Rethinking the Holiday Season
Today’s December 22nd and it’s a holiday. So was yesterday. It’s the holiday season, right?
In the Jewish calendar, today is a fast day commemorating the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. “Happy holidays” doesn’t really fit the mood of this one.
Yesterday was Mawlid, the day when many Muslims celebrate the birth of Muhammad. It’s a national holiday throughout the Muslim world, yet somewhat controversial, because different groups celebrate it on different days (some will celebrate it this year on Dec. 26th) and because some groups, such as the Wahhabists, suggest it shouldn’t be a holiday at all. But at least it’s a celebratory event where “happy holidays” actually fits.
Next year, Mawlid falls on Dec. 11th [1], and by 2018 it will be in mid-November. You can’t really have Christmas in July, but Mawlid will be in July in 2029.
If you’re not getting it yet, the idea of a multi-religious “holiday season” that is being promoted in North America is well-intentioned but silly.
There’s no Muslim holiday season. Islam uses a fully lunar calendar so no holiday is linked to a specific season. But if you use the term holiday season more freely to mean any time of the year when there are a lot of holidays, then maybe Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr would be a better bet, in terms of Ramadan being a kind of month-long holiday (in the original sense of “holy days”). And Eid al-Fitr, which celebrates breaking the fast, is a feast day, which gives it some similarity to the traditions of Christmas meals.
So your best bet for a “holiday season” in Islam is about 97% fast days, and it can happen in literally any part of the year.
There’s definitely a Jewish holiday season, though, because the Jewish calendar is lunisolar and therefore holidays stay in the same season [2]. However, despite the non-Jewish fame of Channukkah [3], it’s really a small holiday in a religion that has a lot of them. Where Hannukah [3] fits with the Christmas spirit is as a winter-ish holiday that’s mostly for kids, and it’s not a big leap from the traditional gifts of gelt (money or sometimes chocolate coins) to adapting the Christmas tradition of gift-giving.
But Hanukka [3] isn’t really the Jewish holiday season. Believe it or not, 8-day holidays aren’t even that big a deal for Jews [4]. No, the real holiday season for Jews is in early fall: roughly September/October. It starts with Rosh Hashanah, which is technically the Jewish New Year [5] but acts a lot like Thanksgiving. Then you have the fast day of Yom Kippur, then the 8 days of Sukkot and more… in total you have 14 days of special holidays in just over 3 weeks. Now that’s a holiday season. By the time Channukah [3] rolls around, the really hardcore Jews are pretty holidayed out. It ends up being roughly as big a deal as Labour Day Weekend, or Spring Break since it’s mostly for the kids.
The holiday season is one of those ideas that’s kind of sweet but doesn’t make much sense. In North America, the holiday season is really just the Christmas season. Even New Year’s isn’t a strictly secular holiday: it’s the New Year of a calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII because the church wanted to prevent the date drift of Easter into the wrong season. The other major religions have their own New Year’s dates.
There’s nothing wrong with saying “happy holidays” — it’s more sensitive to those who don’t celebrate Christmas, and in any case Christmas and New Year’s create a sense of celebratory plurality.
But let’s not pretend that the “holiday season” is one season where many religions celebrate important holidays. It’s 100% Christian in origin. What’s shared is that the atheists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and everyone else come together to ignore the incompatible religious messages and focus on the consumerism, awkward work parties, overeating and family dysfunction that bring us all together.
- [1] Technically the Islamic calendar requires actual observation of the crescent moon to officially declare the start of new months, so Dec. 11th is just a really good guess.
- [2] The Jewish calendar operates with leap months, so holidays vary by as much as a month in the solar calendar (eg. the Gregorian).
- [3] However you want to spell Chanukah is probably fine.
- [4] There’s also Pesach (Passover) and Shavuot.
- [5] One of three, in fact.
