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Room for all faiths in the Arbor District

Saturday, December 22, 2007 11:12 PM CST

Our annual Christmas Party in the Arbor District was great fun, highlighted by opera students from Southern Illinois University Carbondale singing Christmas carols, Hanukkah songs and secular songs of the season. Wait a minute, carols and Hanukkah songs? That's right, and the committee that put together the Christmas party was made up of Catholics, Protestants, a Muslim and a Jew.

Gathered around the Christmas tree were people who were delighted to explain the pagan nature of the yule log and the winter solstice. Many brought something to share at the party, whether it was spirits or potluck dishes.

Our neighborhood embraces people of all religious backgrounds as well as those who are atheists or humanists. The Islamic Center of Carbondale and the Hillel Foundation for Jewish Campus Life are but a couple of blocks apart. The First Christian Church, the Christian Scientists, First Methodist and the First Baptist churches are just down the street. Father Bob Flannery of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church hoisted some holiday cheer along with Hugh Muldoon, the director of the Interfaith Center at the University. Practicing Buddhists are part of our organization. We also have a vibrant and growing Sufi Muslim community that includes one of the party planners, Susan Fehrenbacher.

America is seen by much of the world as an intensely religious country. According to the 2002 survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, the U.S. was the only developed nation where a large majority of citizens reported that religion plays a "very important" role in their lives. In contrast, countries like Britain report 44 percent as either agnostic, atheist or simply having no religion. Sweden reports 69 percent.

America was one of the first countries in the world to embrace freedom of religion, codifying the protection of a citizen's faith, or absence of faith, in the first amendment to the Constitution. That has allowed Americans the opportunity to embrace their neighbors without reservation or concern for their private beliefs.

The generous spirit with which our neighbors joined in the holiday celebration contrasts with some who appear churlish at the Christmas celebration. A friend sent us a copy of a memo from the Dean of the SIU Law School, Peter Alexander. The dean wrote to his staff that 'the government holiday called "Christmas" is a secular event and not a religious event.'

What used to be known as a Christmas tree at the Law School has been renamed the "Finals Tree" decorated only "with bows and candy canes." On the other hand, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee launched a troubling Christmas television commercial that defined the holiday purely as a religious celebration - implicitly off-limits to non-Christians. Perhaps he meant it to be inclusive, but it appeared ham-handed.

For us, Christmas - the midwinter holiday absorbed by Christianity - represents rebirth, peace and hope. Rooted in the Christian traditions that were pervasive among the American colonists, we have celebrated it as a season when family and friends come together to renew the bonds represented by the gifts and cards we exchange.

These days our family is not quite what it used to be. We, like others of our generation, have children scattered from Hong Kong to Chicago to Champaign to New York. It's difficult for everyone to gather for the holidays. And the commercialization of Christmas drives us to distraction. As we grow older, expensive presents mean less and family means more.

When our neighbors gather together at the Christmas party, they are celebrating many things. Some are mindful of the religious dimension of the holiday, others are glad to see old friends. Besides that, the music renews us and we find comfort in many of the traditions that surround Christmas - the giving of gifts, the wonderful smells and tastes of holiday foods, the lights that brighten our streets and the tree laden with ornaments accumulated through the years.

To celebrate Christmas, one needs only to feel a glimmer of peace, love or basic goodness in one's heart and understand that from that spark alone, the world can become a vastly better place.

So we say to all a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

D. Gorton and Jane Adams are residents of Carbondale.