Italian or Latin neighborhoods can one find nativity scenes – Saint Joseph and the Virgin, the Ox and the mule, the Three Wise Men…- in public places, almost always next to churches.
But even more ‘neutral’ characters like Santa Claus have lost public presence in the city in favor of increasingly aseptic symbols, so much so that it seems that Christmas is just synonymous with winter and cold.
And so, the Christmas figures hanging from the trees or from the plant wreaths on the doors are just ice stars, snowmen, shiny balls or reindeer figures, in addition to thousands of LED bulbs , while Santa Claus little by little loses the ground that the tin soldiers gain.
2023-12-18 17:05:00
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