Every year, we celebrate a plethora of holidays which are mostly derived from religious customs. However, I can’t help but notice that those that are the most fantastical are those taken from Catholic society.
Christmas is modernly represented as presents in stockings, and elves making toys, when it is supposed to be about the birth of Christ. Families spend their salaries on excessive gift shopping, and put up figurines of Santa with his reindeer, but won’t bother to attend mass. While I understand that many Canadians are not of the same faith as I, I do not understand why they should warp our traditions so that they have something to celebrate. Every ethnic group has their own list of celebrations, but none of these have had their customs as modified as ours.
Take a look at Easter. For centuries, it has been celebrated as the resurrection of Jesus, but recently it’s taken a turn. Nowadays, Easter brings chocolate eggs and the Easter Bunny to mind, which have nothing to do with the original celebration. The fabrication of new entities to market, sell, and honour in the place of an actual religious holiday is wholly disrespectful in my opinion.
Still don’t believe me? Think about St. Patrick’s Day. What comes to mind? A tiny green leprechaun with a pot of gold. This icon is a commercialized figure meant to represent Irish stereotypes and mythology with no connection to the religious saint for whom we named the day. Saint Patrick’s Day is actually meant to commemorate when Christianity was brought to Ireland by the man himself. While this day originally entails many festivities, it has nothing to do with the popularized, watered-down version of what it is supposed to be.
The reason why this is such a big deal to me is that this level of complete modification happens to virtually no other religion or culture. You can’t imagine another version of Hanukkah or Eid. What if everybody celebrated Yom-Kippur, but instead of it being a day of repentance and prayer, we celebrated some animated figurehead, indulging excessively in foods with no true connection to the religion? It would be inconsiderate to those practicing the religion. To have their days of reverence reduced to marketing strategies to fill profit margins is unthinkable, but this is our present situation.
While I fully support holidays that are suitable for the entire public, like Canada Day, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s, I believe that religious celebrations should be preserved without commercialization.