The experience of Christmas in Canada

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/12/2023 (691 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The House of Commons recently unanimously denounced a discussion paper by the Canadian Human Rights Commission which suggested that the Christmas statutory holiday is an “obvious example” of “systemic religious discrimination,” and that this “discrimination against religious minorities in Canada is grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism.”

Indeed, Christmas and Easter are both Christian holidays, and the only two religious statutory holidays in Canada.

Current statistics on religion in Canada provide some thought-provoking context to this controversy. The 2001 Canadian Census reported that 77 per cent of all Canadians identified as Christian and 17 per cent as atheist, agnostic, or professing no religion at all. Twenty years later in 2021, the Census reported that only 53 per cent identified as Christian, and 35 per cent as non-religious. Though Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism each remained below five per cent, they all had more than doubled since the 2001 Census.

More recently, a study conducted in November 2022 by Research Co. using a representative sample of Canadians reported that less than half of Canadians (48 per cent) identified as Christian, while 37 per cent identified as religious “nones.” Furthermore, the study also reported that only one quarter of Canadians (25 per cent) said religion was “very important” to them personally. Among six different values in life, only affluence (14 per cent) was ranked lower than religion. Ratings of importance were considerably higher for career (36 per cent), country (47 per cent), friends (60 per cent), and family (81 per cent).

These data detail the secularization of Canadian society, which is clearly post-Christendom, though not post-Christian. Christendom was the geopolitical state forged in the fourth century under the Roman Emperor Constantine, one effect of which was Christmas becoming institutionalized. However, after the Enlightenment of the 18th century, Christendom lost its religious monopoly to religious pluralism, and lost its political authority to political secularism.

Today in post-Christendom, Christian ideals and values no longer overtly ground public thought and action, Christian ethics no longer overtly guide social institutions, and the Bible no longer overtly governs morality with any collective authority.

Though post-Christendom is often conflated with post-Christian, the latter is best understood as a society in which there is no longer a significant percentage of Christians, much less a significant Christian presence. A post-Christian culture denotes that most collective expressions of and personal commitments to Christianity have been abandoned, and that Christianity has therefore become essentially absent. In this sense, Canada is post-Christendom, though clearly not post-Christian.

Yet both the explicit and implicit presence of Christianity in many Western countries remains enormous. For example, despite the secularization of the Gregorian calendar from B.C. (“Before Christ”) and A.D (“Anno Domini” — “in the year of the Lord”) to B.C.E. (“Before the Common Era”) and C.E. (the “Common Era”), its dating of world history still turns on the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Furthermore, the origin of “goodbye” in the global language of English is “God be with you.”

Therefore, many scholars today reject the secularization thesis, preferring the concept of “deChristendomization.” Evidently, private belief in the reality of a supernatural divine, and individual spiritual longing for connection with the transcendent persist, and are in many ways resurgent, often as backlash against modern life.

As explanation, Canadian Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor expounded on “the massive subjective turn of modern culture,” including the turn away from external, organized, institutionalized religiosity toward internal, individual, experiential spirituality.

Religion is so much more than self-identification on a census form, participation in sacred services and practices, or even belief in the supernatural by giving mental assent to propositional truth claims.

Nevertheless, for most Canadians, Christmas has been thoroughly secularized. Basking in the time off work of a statutory holiday, indulging in its crass commercialization, revelling in its myriad nostalgic popular customs, and connecting with family hardly amount to celebrating the birth of Jesus. It matters not that a now minority experience it as a holy day; any happy holiday will do.

Even if Christmas is not blatant “systemic religious discrimination,” Canadian Christians ought to at least acknowledge their systemic privilege “grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism.” Because the majority of Canadians now look on Christmas with either the opportunistic indifference of the non-religious, or the aching envy of the other-religious.

Dennis Hiebert teaches in the department of sociology and criminology at the University of Manitoba.