Merry Christmas, now you’re suspended, for a week to be exact. That is what orange county school are threatening their students with. They are allowed to say Happy Hanukkah, and Kwanza, etc… but when it comes to Christmas they're not allowed to mention it. The school's reason being that Christmas is a religious holiday and Kwanza and Hanukkah are cultural holidays.

I celebrate Christmas so I didn’t know much about Hanukkah or Kwanza but I did my research. And I found out that Hanukkah is celebrated for a few reasons. One of the reasons is the rededication of the holy Temple in Jerusalem after the Jews victory over the Hellenist Syrians in 165BC.

Now that I celebrate Christmas I knew a little bit more about this holiday although I still didn’t know why it was celebrated. I did my research on Christmas and found that the history of Christmas dates back over 4000 years. This is way before the birth of Christ. The reason I say that is because a lot of us believe Christmas is the birthday of Christ. While doing my research though, I found something very interesting to me because I believed it was celebrated on the birthday of Christ. This is not true though because Christ was born before December all together. We can tell this from a few lines of the story that we all know "It's about 2000 years ago, the evening of December 25. Mary rides into Bethlehem on a donkey, urgently needing to deliver her baby. Although it's an emergency, all the innkeepers turn them away. So they deliver baby Jesus in a stable. Then angels sing to the shepherds. Afterwards, they all join three kings with camels in worshipping the quiet, newborn."The line “Then angels sing to the shepherds.” Is what gives it away as a farce. Sheep were never in the fields’ any night in Palestine after the third week of October. Also the bible never actually says when Christ was born nor does it say any part of that story is true. Whether you believe the bible or not is the best account of what actually happened that we have.

Now most Christians might have already known this and you are asking 'Well why do I (the Christians) still celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December?' Well the answer to that question is that the date was chosen by the Roman Catholic Church. Because Rome dominated most of the Christian world for centuries, the date became tradition throughout most of Christendom. The original significance of December 25 is that it was a well-known festival day celebrating the annual return of the sun. Now whether the Romans choose this day the 25th of December for this reason we might never know but I think this almost proves that Christmas was never a true religious holiday and it definitely isn’t now. I would say that Christmas is just the December holiday of giving for most people now since most celebrators of Christmas aren’t even Christian anymore. Even the decorating of a “Christmas” tree aren’t Christian customs the decorating of and evergreen tree come from Pagan origins.

I will leave it to you to decide whether or not Christmas is religious or just commercial nowadays or whether it ever was actually a true religious holiday. You can also decide weather Hanukkah is religious or cultural too.