Symbolic recognition, multicultural citizens, and acknowledgement: Negotiating the Christmas Wars

Abstract

In recent times, December has come to mark a new tradition—an annual public debate over the degree to which Christmas should be publicly recognised and celebrated in a multicultural society. Curiously, political theorists of multiculturalism have had little to say on this controversy. In this article, I argue that there is a genuine issue at stake in the so-called ‘December dilemma’, but that the public debate—which construes the matter in terms of offending non-Christians—fails to identify and address it. Differentiating three distinct areas of contention (public holiday, public square, and state schools), I suggest that the core issue is one of ‘acknowledging a “generalised other”’, and sketch what this might mean for each of these public aspects of Christmas celebration.