No holiday today for Diwali

[Anonymous]

There is a day off for Diwali in the draft calendars for next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

What percent of the US is Christian?
What percentage of the founding fathers were Christian?

We aren't just going to roll up our own traditions and start holding holidays for every small group of inhabitants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

We aren’t India.

We aren't Israel either but we had off for the high holy days for the Jewish community (called Professional Days). Particularly tone deaf since they gave off for the following Monday and Tuesday. I have friends in NY public schools who have the day off tomorrow for Diwali.

It has nothing to do with what country we are and everything to do with how many absences there will be.

NY public schools clearly think they’ll have enough absences on Diwali that it makes sense to close.

Likewise for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

Because of the sheer number of people who have the legal right to take that day off for religious observation, which make is pointless to have the school building open.

+1 it's about the practicality.

The only reason MCPS closes on a lot of the main Jewish holidays is because of the number of people who would be out, teachers and admin included. Easier just to close the school. Same for Christmas.

And I'm not Jewish. I'm from CA, and when we first moved here and found out about the Jewish holiday closures, I could not understand why, until someone told me how many Jewish people live in MoCo.

In CA where I'm from, we get a ski week off in February because of the number of families who pull their kids out of school to go skiing.

The flaw is that they have not been able to inquire about people's religion for decades so the data is from the 70s. Far fewer Jewish people % wise here now.

There are 100,000 Jews in MoCo — 10% of the population, which is way higher than the overall US population, which is 2.4% Jewish.

[Anonymous]

Diwali is an evening festival. Personally I like having kids in school that day! I take a half or full day off from work and can focus on getting everything ready for the evening before picking the kids up from school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is Diwali? Never heard of it.

In the amount of time it took you to post an ignorant message you could have googled it

+1000 ignorant AND lazy!

[Anonymous]

I guess they had to choose between today for Diwali, and Monday that was next to the Tuesday that has to be off. And they went for the logistics of the awkwardly placed Monday.

I’m sorry you / your kids don’t get the day. It’s low hanging fruit they could have easily chosen to help you and community be seen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is Diwali? Never heard of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

Because the state requires it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

Because it falls during a scheduled break. Just liket this.

Are you stupid? Or are you being deliberately obtuse?

The scheduled break has purposefully always been around major Christian holidays. Has it been a coincidence that winter break mysteriously always includes Christmas and Spring Break always mysteriously is around Easter????? Come on. Use common sense. This is an old tradition based on decades of predominantly Christian-based populations that's very antiquated.

The nasty tones here are completely unnecessary.

The false premise of your question was more unnecessary. Maybe when you stop behaving in bad faith, you might get good faith answers.

But since you just acknowledged that you were, in fact, being deliberately obtuse, allow me to break this down for you:

The American tradition is to have separation of church and state. This is well covered in the Federalist papers. As such, religious holidays have never been called such on the school calendar. For a very long time, Christianity was the majority religion in this country -- it still is, of course, but observers of other faiths have grown appreciatively, and so we now accommodate their holidays in our public schools in the interest of diversity, equity and inclusion (you know, those things that make America great!). Only, due to the tradition that we separate church and state, we don't actually call it those things.

Do you understand this now a little better? Or are you going to continue to act like an utter dipshit?

Actually your historical knowledge of government’s relationship with religion needs some work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

What percent of the US is Christian?
What percentage of the founding fathers were Christian?

We aren't just going to roll up our own traditions and start holding holidays for every small group of inhabitants.

Yes, when you think of moving almost anywhere else in the world and demanding your holidays off my school, you should realize how ridiculous this expectation is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

What percent of the US is Christian?
What percentage of the founding fathers were Christian?

We aren't just going to roll up our own traditions and start holding holidays for every small group of inhabitants.

Who is the us in "our traditions", and why aren't we (whoever "we" is) going to do that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

What percent of the US is Christian?
What percentage of the founding fathers were Christian?

We aren't just going to roll up our own traditions and start holding holidays for every small group of inhabitants.

Who is the us in "our traditions", and why aren't we (whoever "we" is) going to do that?

Are you stupid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

What percent of the US is Christian?
What percentage of the founding fathers were Christian?

We aren't just going to roll up our own traditions and start holding holidays for every small group of inhabitants.

Who is the us in "our traditions", and why aren't we (whoever "we" is) going to do that?

The existing traditions = we. But not just existing. Majority.
Less than 3 percent of mcps is Hindu.

You can understand how taking a day off for every minor groups holidays would eventually become problematic in a diverse area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

What percent of the US is Christian?
What percentage of the founding fathers were Christian?

We aren't just going to roll up our own traditions and start holding holidays for every small group of inhabitants.

Who is the us in "our traditions", and why aren't we (whoever "we" is) going to do that?

The existing traditions = we. But not just existing. Majority.
Less than 3 percent of mcps is Hindu.

You can understand how taking a day off for every minor groups holidays would eventually become problematic in a diverse area.

Traditions change.