Andrew Lutton explains why we should pay attention to Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Yalda at Christmastime, even if no one else is celebrating them. He also points out that even people of African descent don t seem to pay as much attention to them as they do to Christmas.
00:00:00.080Ho ho ho, tis the season to be jolly, unless that is you work at Canada's state broadcaster, CBC.
00:00:09.120Now, CBC, not the Christmas Broadcasting Corporation as far as I can tell,
00:00:13.500has staked a very unique position this time of year, that at Christmas time we should focus on Kwanzaa and Yalda and Hanukkah
00:00:23.500and everything else that happens around this time of year for people of other belief systems that do not celebrate Christmas.
00:00:30.660This is the headline of the story published on CBC this week.
00:00:34.960Christmas is here, yay, but what about other religious holidays?
00:00:40.240Now, I think that the feigned excitement of Christmas in the headline was just to discourage people from doing what I'm about to do right now,
00:00:47.660which is taking aim at the Grinchery that exists in the rest of the piece.
00:00:53.500In the loud din of Christmas, we sadly forget to credit Hanukkah, Yalda, and Kwanzaa for the warmth and cheer they add to this season.
00:01:04.240I think there's a lot of people who credit Hanukkah, namely Jewish people who celebrate Hanukkah,
00:01:09.940and Kwanzaa is not really a real holiday anymore.
00:01:13.240It's about 60 years old, and even people of African descent don't seem to pay as much attention to it as they do to Christmas.
00:01:19.700And Yalda, what's a Yalda? I don't know, what's a Yalda with you?
00:01:22.940Yalda is a very niche Persian holiday that, again, is very relevant and significant to people of Iranian descent,
00:01:29.820but not something that we celebrate en masse in Canada.
00:01:33.500Christmas is overwhelmingly the holiday of choice in December for people in this country.
00:01:39.960And that doesn't mean we can't celebrate other religions, but we should do it when we encounter people who celebrate those holidays,
00:01:48.920not as some sort of penance to apologize for being a country that is overwhelmingly Christian.
00:01:55.040And this CBC story saying we need to, at Christmastime, focus more on Kwanzaa is one of these very laughable things.
00:02:01.260There was a great story a couple of years ago where there was a Kwanzaa parade in Los Angeles that had, I think, like all of 12 people show up,
00:02:08.060because even then there just isn't the interest this time of year that there is to Christmas.
00:02:13.280And this is multiculturalism to the point of ridiculousness,
00:02:18.600where we don't even look at expressions of faiths and commemorations of holidays as things that are supposed to happen when people celebrate them.
00:02:25.620And we say that everyone has to do it equally because it's not fair if we don't.
00:02:30.380So because Kwanzaa exists in December, we've got to pay attention to Kwanzaa,
00:02:34.520even if everyone in the room celebrates Christmas.