Christmas the Secular, Christmas the American

Is it appropriate for non-Christian Americans to celebrate Christmas? Many do, and why not? I’m an atheist—or, more precisely, a person of reason—and I have no problem celebrating Christmas, even though it has no religious significance for me.

Christmas is obviously a religious holiday for many, signifying the birth of the Christian icon Jesus Christ. But as an American holiday, Christmas is and, by our own Constitution, a secular holiday. That makes it a holiday for everyone. Therefore, people are free to celebrate Christmas according to any meaning they choose.

Why do I say that? Two reasons—one moral, one Constitutional.

I am indebted to philosopher Ayn Rand for showing that, philosophically, in America, Christmas can’t be strictly a Christian holiday. In answer to the question of whether it is appropriate for an atheist to celebrate Christmas, Rand observed:

Yes, of course. A national holiday, in this country, cannot have an exclusively religious meaning. The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property… of the Christian religion.

This makes perfect sense. Neither Christianity nor any particular religion can have an exclusive claim on morality. “Good will toward men” is not a monopoly of Christianity. Rand’s reference to the National Holiday aspect of Christmas points to another important reason why Christmas in America cannot be the exclusive domain of Christianity, or of religion more generally.

Here, I am also indebted to the framers of the U.S. Constitution. As the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." In 1870, Congress made Christmas a national legal holiday. This means that anyone who claims, as one NJ letter-to-the-editor wrote, that Without Jesus Christ you can't have Christmas, that person is repudiating the U.S. Constitution. A national religious holiday in a secular nation founded on the principle of separation of church and state (freedom of religion and conscience) is a logical impossibility. Since to have a secular government means to have one that is neutral with regards to the fundamental conscientious beliefs of all of its citizens, an American national holiday by definition cannot be religious.

In fact, what we today call Christmas originally didn't have any connection to Jesus at all, writes Onkar Ghate in U.S.News & World Report:

Before Christians co-opted the holiday in the fourth century (there is no reason to believe Jesus was born in December), it was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, of the days beginning to grow longer. The Northern European tradition of bringing evergreens indoors, for instance, was a reminder that life and production were soon to return to the now frozen earth.

The Romans celebrated the Winter Solstice with the holiday Saturnalia. In Northern Europe, the holiday was called Yule.

Indeed, as philosopher Leonard Peikoff observes over at Capitalism Magazine, the leading secular Christmas symbol - Santa Claus - actually contradicts some standard Christian tenets:

Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. ... In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick's physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids' stockings, then goes back to the North Pole.

...Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice -- Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.

When Congress declared Christmas a National Holiday, in 1870, Christmas ceased being a strictly religious observance and became a secular holiday. A legal religious holiday in a nation dedicated to freedom of religion and conscience is a contradiction. (The Founders used the terms “religion” and conscience” interchangeably. They understood religious freedom to include the freedom not to believe in or practice any religion—in effect, not just freedom of religion, but freedom from religion as well; i.e. separation of religion and state.) Being a national legal holiday, Christmas can have non-religious, non-Christian meaning just as validly as a Christian meaning. It’s a matter of individual preference. Otherwise, what’s the point of freedom of conscience?

So, regardless of your personal beliefs, go ahead and enjoy Christmas on your own terms.

On that note, let me extend to everyone a hearty wish for a joyous, safe, and thoroughly non-contradictory…

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Related Reading:

How the Welfare State Stole Christmas, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Don't Need Christ to Celebrate Christmas

Why Christmas Should be More Commercial—Leonard Peikoff

The Real Meaning of Christmas: What Would Jesus Teach Today?

A ‘War on Christmas?’ No: A War on non-Christians

Ex NJ Gov. Florio Calls for Dismantling American Checks and Balances

In a New Jersey Star-Ledger guest column, former NJ Governor James J. Florio claims that Something is Fundamentally Wrong with American governance.

