This year’s holiday season is upon us, and I am getting requests about religious diversity for the first time in years. The requests are not fueled by the usual arguments about whether to use the word “holiday” or Christmas. The requests are motivated by the Israel-Hamas war and the antisemitism and Islamophobia that it’s generating. There is a new awareness that we are unprepared for dealing with religious conflicts on our home turf. In fact, our religious literacy in general is modest and often borders on nonexistent.
A half a century ago when I was a freshman at Radcliffe-Harvard and had to report my choice of major to the dean, I told her that I wanted to major in world religions. She reminded me that no such major existed. I kindly offered to assist in designing such a major. As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well. I did develop it on my own over many years and hoped that the university would keep up.
Few diversity professionals speak about religious diversity. That may not be bad because the topic does require knowledge, experience and expertise. And not many folks have an understanding of world religions, which is one of the reasons why memes, slogans and conspiracy theories with religious underpinnings spread so quickly and widely.
But it’s time to bring religious diversity out of the basement and create an educated citizenry on the topic. For example, we all know that Christmas is a national holiday as well as a religious one. But did you know that there are more than a dozen holy celebrations embedded in this time of the year? For example, there is Rohatsu/ Bodhi Day, celebrated in Buddhism as the Day of Enlightenment on Dec. 8. Then there is Kwanzaa on Dec. 26, a pan-African religious celebration originating in the U.S.
And did you know that because many holy days are determined by religious calendars rather than our “universal” calendar, the timing may differ somewhat year to year? For example, the Jewish holy celebration of Chanukah this year is observed between Dec. 7 and Dec. 15.