Katherine Kersten – the best general columnist in the Twin Cities – on the U of M’s continuing effort to expunge Christmas, Christ and Christianity from the U’s public consciousness:

December office parties of any kind are now suspect at our state’s flagship institution of higher education.

The problem, explain [U of M Human Resources orc Dee Ann] Bonebright and [Office of System Academic Administration bureaucrat Julie] Sweitzer in their memo, is that “celebrations held in December tend to make people think of Christmas, whatever the theme.” And who knows where that could lead?

Due to what they call “seasonal creep,” warn Bonebright and Sweitzer, “an event that is meant to be a seasonal celebration [with no allusion to Christmas] suddenly looks very Christmasy when decorated with green and red.”

And here I thought seasonal creep referred to that guy who can’t keep his hands to himself or his nose out of the punch bowl.

Anyway, don’t suppose that including acknowledgements of Hannukah and Kwanzaa can keep an event from looking too Christmasy. That sort of inclusiveness, say Bonebright and Sweitzer, can be seen as “insensitive” and “won’t change the underlying message.”

Like what? Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men?

The U’s burearcrats seem to think that people’s productivity will plummet if they are exposed to – try to keep this straight – people with different worldviews.  People with different traditions, who celebrate different things.  That Moslems, Hindi, or Atheists will be so paralyzed with ire at the notion of people celebrating a Christian (and, these days, secular as well) tradition that they’ll turn into sullen lumps.

Which makes one wonder how a Moslem, Hindu or Atheist manages to do anything at all, in our out of work, in a nation that’s at least nominally 85+% Christian.

Kersten:

But Christmas or holiday parties, or whatever you call them, have a very different purpose. They remind us that life is about more than spreadsheets — that there’s a world beyond the office where real human beings laugh, talk about their families, and share the interests that give their lives meaning, fun and joy.

If we forget this, we risk sucking everything warm and human out of this wonderful season of the year.

The only “warmth” that seems to matter to the U – and much of the rest of official Minnesota – is that tingly feeling you get when nothing, ever, offends anyone, no matter how hard one reaches for it.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Sunday, December 23rd, 2007 at 5:00 am and is filed under Culture War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.