He writes:

For one sure thing, in all of our states, governors are being called upon to fund functions that are clearly beyond their states’ financial capabilities. The pandemic is the most glaring example. Clearly, the federal government should have stepped in much earlier with the resources needed to combat a once-in-a-lifetime virus. But the pandemic is far from the only example. The cost of higher education, health care, mass transit and government employee pensions are among others that outstrip the ability of states to do what needs to be done so everyone can thrive.

A case can be made that the pandemic, being a systemic issue that knows no political borders, is more a federal issue than a state issue in terms of governmental policy response. But the underlying standard should be individual rights protection..

Both higher education and normal health care are individual, not governmental, responsibilities. Of course, the federal government has already usurped the individual in the 65+ healthcare market. And the federal government largely funds higher education, through its student loan programs, Pell grants, and other methods. 

Mass transit should be funded by users’ fares. 

Government employee pensions, being a form of compensation, should be funded by the government the employee works for. Why should the federal government be taxing people across the country to fund my local police department?  

Florio makes no bones about his real target:

Once you realize what a big problem this is, you can’t help but focus attention on the U.S. Constitution, which, since its adoption in 1787, has frequently been interpreted to largely assign to our state and local governments the responsibilities of dealing with issues of a magnitude that could not be imagined 234 years ago. The result often is counter-productive competition for resources among the 50 states to the detriment of their residents and the entire nation.

Florio doesn’t specify what “resources” the states supposedly compete for. But for sure, the Founders did not imagine the extent to which individual rights would be violated. The last sentence, concerning competition among the states, is particularly revealing. In a sense, competition between the states is precisely what the Founders aimed for. The point of federalism is precisely to balance power among the states, and between the state and federal governments. The Founders whole point was to roadblock centralization of power, the path to tyranny. Take the issue of taxation:

Having to rely on resources that rise or fall depending on economic conditions within a state’s borders is a highly imperfect way to meet human needs and make the public investments needed for equitable results. Meanwhile, states offer all kinds of tax breaks to lure businesses away from other states in the false hope that poaching will be the answer, though it never is. 

Tax competition between the states is an example of the success of and need for the current division of power. That competition is perfectly legitimate. It serves the purpose of checking the taxing powers of the states. People and businesses flee in large numbers from higher tax states to lower tax states routinely. Florio, being a “progressive” Democrat, obviously doesn’t place much importance on individuals wanting to keep more of their own earnings, and spend it as they wish. 

Moving to a more broad-based national system of taxation than exists today would free states from their dependency on fluctuating factors and bring a higher degree of uniformity and equity to revenue-raising at the national level — to say nothing about greater amounts of revenue. A carbon-based tax or a European-styled value-added tax are examples of possible options.

“Free” the states? The federal income tax has already given the federal government enormous powers it should not have. Taxation and government funding is control. The more the government taxes and spends, the more it controls what it spends on. Governments at all levels already tax and spend too much, and for too many illegitimate reasons (illegitimate from the standpoint of individual rights.) But at least we have the “competition for resources among the 50 states” to act as a check and balance. Florio wants to “free” the states from that competitive discipline, which really means diminishing the states’ accountability to their own citizens. Cutting the individual citizen out of the equation, and empowering the political and federal bureaucratic classes, is his entire point. The last thing we need is another “broad-based national system of taxation!”

I recently had a conversation with a man who bitterly complained that he and his wife both work full time and still can’t make ends meet. “What the hell is going on; what am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Who is to blame?”  I suspect he would be more receptive to Donald Trump’s “answers” than to a discussion of state and local tax systems. But it’s a discussion we need to have if we’re honest about solving problems.

By all means, let’s discuss the bloated taxes, including the hidden tax on consumers masquerading as a “corporate income tax” that drives up the cost of consumer goods. And let’s remember that Florio wants to remove one of the restraints on taxes, the tax competition between the states.

Whatever the issue, applying old, increasingly ineffective or inequitable policies to new problems can only make matters worse and cause additional problems. It is time to review 1787 assumptions in light of 21st-century responsibilities.

