Blog / 2023 / Judicial Grinches and Irreligious Santas

As we come into the Christmas season with the Santas and the songs permeating every aspect of public life, I feel it’s important to let you know that you’re in the presence of a bonafide grinch. Not a killjoy or a scrooge, but a Judicial Grinch who’s obsessed with fairness—and with shoring up our unsteady democracy.

I was a teen when my grinchy tendencies started to show. I was finishing my first semester at a Catholic high school when the question popped into my head:

Why has the government of the United States made Christmas an official day off?

The US has twelve official holidays, and only this one has a religious origin. This special status given to a Christian celebration acts as an endorsement of one religion over all others. That’s not only unlawful according to our Bill of Rights, but it also very clearly puts the US on Santa’s naughty list. Because naming a religion’s big day as an official holiday can make Americans who don’t celebrate feel excluded, and Santa is most definitely not into anyone being ostracized for their differences. (For legal precedence in the Supreme Court of Santaland, see: Rudolph v. the Other Reindeer.)*

Of course, a lot of people don’t view Christmas as religious anymore. They’ve X-ed that Mas in their minds, and they just want to go into their own personal gingerbread house and leave all legal considerations behind.

I get it.

The Judicial Grinch in me acknowledges the Irreligious Santa in you. I see your desire to celebrate, and I raise you another way to party: HumanLight! Instead of commemorating the birth of a religious prophet, this secular celebration is a way to take a day to honor reason, compassion, hope, and humanity itself.

HumanLight coincides with Christmas, with parties happening on or around December 23^rd specifically so that non-religious people can have their own thing and still be able to attend Christmas festivities if they want.

Like with many secular celebrations, there isn’t a lot of prescribed iconography or required rituals to go with HumanLight. Still, since its start in 2001, HumanLight events tend to include a lighting of candles. Sometimes there are three candles and sometimes four. They’re often red, yellow, blue, and white, but not always. The idea is to reflect on reason, compassion, hope, and humanity as the candles are lit.

I’m still new to HumanLight, having celebrated for the first time in 2021 with this painting, but the fact of its existence soothes the Judicial Grinch in me a little bit. Of course, what would truly make my democracy-loving heart grow three sizes is to have HumanLight as well as Yom Kippur, Eid al-Adha, Holi, the Lunar New Year, and International Women’s Day added to the official holidays of the United States. Hey, a grinch can dream, can’t she?

The original painting has already sold, but there are prints and pretty things with this image here in my print shop.