Today Non- Subscribers get a FREE taste of what they are missing out on.
Have a read of this Insight Politics article then decide whether or not you would like to subscribe to a Silver subscription or upgrade your existing Basic or Bronze level Subscription to Silver.
It was a click-or-you’ll-miss-it news item on Stuff.
Plea to Make Diwali a Public Holiday
A Mr Rajan Zed, president of the grand sounding ‘Universal Society of Hinduism’, is claiming that it was ‘unfair’ Hindu practitioners couldn’t have time off work to paint themselves bright colours and watch each other dance in unison.
He went on to say New Zealand making Diwali a public holiday would be a “Step in the positive direction”.
More like a step in the direction that he and some other multi-cult enthusiasts are hell-bent on taking us.
Mr Zed, you see, is not a local. US based, he is a member of one of those meddlesome international organisations that opine from time to time on the domestic affairs of nations. No such call for a holiday has come from local members of the Hindu community. So why was this even a story? Originally posted on the website of that most left-leaning of media outlets, Radio New Zealand, it concurs with their general progressive project to hack away at this country’s foundations.
And so to Christmas.
The same Auckland council that embraces a religious festival from the subcontinent appears intent on eliminating any religious connotations from our traditional Christmas. A look at their ‘Our Auckland’ website lists the Smith and Caughey window display, the Vector Christmas lights and ‘Christmas Karaoke’ as Christmas ‘events’ without any indication of what kicked off this whole Christmas business two thousand or so years ago.
The religious proposition that Diwali marks ‘the spiritual victory of light over darkness’ was trumpeted by the same council that cannot bring itself to allude to the meaning of the Christmas season. This extends to their choice of decorations. Currently, the inner city is adorned with creations the council claims to be “Christmassy”. Random large scale constructions – baubles, stars, trees – litter the streets like some giant spilt his Christmas tree decorations box when he was getting it out of the attic. There are also a host of confusing flags flying from street lamps with brightly coloured geometric designs that have about as much to do with Christmas as professional wrestling does.
This deliberate denuding of Christmas of its true significance is no doubt seen as necessary by the woke folk to ‘reflect New Zealand’s changing demography’. Immigrants coming to these shores, goes the progressive mindset, would feel excluded by any reference to Christianity in the public square. No doubt as we move further left, the arguments would become loonier – likely ending in the claim that Jesus was a white supremacist/zionist/ patriarchal oppressor of some kind.
And yet these same immigrants have chosen to make a new life in a country formed by the Christian ethos. The laws, customs, public and private morality, and even the economic system (according to Max Weber) of New Zealand are in large part Christian creations. These have gifted us a relatively peaceful and prosperous society, the type of society that people want to join, not leave. If we remove the Jenga block of Christianity from the stack are we so sure the whole structure won’t come tumbling down?
Those on the left who are loath to celebrate Christmas as non-inclusive are ironically jettisoning that which has made this place so welcoming to diverse ethnicities in the first place. Many immigrant groups – Korean Pentecostals, Filipino Catholics, and Pasifika groups – find their Christianity helps them to adapt to their new home. The unremitting championing of festivals and celebrations not traditionally part of New Zealand culture – Chinese New Year, Diwali, Eid – while ignoring traditional holidays, harms a cohesion that all of us benefit from.
You might have assumed from the foregoing that I’m some stripe of God botherer. I’m not. If I’m a Christian it’s of the passive cultural sort. I attend church exactly once a year – at Christmas. Lately it has become fashionable to assume the Grinch position and scorn the yuletide season. I sympathise. If I hear Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas’ in my local supermarket one more time there may be a Christmas massacre in the Baked Goods aisle. Despite the rubbish music and the Santa hats on adults, I at least respect the Christian origins of the celebration.
I look at my annual church going as a tax. A bit of a sacrifice (oh Christ, I mean crumbs, those hymns!) that I make out of respect for the moral genius of Christ and the Christian religion founded in his name. A recognition of all the bounty that religion has granted myself, my family and my country.
Unlike most taxes, it’s a charge that all of us, immigrant or citizen, should be happy to pay.
Did you enjoy reading that?
Subscribe to a Silver subscription or upgrade your existing Basic or Bronze level Subscription to Silver today.