Can the government take a religious holiday and make it an official state holiday? Is it an establishment of religion when a religious holy day becomes an official state holiday? Because the United States has historically been dominated by Christians, there are many Christian practices which have become part of American culture - including the state recognition of Christian holidays.
Can the government take religious holidays and make official state holidays out of them? Is it an establishment of religion when a religious holy day becomes an official state holiday? Because America has historically been dominated by Christians, there are many Christian practices which are now part of American culture - among them, official state recognition of Christian holidays. But are Chris…
Should the government try to keep certain businesses and activities "off limits" on the sabbath of any particular religion? Is there a "secular purpose" to mandating one particular day off which just "happens" to be the sabbath of the country's dominant religion?
Legal enforcement of a 'day of rest' was dormant until recent years, but cat-calls from the choir have been increasing. There is a subtext of anti-civil liberty ideology in defenses of blue laws. Efforts to recreate blue laws do not occur in a political or theological vacuum - they are part of a larger agenda to limit what people can do in the name of others' religious purity. If the state can forbid Sunday shopping because majority Christian sects prohibit it, what else will they prohibit?
Blue laws, or sabbath laws, are attempts by some Christians to enforce a traditional Christian sabbath as a legally mandated day of rest for everyone. Courts have permitted this, but it violates church-state separation for laws to give Sundays to those churches which treat it as special - priests have no business calling upon our government to give them and their religious sects privileged status. Sundays, like every other day of the week, belong to everybody - not just to Christian churches.
Although making Christian holy days like Good Friday an official government holiday is a practice often accepted as a matter of course in the past, recently more and more people have begun to object to what they perceive as unfair favoritism being shown towards Christianity and Christian beliefs. Because of this, they are challenging the practice of accommodating Christian beliefs in ways not gen…
Where does the law currently stand with regards to official government observances of the Christian holy days of Good Friday and Easter? What are governments allowed and not allowed to do? What are schools allowed to do and what rights to students have? It's helpful to know the answers to these questions as well as what the case law is because you might confront constitutionally suspect actions by local school boards, school administrations, and city councils.
Do state and local laws or policies which create holidays on Good Friday violate the separation of church and state? Is making Good Friday a public or school holiday is unconstitutional, or can there be a secular purpose behind making Good Friday an official holiday? Indeed, is Good Friday still a religious holiday anymore or has it become a secular holiday? Some Christians want government should to make Good Friday an official public holiday, but others are pushing back.
The latter part of the year in the United States is affectionately known as the "holiday season" and less affectionately known as the "silly season." This is the time of year when we experience a cluster of holidays - it starts off slowly with Halloween, picks up speed with Thanksgiving, and as we approach the end of the year, we move quickly with Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, New Year's, and som…
Americans look forward to getting a day off on December 25, a day traditionally (and almost certainly erroneously) been celebrated as the birth day of Jesus Christ, savior for all Christians. What's wrong with that? Nothing, really - except possibly the fact that it is a holiday which is legally recognized/mandated by our government. Should Christmas be treated like a secular holiday?
Traditionally, public schools in America have been very explicit in their celebration of the holiday season - for students, it was a Christmas holiday season, a Christmas break, and celebratory events were specifically oriented towards Christmas. So long as America has been predominantly Christian in composition, such a focus went unchallenged and even unnoticed by the majority.
Surely the most obvious and divisive of the holiday questions is that of religious displays in public. These generate the most discussion, the most debate, and of course the most lawsuits - including a couple of high-profile Supreme Court cases. Understanding these issues go a long way towards helping us understand the entire spectrum of social problems surrounding religious holidays.
This holiday season is, naturally enough, heavily structured with tradition - indeed, tradition is very much the lifeblood of any holiday. We have trick-or-treating during Halloween, family dinner during Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping for most of December, and of course the series of rancorous lawsuits.
Good Friday is a Christian Holy Day which many Christians would surely like to have off from work or school, but does that mean that governments should grant it official recognition over and above the holy days of other religions?
