No Place in the Public Square The Empty Crèche

THEY are doing funny things with our holidays. The birthdays of Washington and Lincoln have long since been conflated into “Presidents’ Day.” Conflated is the wrong word. They have been displaced by something that, to the extent it has any discernible meaning apart from another day off, is a tribute to the office of the Presidency or to Presidents in general. Considering the uneven merits of Presidents, it has the virtue, I suppose, of serving the civic religion of equality. Washington, Lincoln, Harding, Clinton, or Whoever, as Bob Dole might say. But Presidents’ Day is the least of it.

This year much media attention was given the growing popularity of Halloween. The trend, as with birthday parties, is for adults to go in big for something that used to be for children. It is no doubt part of the infantilizing of an affluent society that doesn’t know what to do with itself. Halloween, of course, means “All Hallow Even,” but that was a long time ago. Now it’s all about ghosties and ghoulies and things that give a bump to the bottom line. Halloween, they tell us, is now ahead of Easter and Mother’s Day in terms of consumer spending.

RJ

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Richard John Neuhaus

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THEY are doing funny things with our holidays. The birthdays of Washington and Lincoln have long since been conflated into “Presidents’ Day.” Conflated is the wrong word. They have been displaced by something that, to the extent it has any discernible meaning apart from another day off, is a tribute to the office of the Presidency or to Presidents in general. Considering the uneven merits of Presidents, it has the virtue, I suppose, of serving the civic religion of equality. Washington, Lincoln, Harding, Clinton, or Whoever, as Bob Dole might say. But Presidents’ Day is the least of it.

This year much media attention was given the growing popularity of Halloween. The trend, as with birthday parties, is for adults to go in big for something that used to be for children. It is no doubt part of the infantilizing of an affluent society that doesn’t know what to do with itself. Halloween, of course, means “All Hallow Even,” but that was a long time ago. Now it’s all about ghosties and ghoulies and things that give a bump to the bottom line. Halloween, they tell us, is now ahead of Easter and Mother’s Day in terms of consumer spending.