Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays

So apparantly the new hot button issue of the moment is whether companies or governments which use Happy Holidays for their Christmas greetings are trying to take Christ out of Christmas. From Christmas Trees being called "Holiday" Trees in the town square to the lyrics of Joy to the World being changed to make it non-religious the Religious Right is in an uproar. And in this instance I can't really blame them. From their viewpoint the less God is mentioned by companies and government the more they feel God is being attacked by the Left.

As stupid as I believe this whole thing is let me address it in as short a way as possible. The Right has a very good point. Growing up I sang Christmas songs in school and decorated a Christmas Tree and I wasn't harmed by this indoctrination. We had children of other faiths in our classes and they all seem to have turned out ok. Were they made to feel like outsiders? Probably. But who among us has never felt like an outsider at some point in their lives? You can either accept it and move on or let it bother you and become obsessed with eliminating it. However, you can't eliminate it. So long as people believe in different faiths, have different color skin or have different levels of intelligence there will never be complete equality. Some people will always be in a minority. That's life.

However, this is a country of laws. And one of our laws, based on the Constitution, is that the government will not endorse any particular religion and place it above all others. I think the government, state, local and federal, are taking the wrong approach to balancing the need to not endorse any one religion. What they should do is celebrate ALL religions represented in a community. Keep the Christian holidays and the word "God" on the money and in the pledge because the vast majority of people in the country believe in God. Not necessarily the Christian God, but some form of a Creator or Higher Power.

Solutions

I kinda lost interest in following the current events and posting my opinions about them. Mine is just one opinion in thousands posted daily in blogs and nobody really cares. So, instead of trying to attract readers with posts on current events I'm just going to post my views on various issues.


First up is regarding re-districting. This is the process that occurs every ten years or so after the census when the number of seats each state gets in the House is redistributed to adjust for population shifts and growth. In an ideal world this would be an easy process in which each state calmly and intelligently redraws the district lines in as close to geometric shapes as possible. However, because of the tendency of certain types of housing (ie burbs, cities, rural) tend to vote certain ways this process has been turned on its head and become a backstreet brawl in which the party in power tries to jerry-rig the district lines in an effort to safeguard as many seats for their party as possible. Areas that are strongly for the minority party are concentrated so as to limit their influence. In my state of Virginia this was most recently done by the Republicans, although the Democrats were guilty when they were in power.

So what should be done about it? Independent committees should be charged with drawing up the lines according to strict guidelines. Race, income level and party affiliations should be ignored. The lines should be drawn in a way to make each district a square or rectangular shape. Many districts now have legs or arms extending out from the main body in an attempt to maintain the party in power. If these appendiges were banned a map of the districts in a state might look more like a set of blocks, than some kind of insane jigsaw puzzle. Only when some sanity is brought back to this process can the people truly be represented fairly.