The line between religion and work blurs during the holidays.
More and more companies are insisting that parties taking place at the end of December be called "Holiday" parties, instead of "Christmas" parties. This way they don't exclude people of other faiths.
According to the FOXNews.com, 95% of Americans celebrate Christmas, 4% Hanukkah, and 3% Kwanzaa. Newsflash, FOXNews: that’s 102%.
Is it any surprise that the news channel that hosts Bill O'Reilly (and his famous boycott against businesses who don't specifically mention the word "Christmas" in their ads) manufactures numbers that indicates a vast majority of Christian holiday-celebrators?
Wikipedia actually shows that number to be more around 79%--still a vast majority, but with over 20% of people belonging to faiths that do not celebrate Christmas. Even if some of the non-Christians celebrate Christmas in terms of an American tradition, those individuals are less likely to object to Christ-references being eliminated from the title.
If an office has 100 people, that means around 20 of them do not celebrate Christmas. That's a lot of people to leave out of what is generally a company-sponsored event. Yet still many argue that it should be called a Christmas Party, and that there is, in fact, a "War On Christmas."
Here is more on that topic:
http://workplaceculture.suite101.com/article.cfm/holiday_party_versus_christmas_par
Happy Holidays!
