Official Easter


Small note to diversity folks:

1. Putting “Happy Easter!” on the cafeteria menu, but not Passover, is showing official favoritism to a single religion.

2. When you put “Happy Easter!” on the menu, you should probably recognize that not all Christian faiths calculate Easter the same day.

3. Really, handing out Easter candy on Good Friday is kind of inappropriate – not only for the reasons above, but also because quite a few Christian faiths fast on Good Friday. And – if you’re going to recognize religions at all – you should offer something other than chicken and roast beef as menu options on Fridays during Lent. Maybe, oh, that fish you had on the menu for Thursday?

Where the hell are the “War on Christmas” people now? Seriously – if an organization is going to officially recognize religious holidays and festivals, then it should try to recognize as many of them as possible. If it’s not going to recognize any of them officially, then it shouldn’t recognize ANY of them. Selectively recognizing the majority Protestant Christian religious holidays inherently reminds all the rest of us that we are not *really* part of the organization.

While in the military, there were specific rules for participating in politics. I couldn’t wear my uniform at rallies and marches (and yes, the Dubya administration had soldiers break this rule). I had to speak as a private citizen, not as a soldier, and so on. But these rules were not a limitation on *my* activies. They ensured that there was no way that it could appear that my actions were synonymous with the organization’s.

Why is that so bloody hard?