2008 Woodie Awards
Letters to the Editor
Issue date: 1/13/05 Section: Opinions
- Page 1 of 2 next >
To the Editor:
In an article in last month's Middlebury Campus ["Santa Meets Secularism," December 9], I never said that "for several years I have sent out an all-faculty, all-staff e-mail protesting the naming of the holiday tree." This year was the very first time I got involved with this issue. What I did say was that in the past other members of the faculty and staff had raised the question in various settings and that I thought it was high time for a full discussion of the matter.
Sincerely,
Michael Katz
C.V. Starr Professor of Russian
To the Editor:
With reference to the article in last month's Middlebury Campus [Santa Meets Secularism, December 9], the argument over the tree may be trivial, but the point is worth making.
Almost no one objects to the lighted tree, which is beautiful and which everyone can enjoy. The objection is to calling it a "holiday" rather than a "Christmas" tree. What "holiday" other than Christmas does the tree represent? None - certainly not Divali, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or other festivals celebrated by some members of the Middlebury community in late fall and early winter. Who in the "real world" looks at a lighted evergreen and says, "What a beautiful holiday tree"? No one!
Even if the tree originated as a borrowing from pagan solstice observances, it is so universally associated with Christmas that calling it a "holiday" tree immediately raises the question of why it is not called a Christmas tree. The answer is either that the College does not want to acknowledge that it celebrates Christmas or that it is pretending to celebrate everyone's holiday equally. Neither is true. The College is really selecting a symbol of the majority's holiday and pretending that with a change of name it can be applied to all. The intention is good but the result is institutional hypocrisy.
Since this is an institution whose mission includes the search for truth and insistence on intellectual honesty, why not just practice truth in celebration and call a Christmas tree a Christmas tree?
In an article in last month's Middlebury Campus ["Santa Meets Secularism," December 9], I never said that "for several years I have sent out an all-faculty, all-staff e-mail protesting the naming of the holiday tree." This year was the very first time I got involved with this issue. What I did say was that in the past other members of the faculty and staff had raised the question in various settings and that I thought it was high time for a full discussion of the matter.
Sincerely,
Michael Katz
C.V. Starr Professor of Russian
To the Editor:
With reference to the article in last month's Middlebury Campus [Santa Meets Secularism, December 9], the argument over the tree may be trivial, but the point is worth making.
Almost no one objects to the lighted tree, which is beautiful and which everyone can enjoy. The objection is to calling it a "holiday" rather than a "Christmas" tree. What "holiday" other than Christmas does the tree represent? None - certainly not Divali, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or other festivals celebrated by some members of the Middlebury community in late fall and early winter. Who in the "real world" looks at a lighted evergreen and says, "What a beautiful holiday tree"? No one!
Even if the tree originated as a borrowing from pagan solstice observances, it is so universally associated with Christmas that calling it a "holiday" tree immediately raises the question of why it is not called a Christmas tree. The answer is either that the College does not want to acknowledge that it celebrates Christmas or that it is pretending to celebrate everyone's holiday equally. Neither is true. The College is really selecting a symbol of the majority's holiday and pretending that with a change of name it can be applied to all. The intention is good but the result is institutional hypocrisy.
Since this is an institution whose mission includes the search for truth and insistence on intellectual honesty, why not just practice truth in celebration and call a Christmas tree a Christmas tree?