Yes, let’s review, and reaffirm, the 1787 “assumptions”--the fundamental principles--that the Founders put in place. The Constitution was meant to divide governmental powers to prevent centralization and thus tyranny, and to stifle the ambitions of statists like Florio. Florio concludes:

This task is not for the faint-hearted. Some upholders of the status quo will fight to the death (usually for money); think tobacco, coal, assault weapons. But, the end goal — preserving our democracy — is worth the struggle.

The end goal of the Founders was not Democracy. It was a republic with a democratic process  constitutionally limited by the ultimate safe space, inalienable individual rights. The principle of individual rights is a check on governmental power. Checks and balances is a check on government power. Both stand in the way of centralization and tyranny. The Constitution leaves plenty of room to devise solutions to problems that legitimately require governmental involvement, such as the pandemic. But the Left is looking beyond the legitimate functions of government, the protection of individual rights, to involve government in. Thus, like the attack on the Electoral College, Florio is continuing the Left’s attack on what is fundamentally right about American governance, the structural checks and balances embedded in the Constitution of 1787. 

Related Reading:

In the Name of Science, Preet Bharara and Christine Todd Whitman attack America’s Checks and Balances.

QUORA: ‘Why does the Electoral College of the United States of America exist?’

Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right

The Conscience of the Constitution—Timothy Sandefur

QUORA *: ‘What do you think of the fact that California has 2 senators to represent 40 million citizens while 23 smaller states have 46 senators to represent 40 million citizens?’

QUORA: ‘The constitution is a living document that must change as society changes. Do you agree or disagree? Why?’

 QUORA: ‘The constitution is a living document that must change as society changes. Do you agree or disagree? Why?’

I posted this answer:

No and yes. The U.S. Constitution is substantive, not just procedural. Substantively, it is unchanging. Procedurally, it is subject to change.

The Constitution stands on a particular philosophical and moral foundation. The philosophy that undergirds America is grounded in human nature and man’s relationship to nature. The Founding generation understood that man is a rational being; and thus that reason is man’s means of survival and living; that reason is an attribute of the individual; that every individual therefore has the inalienable rights to think and act on the judgment of his own mind, in support of his own life, without interference from his fellow man, so long as he/she does not interfere in the same freedom of others.  Based on an understanding of man’s nature, America’s Founders believed all individuals are naturally free to self-govern their lives, and the Founding documents reflected this. These principles are grounded in the facts of nature. This grounding is summarized in the Declaration of Independence. This is the meaning of the words of the Declaration of Independence, which holds that all people are born equal in their freedom of self-governance and self-determination.

Through the Declaration, the Founding generation recognized the “certain unalienable Rights” of man, individual man, required by his nature to fulfill this freedom—“among” which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The right to work, trade, and contract in order to acquire, use, and keep property was considered implicit in these rights, which is why the Constitution explicitly protects private property rights and freedom of commerce while pointedly not authorizing the government to redistribute private wealth among private individuals in any form.**

Society may change, which is why the Founders grounded this country’s government on a foundation that can withstand the changing vagaries of society, or politics, or culture, or powerful factions. Until human nature changes, the substance of the Constitution, that of being grounded in individual rights, is not “living.” The purpose of government is to “secure these rights,” not violate them, and it cannot abandon this obligation based on shifting political, cultural, popular, or factional whims or passions. 

I think of the unalienable individual rights of the Declaration as the Founders’ attempt to create a “safe space” to protect individual freedom from societal changes. The U.S. Constitution was written to form a type of republican government designed specifically to protect that safe space. The Constitution is “living” in the sense that governmental procedures can change with changing circumstances, such as with advances in technology. The Constitution allows that “We the People” always be open to procedural or structural changes “in order to form a more perfect union.” The Constitution does, after all, include an amendment process.

In this way, the Founders intended to protect individuals from any form of encroaching tyranny. To protect the governed from societal changes, they established the safe space of unalienable individual rights. To protect the people’s safe space, they created the Constitution to limit the government to establishing those protections. Society may change, and it certainly has. America started as a poor, agrarian society. Today, it is an industrial and technological wonder. Certainly, laws must change to keep up with those advances. The Founders understood this need for progressive government, and the Constitution may be amended to adapt governmental procedures to those changes. But the government’s purpose and job, for which the constitution was created, will always be “to secure these rights.” Until and unless human nature changes, that purpose is eternal. So substantively—that is, in its fundamental philosophical underpinnings—the Constitution is not “living” because “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” remain constant over time. 

