If you celebrate Christmas or any Christian holiday, you might be intolerant and perpetuating “settler colonialism” according to a federal body in charge of human rights law.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) recently published a paper discussing anti-racism in the workplace, which describes the Christmas and Easter holidays as a form of discrimination and religious intolerance.
The paper’s release comes shortly after the Canadian Armed Forces issued a directive that prohibits chaplains from reciting religious prayers and mentioning God during official public functions and ceremonies, including Remembrance Day.
Entitled, Discussion Paper on Religious Intolerance, the paper claims that because “Statutory holidays related to Christianity, including Christmas and Easter, are the only Canadian statutory holidays linked to religious holy days” they are therefore discriminatory.
The CHRC argues that this is the case because “non-Christians may 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.”
According to the federal human rights body, Canada has a long history of religious intolerance which is “deeply rooted in our identity as a settler colonial state.”
This legacy has led to the system in Canada being “constructed in a way that places value on certain traits or identities to the exclusion of others — for example, white, male, Christian, English-speaking, thin/fit, not having a disability, heterosexual, gender conforming.”
As for microaggressions in the workplace, the paper cites “scheduling team meetings on Jewish or Muslim holy days” as an example.
Perhaps the assumption there is that no work meeting has ever been scheduled over a Christian holiday.
