EDITORIAL: Greeting the True Spirit of the Holiday

By The Record, Stockton, Calif., The Record, Stockton, Calif.

Dec. 25–OCEAN ISLE BEACH, N.C. — Happy holidays, Stockton. That’s not an attempt at a politically correct salutation. It’s an effort to be polite and courteous — something we need to think about at Christmas. The American Family Association and columnist Bill O’Reilly want me — and retail advertisers — to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I can’t and won’t do that. It might be appropriate if Stockton were exclusively Christian. Stockton, like the nation, is of many faiths and I want to respect them. A “Merry Christmas” would sound rather disrespectful, for example, to my Jewish friends who’ll marking the start of Hanukkah at sundown today. Putting and keeping the Christ in Christmas for Christians shouldn’t mean wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. We need to put and keep that sacred holiday in the right place — in our lives if we’re Christians and in our knowledge and respect if we’re not. We need to treat all religious celebrations and observances the same way. Several years ago, I wrote about Christmas when I was growing up: “When I was in elementary school in Maine, you couldn’t tell Heseltine School, where I was a dutiful student Monday through Friday, from Woodfords Congregational Church, where I went to Sunday school. There was as much religious symbolism in the public school — nativity scenes, singing of Christmas carols, etc. — as there was in Sunday school. “David Zolov, the Stein twins? Nobody gave them or their Judaism a thought. They were expected to sing “˜Silent Night’ and participate in the Heseltine religious play the same as us Christian kids. “At this point in my life, I can’t imagine our intolerance or stupidity. Why weren’t our parents and their parents demanding a stop to what was government-established religion? What were our teachers thinking? What was the school board doing?” I renewed contact with Zolov — he’s a physician and medical school professor — at my wife’s 50th high school reunion and told him about mentioning his experiences in a column. He remembered those Heseltine days and the fact no teacher ever mentioned Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur when he was absent celebrating those holidays. His wife, who went to public schools in another state, went through the same Christmas carol experience and remembers mouthing some words in the carols rather than saying them aloud because they were so alien to her faith. Those days, as best I know, are long behind us. I don’t want O’Reilly or the American Family Association trying to bring them back. If they want good Christian men to rejoice, as that old carol has it, they might consider the example of Zolov’s father, Benjamin Zolov, also a physician. It demonstrates, as Zolov reminded me, of what men of goodwill can do. I had forgotten what the father of another schoolmate, Del McDonald, did in those years. Del’s father, the district attorney and a leader in our church, acted as a middleman to help Benjamin Zolov buy the home he wanted. There was an unwritten agreement not to sell houses in the area to Jews, so Del’s dad quietly bought the house Zolov wanted and immediately resold it to him. Benjamin Zolov fought discrimination where he found it.. He worked for years to get the state legislature to pass one of the nation’s toughest anti-discrimination laws. Zolov, pere and fils, are one of the best examples of why we should keep religion where it belongs — in our personal lives. It’s why this day I say: — Merry Christmas to my Christian friends; — Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends; — Happy holidays to everyone else. Marsh is opinion page editor emeritus of The Record. Contact him at The Record, P.O. Box 900, Stockton, CA 95201, or by e-mail at editair@aol.com

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Record, Stockton, Calif.

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