Religious Festivals and Social Events

Yesterday was Holi, the Hindu Spring Festival of Colors.  It is an ancient festival with deep religious significance in the Hindu faith.  It begins with a variety of religious rituals and culminates in a joyous event in which people paint one another with bright colors. 

“Holi is celebrated as a social event in some areas of the United States.”  Wikipedia tells us these events are generally secular, celebrating things like the coming of spring, love, peace, equality for all.  Those are all lovely sentiments.  And there is nothing wrong with celebrating any of them.  And one can understand how dancing and spraying paint on oneself and others might be an enticing form of merriment to many.

But, what happens when we take a religious event and turn it into a secular social event?  When an event with deep religious significance is appropriated to support a secular festival, it trivializes the underlying religion and its beliefs.  It minimizes the importance of that faith and by extension, the people who are part of that faith.

This appropriation and trivialization is not uncommon.  Look at any public school today in early December.  There will often be some sort of holiday celebration in which pieces of religious holidays that occur near that time of the year are combined to create some sort of festivity.  There may be a menorah representing Hanukah, but will the children have any understanding of the significance of that menorah and the miracle that underlies the Hanukah religious celebration?   To represent Christmas students are likely to have a Christmas tree or similar decoration or maybe even an Angel, but the religious meaning of the holiday to Christians – the miracle of the birth of the son of God – are lost.  Students will learn that December is a time for celebration and gift giving, they may learn that some people celebrate differently, but will they have any understanding of the deep religious significance of these events or even that such a deeper meaning exists?

In today’s society, along with taking various religious celebrations and using them for simple secular entertainment, we take pieces of various religions and use them to create pleasing statements of spirituality that are attractive to us without truly understanding the underlying meaning and full religious significance of those statements.   It is especially popular to post memes with sayings from Buddhism or other Eastern religions and philosophies as statements about life’s true meaning.  But do those who use these quotes really understand their full and deep meaning and the work required of that religion or philosophy to attain the mental state and understanding reflected in the quote?   Even the more familiar quotes from Christianity are often taken out of context and used as simple statements of some desirable way of life; but, I often question whether the user has actually read and understood the context in which that statement was originally made, or if that user understands its meaning in the context of the religion of which it is a part.

Perhaps that is not a loss.  Some might argue better a little piece than none at all.  But to me this all reflects a very superficial and selfish approach to the world.  Religion requires work:  it requires mental work to reach a depth of understanding of the meaning of the particular religion’s beliefs; it requires work in the form of self-discipline to follow the rules that every religion has for its followers; it requires some form of self-sacrifice, if only in the prayer or contemplation required to fully understand the religion and to get closer to its God.  Many today are not inclined to put in this sort of work, work that does not provide immediate gratification and which precludes a focus on self.  So, instead, one can simply appropriate the feel good and the good sounding words from a variety of religions, celebrate them, and call themselves spiritual.  They can feel good about themselves and believe that they have some connection to something deeper because they have appropriated the words from deep and ancient beliefs. 

But, this sort of spirituality is not deep.  It is selfish and self-centered and as such is in contradiction to the real and deep beliefs that such people either seek or think that they possess. 

Moreover, it cheapens the diverse religions that do exist and the people who believe them.  While any study of comparative religion will teach one that there are many similar concepts found in most religions, that does not make those religions the same.  There are also many deep distinctions, not only in practice and doctrine, but also in the essential belief of who or what God is.  Taking nice phrases from a variety of religions and putting them together into some sort of feel good festival does not make all those religions or all their practitioners the same.  This effort to equalize all as the same, even in the name of appreciating diversity, is a denial of that very diversity.  It reflects again a laziness, because it is difficult and time consuming to get to know and understand the diversity of individuals and their beliefs.  It is much easier (and a more selfish approach) to simply paint everyone as the same. 

Turning days with deep, historic religious significance into social events might be useful if we took the time to understand the underlying beliefs.  But that is unlikely.  Instead we are minimizing some of mankind’s deepest truths into nothing more than a feel-good party.  Such parties are sadly reflective of how superficial life for many has become.