by Mary Gottfried

In the 22 years that I have been a member of the Elizabethtown College Community, I have never felt the need to address an issue in a public forum. However, having just lived through what has been labeled as the "Holiday Season" I am driven to comment. Strenuous efforts were made this year to eliminate the word "Christmas" from all public functions and communications. This effort to de-Christianize the seasonal festivities went so far as to require the excision of the word u2018Yule', a pre-Christian, pagan term, from our college Yule Bowl party! By now we are forced to pay homage to a morphing multicultural mishmash that has moved from Chrismukkah into even more bizarre forms. In our home, we celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas while recognizing that each is different. I wish a heartfelt u2018Happy Hanukkah!' to my Jewish relatives and friends, and an equally hearty u2018Merry Christmas' to my Christian family and friends. It is disturbing that an administration that speaks of re-connecting to this college's Brethren roots is so eager to obliterate its Christian traditions. It is one thing to avoid imposing religious doctrines on the members of other churches. It is an entirely different matter to go out of ones way to remove all Christian references from a now homogenized and utterly secularized "holiday season". One might suspect that what lies behind this venture is the attempt to replace a real historical community with forced diversity. This does not enrich but rather demeans. Let's encourage true cultural appreciation –but not the kind of homogenization that excludes our own heritage.