Keeping Christmas.

• Author: McCorkie, Vern
• Position: Hanukah, Kwanzaa and Ramadan celebrations

Depending on when you may be reading this, there are only about 45 more days until Christmas. Visual clues are to be seen everywhere, but if present custom keeps, which we hope it does not, one dare not wish anybody Merry Christmas. It's thought by many folks who rush to be politically correct that it would hurt somebody's feelings to hear the word Christmas.

To that we say, "Bah, humbug!"

Notable among those celebrations that are observed at about Christmastime are Hanukah, Kwanzaa and Ramadan. None has anything to do with celebrating the birth of Christ. How it came to be that Christians have been politically corrected into changing their traditional greeting of Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays is one of the most unfair and unfortunate events of contemporary religious practice. We do not accept this conventional wisdom.

Hanukah (sometimes Hanukkah or Chanukah) is celebrated by people of Jewish faith from Dec. 8 until sundown on Dec. 15. On each day of Hanukah, a new candle is lighted in remembrance of eight days of lamp oil that miraculously appeared following destruction of a Holy place. It is also called the Festival of Lights and during Hanukah there is focus on family, friendship and food. Latkes, scrumptious potato pancakes, are served as one great favorite, among many traditional treats.

Kwanzaa (sometimes Quanza or Kuanzah), celebrated from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, and feted by Afro-Americans, is said to be patterned after an East African harvest festival. Kwanzaa was invented in Los Angles in 1966 by convicted felon Ron Everett, leader of a Black Nationalist group called United Slaves, according to researcher Gall Heriot. It celebrates ties of African Americans to African culture and unlike other observations has origins going...