** [notwithstanding the fact that our current government redistributes wealth on a massive scale.]

Related Reading:

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty – Timothy Sandefur

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?--Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

QUORA: ‘Why do law schools teach constitutional law but not the Declaration of Independence as an animating principle?’

The U.S.Constitution: Nick Goldberg’s Scheme to Transform Our Liberty Document into a Democratic Socialist Manifesto

QUORA: “What would the founding fathers have thought of the ruling that 'corporations are people'?”

 QUORA: “What would the founding fathers have thought of the ruling that 'corporations are people'?”

I posted this answer:

No one ever said that corporations are actual people. But there is a legal doctrine called corporate personhood, to which the question probably refers, and which the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized. As  the Court noted in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the purpose of the doctrine of corporate personhood is to “to provide protection for human beings” organized under a corporation. “When rights . . . are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people.” (See my essay Corporate Personhood” Clarified.) 

As the Supreme Court noted in Citizens United, corporations are associations of individuals. "The First Amendment,” the Court held, “prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." Corporations are obviously associations of individuals. Therefore, the government cannot “ban political speech because the speaker is an association with a corporate form.” If it could, “Its censorship [would be] vast in its reach, suppressing the speech of both for-profit and nonprofit, both small and large, corporations.” Significantly, the Court noted that media corporations could be targeted if people couldn’t speak under the corporate form. [my emphasis]

The doctrine of “corporate personhood” is an expression of the individual right of freedom of association. Freedom of association is recognized by the First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” This means that a number of individuals may voluntarily assemble as a means of collectively exercising their inalienable rights, including rights to property and free speech. The “personhood” of a corporation is merely an extension of the rights of the people who comprise the corporation for a limited purpose, such as to manage productive activity or to speak as one voice. Corporations are therefore not “people” apart from or superior to the individuals that comprise it, but an extension of the members’ individual rights. Individuals that voluntarily join groups like corporations neither lose nor gain rights. 

The Founding Fathers, as creators of a country based upon individual rights, would approve of the doctrine “corporate personhood,” in my view. Corporate personhood is merely a legal fiction that stands for actual individual human beings. After all, they crafted the First Amendment to unite freedom of speech and assembly. This was no accident. How could they not agree with the doctrine of corporate personhood?

Related Reading:

“Corporate Personhood” Clarified

QUORA: ‘Since corporations are not actual people, how does John Roberts justify legally defining them as such?’

"Corporatists" Are Individuals, Too

If Citizens United is Overturned, Michael Moore’s Film Would be Banned. But Does the Left Care?

Citizens United and the Battle for Free Speech in America by Steve Simpson for The Objective Standard

QUORA: 'We live in a totally different world now. Shouldn't the Constitution be reinterpreted to match our reality?’

 QUORA: Constitutional literalists treat the opinions of the Founding Fathers as though they were God-inspired. We live in a totally different world now. Shouldn't the Constitution be reinterpreted to match our reality?’

I posted this answer:

No, because nothing fundamental about “our reality” has changed. 

The Founding of America grew out of certain Enlightenment discoveries. To wit:

• All individuals are beings of reason and free will, the attributes that distinguish humans from all other life forms. 

• Individual human beings are autonomous beings, each possessing their own minds and capable of using the judgment of their own minds to guide the course of their own lives. 

• These unique characteristics make each individual morally entitled to be free to do so. It follows that each individual is morally entitled to the equal individual liberty rights to self-govern their own lives, however different or “unequal” their individual abilities, virtue, character, background, ethnicity, values, interests, temperament, and life outcomes, et al.* 

• To secure this freedom, every person needs the guarantee of certain inalienable rights, including rights to life, liberty, and the personal pursuit of happiness.

