By Aaliyah Dasoo
With the holiday season approaching, Toronto is getting ready to celebrate in many different ways. With Christianity being the largest religion in Canada, much of Canadian society is dictated by Christian principles – statutory holidays being one of them.
A number of statutory holidays in Canada have a christian affiliation. This includes; Easter, Good Friday and Christmas, According to Statistics Canada, only 67.3 per cent of people in Canada reported that they identify with a Christian religion. That leaves 32.7 per cent of the population who either celebrates Christmas without being religious, or observe different holidays.
Pastor Dawn of the First Evangelical Lutheran Church says it makes her “really happy” when non-religious people celebrate Christmas, even though she has noticed the commercialization of the holidays.
“Things like generosity and making sure to give to charities and to bring families together, and to use christmas as a time to heal old wounds and to make reconciliation, those are the values that are still trumping.” she said.
Only about one per cent of the Canadian population identifies with Judaism, but that still makes up approximately 375,000 people.
“Hanukkah is a time of gathering with your family,” says Alannah Isaacs, who identifies as Jewish. “Overall this holiday provides a time of gathering with those you love over food and song.”
However, she says she feels like the “true meaning behind the holidays have been taken over by the need and want for material goods and mass consumption of products”.
Timeline by Selina Setrakian
A city of coexistence
According to StatCan, men and women only lose about 9 days on average out of whole year off work.
Alex Desouza, says he’s atheist but still celebrates christmas. But Alex says that it’s important people of all religions get their time off.
“I think we’re all created equal so yeah, if you believe in a religion, your work or school should accommodate you.”
A report done by the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics shows that people are usually reluctant to take days off work for a few reasons including; not being able to find someone to cover for them, having too heavy of a workload to leave, or their employer may not favour them if they do take the time off.
Eid, an Islamic holiday, rotates on a lunar calendar, so it’s not always around the holiday season in December.
“You have to let your respective workplace know like a month beforehand, and it’s pretty difficult especially when you observe the moon. Traditionally, eid is like three days long, and we don’t want it to be seen as taking advantage of generosity.” said Asad Malek, a member of Ryerson University’s Muslim Student Association.
Samaa Hussein, who also works with Ryerson University’s Muslim Student Association explained that if she were to get time off for work and school, she would want all religions and cultures to be able to experience that as well.
However, she understood that it not easily feasible, the importance of accomodation still remains.
“Sometimes with the hectic nature of life and school and work, it’s nice to just have a day to spend some time together.”
Map by Selina Setrakian
Video to come soon.
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