Should Good Friday remain a stat holiday?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/03/2024 (549 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Is Good Friday a discriminatory holiday? That was the question raised by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) last fall when it published a discussion paper on religious intolerance.

In the paper, the Commissions suggested that day and Christmas are not only “grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism” but are “an obvious example” of religious intolerance—being the “only Canadian statutory holidays linked to religious holy days.”

The result, the paper went on to say, is that while Christians are privileged by getting days off for their religious observances, non-Christians may experience intolerance or discrimination since they need “to request special accommodations to observe their holy days and other times of the year where their religion requires them to abstain from work.”

The paper sparked a furor in Quebec. In November, the National Assembly denounced it and voted unanimously in favour of a motion defending Christmas as something that has “been part of Quebec heritage for several generations.”

A day later, the House of Commons adopted a Bloc Quebecois motion that also denounced the paper and invited “all Quebecers and Canadians to unite as we approach the Christmas season.”

In response, Charlotte-Anne Malischewski, interim chief of the CHRC, wrote: “To be clear, the Commission has not issued a statement or a position on Christmas or any other religious holiday.”

Christmas, she went on to say, “is an important and time-honoured tradition in Canada. It is both spiritually and culturally significant for millions of people in this country, Christians, and non-Christians alike.”

The issue, Malischewski said, was not about the importance of Christmas, and the Commission wasn’t advocating for the country to drop it as a holiday.

Instead, it was making sure people of other religions can be reasonably accommodated when they want time off to celebrate their special holy days.

The goal of the paper was to start a conversation about how everyone in Canada could “practice their religion with the same equality, dignity, and respect as others,” Malischewski said.

What’s worth noting about the political furor surrounding the paper was not how politicians rose in defence of Christmas — who would be foolish enough to speak or vote against it? — but how nobody mentioned Good Friday.

Neither motion included that holiday, which is one of the holiest in the Christian calendar, or suggested it should also be protected because of its importance to Canadians at large.

And the reason for that is simple: It isn’t that important. For most Canadians, Good Friday is just a day off in spring, a welcome “secular pause,” as one person put it, a chance to enjoy a long weekend.

It’s nothing at all like Christmas, which is deeply ingrained into Canadian society, traditions and — very importantly — commerce. (Nobody has found a way to make money off Good Friday yet, as far as I can tell.)

My guess is Good Friday isn’t even that important for most Christians; churches that held services yesterday were probably not packed, unlike what will happen tomorrow, on Easter Sunday — traditionally one of the busiest Sundays for churches each year.

So why is Good Friday still a statutory holiday in our very secular and post-Christian country? With so many people from other religions now calling Canada home, why do they have to take vacation days for their religious holidays while Christians get an official day off?

That’s a question being tackled by Paige Thombs, an associate fellow at the University of Victoria’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society. In an article in the Anglican Journal, Thombs noted the large number of immigrants coming to this country each year, many of them not part of the Christian religion.

“If we continue this trajectory, those numbers [of non-Christians] are only going to get bigger,” Thombs said. “Are things going to have to change? I think so. I hope so.”

One of these changes, she suggested, would be giving all workers a set number of paid days off in order to observe their religious practices. But why stop there? Why not eliminate Good Friday as a statutory holiday altogether and let everyone — Christian and non-Christian alike — claim a day a year for their unique religious observances?

That way, everyone is on the same footing. Christians who want to go to church on Good Friday could ask for a day off for that reason, just like Hindus could do for Diwali, Jews for Rosh Hashanah and other observances and Muslims for Eid. People with no religion could simply ask for a mental health day — something we all could use now and then.

If that happened, maybe we would achieve the goal set out by the Human Rights Commission to make Canada a place where everyone, no matter what their religion or lack of it, feel more included.

faith@freepress.mb.ca

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