Easter can be a celebration of hope for everyone

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday April 13th, 2009

A few years ago Europeans ended up in North America. I know the Vikings were here first, but let's ignore them; they actually just made this an outpost and moved on. Europeans came to stay.

Now the thing is, we were bullies. I blame alcohol and gunpowder for giving us an inflated sense of self-importance.

For the most part, the people who settled here were also very religious -- often more religious than the people they left behind -- and persecuted for it.

We still feel that echo in our society today. Like it or not, all of our government, all of our moral code, all of our legal code, and most of our holidays are based on the Christian faith. I think that the best thing we can do as a culture is admit that; and live into it, so that we might make some real sense out of it.

At Christmas we have fights about manger scenes and decorated trees. We change Merry Christmas to "Happy Holidays" and we try to fight against our heritage instead of asking where we have been, where we are now, and where we should be going.

Canada was Christian; unambiguously so. And because of that, Easter was a big civic holiday. From a Christian point of view, this is the major festival of the church celebrating when Jesus, because of his relationship with God, came back from the dead.

Now, if we really wanted to understand our heritage as a country we would ask where Christians got this idea for a celebration from . . . they stole it. Pagan cultures, and just so you know "pagan" was the Latin word for "rural," always celebrated the spring. This was true whether we are talking about ancient Rome from whence Christian culture came, ancient Chinese culture, or ancient Druidic culture. Winter is harsh, scary, dark and lifeless. But when the sun comes back, and the crocus bloom, there is something to celebrate.

In Ancient Rome there was a celebration for the rise of the Sun. Why not borrow this, and make it the rise of the Son, and keep a lot of the same rituals? In fact, most springtime pagan rituals are present in our current Easter celebrations, whether inside or outside of church. Kindling the new fire was part of spring in most cultures. In church we light a new Christ candle, in Wiccan and pagan religious observances today they light bonfires, and in Moncton we light barbecues. It is not so different; we are all trying to say the same thing: Spring is here.

Rabbits are symbols of procreativity. Eggs are symbols of birth. Lilies are symbols of growth. Easter, as a name for the weekend was even taken from the Druids who worshiped the goddess Eostre, the mother goddess who brought new life back into the world each vernal equinox, each spring.

That is where we have been; but let's look at where we are.

Canada is as multicultural a place as you could get. Even smaller cities like Metro Moncton are becoming increasingly diverse. We have representatives of every race, of every religion, of every culture and of every class within our bounds. At the same time, we exist within the civil framework of Christianity, so how are we going to reinvent that framework so it fits not only who we have become, but where we are going as an increasingly intermingled society?

I have already hinted at that by suggesting we return to the original meaning of Easter -- which was spring.

We do not have to abandon anything to do this, we just have to see it in fresh ways and add more to our celebrations. Spring means new life, and this fits with the Christian conception of what it is about, the Hindu conception of what it is about, the Buddhist conception of what it is about, the secular humanist conception of what it is about, and even the Molson beer ads.

I am serious about that. Molson beer ads pretty much define our civic identity in this country. I am Canadian. And the best spring ad they ever had was saying we have two seasons in Canada, winter, and patio. . .

The reason that we can reclaim this as a season and holiday that is important to every single one of us lies in looking behind the concept of new life. What is it we are really celebrating? We are celebrating hope.

I am building on last week's column where I suggested that there is a lot that seems to go wrong with the world, both collectively and individually. I said last week that we need to counter that with optimism, with positivism; it is too easy to let the negative state of mind influence what we think and do.

Well, in trying to heed my own advice and have a positive outlook for the week, I realize that at the core, we need something even deeper, we need hope.

And there is no reason not to have hope. Everything around us displays a sense that there will always be something new, something different, and something better. Sure it might take more than a lifetime, and there might be a lot of disasters in between. But we as a society would do better to live out of hope.

"God's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land," vouched Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the night before he was assassinated.

He never saw it, but Obama became the first black president -- by running a campaign with one simple message, hope. By claiming he stood for "change we can believe in" Obama suggested that something better was on the horizon.

Well, it is. Believe it. That is the message we need to take into every corner of our society if we want to make this world a better place.

We should be celebrating our differences

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday March 23rd, 2009

In order to solve the problems of society we have to have individual change of hearts.

Canadians tend to believe that statement wholeheartedly. Trust me, I know we are not alone in this, but we believe in the old pull yourself up by the bootstraps, solve your own problems, type of attitude.

So, if someone is racist, we think that if we can just convince them to change, or have them meet someone of another race they respect, that will be the end of it. You can add any "ist" to that; sexist, classist, religionist; anyone who has a problem with other people based on stereotypes is thought to be individually deviant and in need of change.

A second way that we confront the bad behaviour of our society is by individually choosing not to be these things. I am not sexist or racist or elitist, or anything that I can think of; so clearly there is no problem.

In case I am explaining this wrong let me try another angle. We Canadians seem to have convinced ourselves that we are nice. This is a friendly, open, accepting country and there are just a few bad apples who act badly, right? We are clearly not like that!

I would like to argue that we use the above arguments as a defence mechanism to make sure we never have to confront the reality of what we are like as a society. We believe in individualism so much, and we believe in equality so much, or we say we do, and so we never have to really change.

The truth is that the problem is not individuals. The problem is culture, it is society, it is norms, and it is historical.

I am a modern, somewhat metrosexual, mostly liberal, mostly equal person. I try never to judge or to base judgments on the things I see. However, I instinctively do. When I see the way a person is dressed, or the car they drive, I make snap judgments. When I am talking to a woman I expect certain behaviours from them and I prejudge whether they are going to like World of Warcraft, or Star Trek, or that sort of thing.

I am sure most of us could add a lot to this list. Homosexuals are overly emotional. People of other races are culturally totally different; which we then create sub racist categories for, Arabs are violent for example. Women can't drive. Try it, I bet you can name your own 10 within a minute.

The thing is, no matter how hard I try to escape this, I cannot. I try to be open and up front and not fall into stereotypical thinking; but then I see an ad for something and realize that women are there as sexual eye candy. Or I see a sitcom and realize that homosexuals are all funny and emotional. Or watch a movie and see that all people of colour are poor.

What bombards us every day from the world around us destroys our ability to see people for who they really are, changing me as an individual is a cop out --- I need to work at changing societal norms. I need to fight against the way this is all influencing my daughters. I need to admit my own racist, sexist, classist, tendencies and work from there.

The other side of this would be to get rid of our post liberal understanding of equality. It just no longer serves us well. I don't want to go back to feelings of superior and inferior, but we need to return to a sense of true difference.

Men and women are different. Our minds work differently, our imaginations work differently, our emotions work differently, and our bodies work differently.

As long as we ignore this truth, we are actually making sexism worse. What we should be doing is admitting the differences and saying that in almost every way that we equate with status, those differences do not matter. Women CEOs bring something to a company that no male CEO can. And by forcing either one of them to abandon their sexual identity to become like the other, we are making the world worse.

This is true of every division we witness. And, it is true of divisions between even the most homogenous of groups. Ever had someone of Scot descent and Irish descent in the same room? How about French and English? And yet, these four peoples are as close together as Ontarians and people living in New Brunswick. There should be practically no difference, and yet . . .

The differences are the things we should be celebrating. In a perfect world we would allow people who are from different cultures, from different religions, from different languages, from different ages, men and women, straight and gay, rich and poor to influence each other and interact with each other in so many ways that we come to realize that we need all of them in order to make the world what it should be.

As long as we think that it is OK just to try to be nicer; as long as we can find someone to make the fall person and say it is because of their racism; as long as we fail to admit we all have a problem; we are not going to get anywhere.