Opinion ID: 560568
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: good friday, christmas, and thanksgiving

Text: 111 The district court made the additional effort to show that Good Friday is of a similarly secular nature as Christmas and Thanksgiving. Cammack v. Waihee, 673 F.Supp. 1524, 1539 (D.Hawaii 1987) (this court concludes that Good Friday and Christmas stand on equal footing before the First Amendment). It is true that the majority does not accept the contention that the observance of Good Friday has become secularized to the same extent as celebrations of Christmas and Thanksgiving. Majority op. at 782 n. 19. Yet it still notes that the average Hawaiian would view the inclusion of Good Friday as a holiday as no more of an establishment of religion than Christmas, id. at 781, relies on Thanksgiving and Christmas as religious holidays in its context section, id. at 780, and makes other analogies between Christmas and Good Friday as religious holidays. Id. at 780. Because I strongly disagree with the theory that Good Friday may be compared in its religious and secular makeup with Thanksgiving and Christmas, I add this section. 112 First and foremost, I do not think that the Supreme Court agrees either. For example, [a]s observed in this Nation, Christmas has a secular as well as a religious dimension. County of Allegheny, 492 U.S. at 579, 109 S.Ct. at 3093 (footnote omitted). In fact, [i]t has been suggested that the cultural aspect of Christmas in this country now exceeds the theological significance of the holiday. Id. at n. 3. Justice O'Connor has noted, [T]he celebration of Thanksgiving as a public holiday, despite its religious origins, is now generally understood as a celebration of patriotic values rather than particular religious beliefs. Id. 492 U.S. at 631, 109 S.Ct. at 3121 (O'Connor, J., concurring). Justice O'Connor continued, Christmas is a public holiday that has both religious and secular aspects ... Id. 492 U.S. at 633, 109 S.Ct. at 3122 (O'Connor, J., concurring). See also Lynch (Christmas has very strong secular components and traditions. Id. at 692, 104 S.Ct. at 1369 (O'Connor, J., concurring)). 7 113 Though the Court has not mentioned Good Friday, it has spoken on Easter: The Easter holiday celebrated by Christians may be accompanied by certain 'secular aspects' ... but it is nevertheless a religious holiday. County of Allegheny, 492 U.S. at 633, 109 S.Ct. at 3122 (O'Connor, J., concurring). If Easter, the Easter Bunny notwithstanding, is still in essence a religious holiday, what does that say about Good Friday? Simply stated, Good Friday has no secular symbols or accompanying secular celebration. 114 On one side of the holiday ledger we may place secular symbols: stockings, Santa Claus, elves, reindeer, and pilgrims, Native American maize, turkey, and cranberry; on the other side we place religious symbols: creches, menorahs, palms, and crucifixes. While Good Friday is associated with the religious symbol of Jesus Christ on the cross, it is, very much unlike Thanksgiving and Christmas, associated with no secular symbols at all. In fact, I think that we would insult observing Christians by characterizing Good Friday, a solemn day of worship and reflection on the death of Jesus Christ, as a day of convivial secular celebration. Easter, perhaps because it is a celebration of Jesus' resurrection, does have some secular components such as egg hunts and chocolate bunnies, and may, in this fashion, begin to approach Thanksgiving and Christmas. Good Friday, bereft of secular symbols or joyous festivity, simply does not belong in the same category. Indeed, while the death of Jesus Christ dominates Good Friday, for many, the reigning images of Christmas are the secular Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. 115 Another telling example is that people of many religions or of no religion at all celebrate Thanksgiving and even Christmas, but it would be difficult to find atheists, Jews, or Baha'is engaging in Good Friday commemorations. Christmas, indeed, may be seen as a whole season, which the man who is perhaps its greatest secularizer described as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. Dickens, A Christmas Carol 8-9 (Bantam ed. 1986). To say that such an ecumenical spirit pervades Good Friday is simply untenable. I must agree that there is no evidence that the Christian holy day of Good Friday has become secularized in any degree during the course of its longtime observance by Christian sects. Mandel v. Hodges, 54 Cal.App.3d 596, 612, 127 Cal.Rptr. 244 (1976). Indeed, the passage of time has not converted Good Friday into a secular holiday or freed it of its clearly religious origins. Griswold Inn, Inc. v. State, 183 Conn. 552, 441 A.2d 16, 21 (1981) (holding state law banning liquor sales on Good Friday unconstitutional). 116 I find this equation of Good Friday with Christmas and Thanksgiving both distasteful to practicing Christians, who do not wish a serious day permeated by mirth and levity, and unsettling to adherents of other religions or nonreligious persons, who would not desire their secular celebrations of Thanksgiving and Christmas to be linked to a holiday they could not imagine honoring. 117 I, therefore, respectfully dissent.