DAVID WATERS December: A potpourri of holidays -- and complications

A friend sent me a Happy Holidays card a couple of Decembers ago.
Inside, it said: "Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Solemn Ramadan. Joyous Kwanzaa."
Only in America.
When I was a kid, there were only two holidays in December. Christmas and Christmas vacation.
Now, Americans will celebrate the 12 days of Christmas.
They also celebrate the eight days of Jewish Hanukkah and the seven days of African-American Kwanzaa.
And every so often they celebrate the 40 days of Ramadan in December.
December isn't changing.
America is.
In Los Angeles, there are more Buddhists than Lutherans or Episcopalians.
In Chicago, there are more Muslims than Presbyterians or Methodists.
In Memphis, there are more Hindus and Sikhs than Quakers and Unitarians.
America's spiritual holidays no longer are confined to Dec. 25 and one Sunday in spring.
In recent weeks, Americans celebrated five days of Hindu Diwali and the birthday of Sikhism's founding guru. Baha'is and Shintoists also marked holy days.
Things must have been simpler a millennium ago.
When the clock struck 2000, there were about 270 million people living in America. That was the population of the whole world in 1000.
The whole world lives here now.
America isn't a Christian nation. It's a nation of Christians.
It's also a nation of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Shintoists and every other sort of religious adherent, not to mention atheists, agnostics and undecideds.
How we handle that might be our greatest challenge of this century.
"In the New World of religious diversity, pluralism is not a given but an achievement," Diana L. Eck, founder of the Pluralism Project, wrote in Harvard Magazine a few years ago. "Pluralism will require not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding ... In the world into which we now move, our ignorance of one another will be increasingly costly."
Pluralism.
Distilled to three choices
According to my encyclopedia, a society has three choices: Pluralism, anarchism and totalitarianism.
Wish all multiple-choice questions were that easy.
So, this holiday season, don't just "tolerate" the holy days of others. Get to know them. Watch. Ask questions. Participate.
Find out that Christmas isn't just about giving but also about liberation and salvation.
Learn that Ramadan isn't just about fasting but also about compassion and dependence on God.
Ask someone about the seven guiding principles of Kwanzaa, which include unity, responsibility and faith.
Tell your all-American kids that Hanukkah isn't the Jewish Christmas.
"What is most inspiring about Hanukkah," historian Thomas Cahill writes in "Desire of the Everlasting Hills," a new book about Jesus, "is that it memorializes the first clear victory in history for freedom of worship."
Now there's something we all can celebrate, and not only in America.
Happy holy days.
Scripps Howard News Service