By Kollengode S Venkataraman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 31, 2001
As an agnostic Hindu, I understand Tom Piatak’s tirade ” ‘Happy Holidays?’ Bah! Humbug!” (Forum, Dec. 23). But I have different reasons.
It is the consumer culture, not multiculturalism, that keeps out Christ during Christmas. Retailers gift-wrap Christ ignoring his teachings since a third of consumer spending is during Christmas. Christian theologians themselves deplore this brazen commercialization. Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramdan and Diwall are simply following the bandwagon.
Do children and adults alike recognize that gifts are what we voluntarily and joyously give without comparison complexes?
In the Bible, Jesus compares a rich man who gives gold coins to the Temple with a poor man who gives the only copper coin he had. The poor man, Christ tells, was more generous because he gave everything he had.
The Christmas spirit should be kept in families, communities and churches where it naturally belongs, not in shopping-mall Santas. If this catches on, maybe even Hanukah, Ramadan, Kwanza. Diwali may revert to their simpler times.
As practitioners of the dominant reli-gion, Christians of all persuasions should be free to celebrate Christmas because it is “our” holiday, as Piatak says. But as a spiritual leader teaching compassion and love, Christ belongs to all, even to an unconvertable Hindu like me.
Platak says Christianity is “one of the crowing glories of the Western culture that gave birth to America and sustains us still.”
Really? Christians arrived here escaping persecution from other Christians in Europe only to decimate the native population.
The success of Western civilization has nothing to do with Christian dogma, but everything to do with the rejection of them. Western civilization succeeded, when, starting from the Renaissance, Europe went back to its pre-Christian Greek roots of skepticism, enquiry and rational thinking. END