If people spent more time focusing on what they themselves believe and less time obsessing over what everybody else believes, or doesn't believe, we'd live in a better world. I believe I'd like to walk across Daley Plaza without having the earth's major religions conducting a weird holiday beauty contest one month out of every 12. It isn't as if Christmas — or Hanukkah, or Kwanza, or atheism—would get overlooked if the government didn't dedicate its land to drawing attention to it.
Readers sometimes accuse me of being an atheist, based on my complete non-belief in God. I always correct them. I am not an atheist. Atheists are zealots, too, elevating denial of the divine into a kind of faux religion, complete with pieties, and manage to be as aggressive and joyless as those who at least can blame a higher power for making them the way they are.
Rather, I am an agnostic. Agnostics know what we know but don’t make such a fuss. We’re the Unitarians of the non-belief community.
Why? Rob Sherman for one. Anyone who has lived here long remembers the Buffalo Grove atheist gadfly, storming into board meetings, trying to get crosses off of water towers in such a heat of unpleasant legalistic dudgeon that it indicted the very notion of opposing government-endorsed faith. Northbrook could paint the bleeding heart of Jesus Christ on its water tower and I’d hesitate to complain, thinking of Rob Sherman.
Maybe that makes me timid.
For instance, I was not glad to see that the Freedom From Religion Foundation has erected a white plastic “A” at Daley Plaza.
"Very Hester Prynne-ish" my editor sniffed, though it stands not for "Adultery" but for "Atheism" and "Agnosticism" and a bunch of other free-thinking concepts.
Let's put this new public pronouncement of belief, or rather, non-belief, in context.
There is the 57-foot official Chicago Christmas tree, a gorgeous Colorado blue spruce festooned with 51,000 colored lights.
Then, a polite distance away, a brutalist 20-foot stainless steel menorah — the sort of menorah the Germans would have erected at the Nuremberg rallies if, you know, they were into that kind of thing.
Next to the menorah, a life-size Nativity scene with real straw and, lest anyone miss the point, a chiding placard noting that it was paid for by private donations from those who "wish to keep CHRIST in CHRISTMAS." (And who is taking Him out? We nonbelievers, striding into your churches, disrupting your services? No? Oh, you mean people who don't share your faith pointing out that they live here too and maybe you should consider honoring your particular religion in your own church? Yes, that is tough).
Not that I mind. Honestly. Have fun. I like Christmas. Carols. Lights. Cookies. It isn't my faith, true, but then Scarlett Johansson isn't my wife, yet I don't mind seeing her either.
The distinction I make is between celebration and castigation.
The city tree is a celebration. The creche and the rest, castigation. Protected speech, true, though you wonder what happens when Muslims and Buddhists, Scientologists and Taoists all stake out spots. What the war-on-Christmas crowd doesn't get is there are lots of religions, and if they all set up shop on Daley Plaza soon there wouldn't be room for the big faux German Christmas folk village that's already taken over the place.
When you're not really a victim, pretending to be one feels good, to you, because you don't understand suffering, so can shroud yourself in the unearned dignity that those who have actually felt oppression — at the hands of your forebears, as it turns out — are entitled to. Those who complain about Christmas being edged out of the public realm are like singers who complain that they can't put on blackface and sing "Swanee River" in a minstrel show. Yeah, that's a shame, but there's history here. Christians have been shoving their faith down people's throats at pain of death for a thousand years, and the key miracle of modern society has been prying their fingers off the levers of government, science and education. Maybe if Christian zealots weren't ripping pages out of textbooks, maybe if they were weren't yanking contraceptives out of women's purses, then Christmas would be welcomed by all faiths. But they do, and thus holiday trappings are a reminder of who has the whip hand, still.
Agnostics get this. Atheists, well, they're putting up their big plastic A between the shame-on-you creche and Albert Speer's menorah. With a placard, "to encourage the non-religious to come out of the closet."
OK. I'm out. And here's what I wish you atheists would do. Find something you think is significant and do it. On the day of the winter solstice, don elk antlers and prance around a bonfire at Daley Plaza. I'll join you.
People sincerely expressing their religion in a public space seldom run afoul of anyone. The Chicago Police do not chase carolers off city sidewalks. Hasidic Jews can dance their brand new Torahs off to new homes. Muslims find a quiet corner and pray.
For some, that isn't enough. They want to take their faith, or non-faith, roll it into a tube and bop the rest of us on the head. It's not subtle and not joyous and not welcome.
"Very Hester Prynne-ish" my editor sniffed, though it stands not for "Adultery" but for "Atheism" and "Agnosticism" and a bunch of other free-thinking concepts.
Let's put this new public pronouncement of belief, or rather, non-belief, in context.
There is the 57-foot official Chicago Christmas tree, a gorgeous Colorado blue spruce festooned with 51,000 colored lights.
Then, a polite distance away, a brutalist 20-foot stainless steel menorah — the sort of menorah the Germans would have erected at the Nuremberg rallies if, you know, they were into that kind of thing.
Next to the menorah, a life-size Nativity scene with real straw and, lest anyone miss the point, a chiding placard noting that it was paid for by private donations from those who "wish to keep CHRIST in CHRISTMAS." (And who is taking Him out? We nonbelievers, striding into your churches, disrupting your services? No? Oh, you mean people who don't share your faith pointing out that they live here too and maybe you should consider honoring your particular religion in your own church? Yes, that is tough).
Not that I mind. Honestly. Have fun. I like Christmas. Carols. Lights. Cookies. It isn't my faith, true, but then Scarlett Johansson isn't my wife, yet I don't mind seeing her either.
The distinction I make is between celebration and castigation.
The city tree is a celebration. The creche and the rest, castigation. Protected speech, true, though you wonder what happens when Muslims and Buddhists, Scientologists and Taoists all stake out spots. What the war-on-Christmas crowd doesn't get is there are lots of religions, and if they all set up shop on Daley Plaza soon there wouldn't be room for the big faux German Christmas folk village that's already taken over the place.
When you're not really a victim, pretending to be one feels good, to you, because you don't understand suffering, so can shroud yourself in the unearned dignity that those who have actually felt oppression — at the hands of your forebears, as it turns out — are entitled to. Those who complain about Christmas being edged out of the public realm are like singers who complain that they can't put on blackface and sing "Swanee River" in a minstrel show. Yeah, that's a shame, but there's history here. Christians have been shoving their faith down people's throats at pain of death for a thousand years, and the key miracle of modern society has been prying their fingers off the levers of government, science and education. Maybe if Christian zealots weren't ripping pages out of textbooks, maybe if they were weren't yanking contraceptives out of women's purses, then Christmas would be welcomed by all faiths. But they do, and thus holiday trappings are a reminder of who has the whip hand, still.
Agnostics get this. Atheists, well, they're putting up their big plastic A between the shame-on-you creche and Albert Speer's menorah. With a placard, "to encourage the non-religious to come out of the closet."
OK. I'm out. And here's what I wish you atheists would do. Find something you think is significant and do it. On the day of the winter solstice, don elk antlers and prance around a bonfire at Daley Plaza. I'll join you.
People sincerely expressing their religion in a public space seldom run afoul of anyone. The Chicago Police do not chase carolers off city sidewalks. Hasidic Jews can dance their brand new Torahs off to new homes. Muslims find a quiet corner and pray.
For some, that isn't enough. They want to take their faith, or non-faith, roll it into a tube and bop the rest of us on the head. It's not subtle and not joyous and not welcome.