• As per Nature’s mandate, individual human beings must work to support their lives, so the ability to produce, keep, use, and dispose of the product of one’s labor must be legally protected both from private criminals and despotic governments. Hence, the rights to his own earned property.

• Freedom needs the rule of objective law to exist, so governments must be instituted to secure these individual rights, equally, at all times, for all.

• Powerlust is still endemic to the human condition, so governments can still be breeding grounds of tyranny. Therefore, they must be structurally designed with enough checks and balances to prevent any branch of government from accumulating too much political power.

Yes, today’s world is materially far different from the world of 1787. But the worlds of ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and the Dark and Middle Ages were “totally different” from 1787. Yet the Founders studied history, as well as their contemporary world, to draw lessons useful in framing the Constitution of the new nation. But they were not mere pragmatists. They also consulted the guidance of major philosophers of the Ages, in order to meld theory and practice into a workable, liberty-protecting government. Above all, they understood that human nature, the laws of nature, and man’s relationship to broader nature are immutable and unchanging. So they designed a Constitution to support the basic principles of a free human society, not just for their own contemporary world, but with an eye firmly cognizant of posterity. Drawing from history, philosophy, and contemporary experience, they designed a Constitution consistent with what they called “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” and capable of being sustained through all of the changes of future ages. Just read the Federalist Papers, and you’ll see the broad scope of their thinking, and how they adapted the principles they discovered to the practical challenge of creating an effective government while protecting individual liberty. Essentially, the philosophy that guided their work is consolidated in these words: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .

This is not to say that the Constitution should never be amended or clarified through law or court interpretation. Yes, today’s world is materially much different, and so are many issues that concern us today. The Constitution can certainly be refined, and the Founders understood that. For example, the Electoral College was amended in 1804. It was further clarified by Congress in 1887. That Act is currently being reconsidered by Congress once again, and has a good chance of enactment. Yet, through these changes, the Electoral College continues to function well to facilitate transfers of presidential power while maintaining its function as a check on federal and majoritarian power. Note that these changes do not harm the basic Electoral College system, which is part of the cheeks-and-balances the Founders saw as vital to protecting balanced government and thus liberty. While the Electoral College outlived its means of implementation, it did not outlive its usefulness. 

The Founders weren’t “God-inspired,” despite what Religious Right revisionists claim. And I don’t know any Constitutional scholars who believe that. In the Federalist Papers, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton explain the workings of the Constitution, and the reasons for them. I read the Federalist Papers cover to cover, and I do not recall any mention of religion or God except in relation to religious freedom or the Laws of Nature. There were no phrases such as “God said” or “God mandates” or “God inspires us to ...,” or the like. The Founders explicitly rejected the union of religion and state in any form. The Founders were men of The Enlightenment, meaning men of reason and reality orientation. 

As the Founders understood, we should always seek “a more perfect union.” But the U.S. Constitution should not be reinterpreted in its fundamental philosophical orientation, because the Constitution already conforms to reality in its fundamentals. In their practical genius, the Founders created a changeable constitution oriented around unchanging natural principles. Today’s world is not “totally different.” Nothing fundamental has changed from 1787—not human nature; not the laws of nature; and not man’s relationship to broader nature. Yes, new lessons of experience and history can be drawn. But the laws of nature cannot be “reinterpreted.” They are immutable facts of reality. Thus, the principles of the Founding have not changed. These principles, from which come individual rights and limited government, are fundamental to America because they are fundamental to the free civilized society proper to human beings. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* [Individual rights define the scope and boundaries of human freedom; in effect, you have the right to freedom of action, so long as your actions don’t infringe on the same rights of others. See Tara Smith, Moral Rights and Political Freedom (Studies in Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy.)]

Related Reading:

Will the World's Statist Past, or the Founders' Values, be America's Destiny?

America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson

In Gay Marriage Decision, the Court Upheld the Founders' Vision

The Conscience of the Constitution—Timothy Sandefur

The Founders Were Flawed. The Nation Is Imperfect. The Constitution Is Still a 'Glorious Liberty Document.' -- Timothy Sandefur

In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed