Thinking about religious holidays
This being the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday got me thinking about those of us who do not celebrate it. Should we be more inclusive when it comes to statutory holidays? In other words, should we make all religious holidays mandatory days off for the workforce? Keep in mind the affects this might have on our economy etc. Also, if it's not realistic, how do we choose which ones are 'significant enough'?
This post was edited on: 2009-10-08 at 07:57 PM by: schmuck (Moderator)
7 Replies
In my opinion, the significance of a holiday is based around historical events (including religious events that happened on that day) or cultural/racial/citizenship days that are created for individual groups of people. Take Christmas as an example as a religious holiday, it's for Christians and Christians celebrate it because it's the birth of the Saviour. To us that would be an important date in the history of the world, and it should be praised in our beliefs. However, in another's belief, say the Muslim belief, Christmas is normal day and shouldn't be treated significantly.
Religion and culture are both very important factors of holidays that we need to recognize. If one religion has a different belief and gets more days off, should the other religions still need to work that day? I think it would be unfair if people were treated as such. The fairness of taking time off of work would be needed or else tension would stress all the workers of seperate religions/cultures, and the business would be chaotic because of it. I think that's why they have every worker take time off for, say, Christmas. Just because one person believes one thing does not mean that the other person must suffer because of their own beliefs.
Now, I think that other holidays like the country-related holidays shouldn't be reasons to take time off of work. Holidays like National British Day (where englishmen celebrate there heritage) aren't well-known holidays. If these holidays were used to take time off work it could come across as the manager's preference for another, because of the inpopularity of it. To avoid this, I think that these holidays were ignored in order to not show preferencial treatment - especially to those people who come from places that Don't have country-related holidays.
I agree with the previous commenter. Of course, depending on your beliefs, religion, etc, you may think diferently of various holidays. However, in my opinion I think that if Canada is going to state it self as a multicultural society and not the melting pot, if the government is going to allow so many immigrants, I think holidays for other religions should be more than recongnized. Of course, ones that don't celebrate it wouldn't necessarily get a holiday, employers could negotiate, should negotiate with their employees of the days they need to restrain from working due to religion and culture. In exchange, they can work when others take that time off to maintain balance in the workplace. There would definately then need to be a limit so people wouldn't take advantage of the right. I think that would be the a more fair way of settling the situation.
Is thanksgiving religious? I thought it was just for celebrating early settlers and what not. Whatevs, I may be wrong. It's hard to say wheather or not we should make every holiday for EVERY religion a holiday-holiday with no work, because there might not be enough practitioners in the country for everyone to benefit from it (in a religious persective, of course 
wouldn't everyone like a day off?!), and it's important for people to work, for our economy, and if we had more time off it would be less productive for our country. I think that mainstream religions like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, (I don't know if there are enough practitioners of hinduism, buddhism, confucationism, and taoism in Canada, even though they are rather mainstream) should have there holidays respected, but I am undecided on wheather or not we should have more holidays. Maybe some religions' holidays' are made statuatory (however you spell that. lol.) and for other religions with less concentration of practitioners, they should go to human resources or however of there employer and arrange a holiday for their religion. I mean lots of religions in one place in my opinion are good, because they promote cultural growth and peoples of other faiths can all learn about and respect each other. So yeah I wrote alot....
yes def all holidays should be mandatory!!!!!!!!!!!! MORE LOOOOONG WEEKENDS N LESS SCHOOL DAYS BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:cool
i agree with newyork Canada is so muliticultural, all cultural holidays should be recognized. not everyone has to participate in them, but there should be some sort of reccognition for them. it will also mean more days of school and work who doesn't want that
Augustina, You know that less school days in the year means either more homework, or longer school years, right?
B/c if we have less days of school then we have less time to get stuff done.
This post was edited on: 2009-10-10 at 04:40 PM by: PepperJakki
Tiffany Rylee
Oct 8, 2009 at 10:03 PM