I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating.
IF you own a business or are in charge of a public space or institution, and
IF your business or public space or institution, for whatever reason, does something to mark a religious occasion, and
IF members of the public, especially of that religion, complain that your method of marking the religious occasion is not religious enough,
THEN I would recommend not doing anything at all to mark the occasion next time it rolls around, if not to save yourself some trouble, then at least for the amusement if seeing if anyone notices that you haven't gone to any effort.
4 comments:
Why does everybody else have to suffer then? IF you are talking about 'Holiday/Christmas' decorations, I enjoy seeing them up everywhere. I enjoy this because it gives me a good feeling and I think lights and wreaths etc. are beautiful. I am not overtly religious in any way, but I am not all annoyed at decorations that come from religious practices.
So I am asking, can you be more specific? I guess I am just not getting your point, and that may not be any fault on your part.
It doesn't make other people SUFFER, unless you have some bizarro condition where you are in EXCRUCIATING PAIN if you don't see pretty shiny lights or something.
To give a specific example, Walmart and Target in the US had their employees say "Happy Holidays" to people. Some religious organizations complained that they were saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." So if you were to apply my advice to this situation, next year they would just continue to say "Have a nice day" all year round. No one suffers from that, I doubt anyone would even notice, and it save everyone a lot of trouble.
Similarly, every year someone or another complains that the xmas decorations at City Hall aren't religious enough. So if they get these complaints from people who celebrate xmas (i.e. the target audience of the decorations) they should just not decorate the next year. Their efforts clearly are not appreciated by their target audience, and not having decorations at City Hall doesn't take away from anyone's private celebrations.
Now I understand what you were saying about complaining too much and then having things taken away. I forgot that people were complaining about decorations not being religious enough...I'm not sure taking them all away, like you do to crayons with a 3 year old when they decide they like to colour on the wall instead of the paper...is the right answer. It is like a slap on the wrist - "Bad, Religious people! No more Nativaty scenes for you because you like them too much!"
My theory is that people won't notice the lack of decorations at all. They wouldn't explicitly say "Guess what, we're not decorating this year!" They'd just quietly not decorate. I don't think people usually notice that things aren't decorated. If you walk past a house that doesn't have a wreath on the door, you don't go "Hey! There's no wreath on that door!" (And if you do notice, you generally assume they have a reason for not having a wreath). Even if people did notice, for the first several weeks the assumption would be "I guess they just haven't put the decorations up yet."
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