Assumptions

I was driving my family down to my mother's house for an Easter supper, when an interesting conversation came up in the car.  Easter is part of this, but not perhaps, in the way you'd think.

We have an interfaith family and cover all our bases...at least on the celebration end of things.  For Easter we acknowledge it as a time of renewal and rebirth - embracing perhaps more of the original intent behind the holiday before the Jesus story came to be.  We hunt for treat filled eggs and eat far too much from a feast prepared by loving hands, counting our blessings with every bite.  We enjoy time with family and friends and toast to good things past and to bright futures to come.  For a little while, we all put away our more pressing issues, and leave the cacophony of the popular culture and just enjoying the very nature of being.  I mention all of this to give you an idea of how we look at Easter in our family - though my husband was raised as a Catholic, he doesn't cling much to that dogma and tends to identify himself as Jewish when asked.  I am a Jew, raised in an interfaith household as well, as my mother converted to Judaism before marriage, and her entire family celebrated the holiday as well, but again...mostly secularly.  The message of Easter sent to me was mostly about bunnies and candy.  I knew it was a Christian holiday, but didn't get it's larger meaning until middle school, much less it's previous incarnation until later in high school (the festival of Ishtar).  And now that I understand it, after asking many questions and doing my own research, I greatly respect what the holiday stands for and how important a Holy Day it is for my Christian friends and family (and all those who I don't know) who observe it.  But I digress...

So, we're driving down to my mother's, and in the distance we see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles on the left hand side of the road.  Traffic begins to slow as drivers are pulling out of the way, and others are simply craning their curious necks to see what had happened.  I believe there were four emergency vehicles, a flatbed truck with the damaged car already mounted, and a handful of people milling about with a load of whatever was likely in the damaged vehicle now sitting on the side of the road.

I whisper, "I hope everyone is all right."

My husband says aloud, "Someone's making double time today."

I don't put this out there to present an obvious difference in the way we think with regard to compassion.  My husband tends to more of the compassionate side for the most part, but I still thought it an odd choice of comment to make.  So I asked him why.

He replied with something about the fact that it was Easter, and how sorry he felt for all those emergency personnel who were called out to work on the holiday.  (For the record, he did add that as he had more time to look at the situation as the passenger, he had surmised that everyone, for the most part, was safe and unharmed. But that part simply isn't germaine.)

This is where I found the more glaring difference in our thought process.  My husband made the assumptions that 1. all of the emergency personnel were Christian, 2. they were all observing the holiday and 3. that Easter would be considered a holiday to the extent that employers would pay holiday time for. 

I pointed all of those potential flaws to his logic. He paused for a long time, and then said, "I just didn't think about it that way."

It's these very same assumptions that those who are not Christian in this nation come up against so often.  It's these assumptions that cause so much angst and frustration.  It's these blind assumptions that even when pointed out, day after week after year...that build resentment and hostility. 

And day after week after year those of us who are not Christian, for the most part, are expected to simply forgive the misunderstanding or innocent ignorance, and roll with the punches, accepting, yet again, another heartfelt apology, and simply adjust our lives to accommodate the exclusionary scheduling. 

Prom on Passover?  Exams on Eid-al-Fitr? Dance Recital on Diwali?  Oh...we're so sorry...we didn't know.  Reviews on Rivdan?  Finals on Vaisakhi?  We didn't realize.  We didn't even think about it.  We just assumed...

Stop the assumptions.  Think outside yourselves.

I know I should wrap this up with some inspirational recommendation on being bigger and better than who you are, and learning and embracing (rather than simply tolerating) what is different from what you know, and being inclusive and educated.  But the whole thing is just so...bothersome and I don't want to come across as too pedantic.  I'm going to assume you've already figured that out.  So instead, I'll leave you with this...

Remember that old saying about when you assume?  It still holds.  For all of us.

I've started a change in course that could and will likely have some relatively radical outcomes for my way of life.  I stress the word "relatively". Not reality-show life changing, nor Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning changing, nor winning-Powerball life changing.  But I've taken a first step that I'd hoped would give me a sense of relief, but that hasn't come yet.  There has been so much chaos over the past few years and I've finally admitted that I can't, as much as I'd like to, hope or depend that someone else is going to pick up any of these broken pieces.  And so I've been starting the clean up.  One small piece at a time.