That prayer to Jesus is inappropriate at a company party?

[Kate8889]

I went with my husband to a company Christmas party and before we started to eat a woman came to the microphone and said a short prayer in the name of Jesus as thanks/blessings for the food. Everyone was expected to bow their head.

This is the first time I've been witness to something like this, it is a secular company with many Jewish, Muslim and agnostic people. We have been going to this Christmas party for 7 years and it's never been like this.

I’m not posting screenshots of my work emails. Why do you think it didn’t happen? Taking what I’ve said at face value, do you agree that it’s not ok?

I’ve been around a long time. And never once in all that time has a “we’re not allowed to say Christmas any more” story proved to have any foundation in fact. Which is why I regard such claims with extreme scepticism. I remember my MIL complaining g that you couldn’t say Happy Christmas in Bradford while standing under a street decoration saying Happy Christmas in lights.. And if you have a lot of practising Muslims in your work force I see nothing wrong with making sure others understand about fasting. And surely sharing iftar is good thing? And cynically good for the company to get fasting people fed as soon as possible. Neither Christmas dinner nor Christmas trees are religious requirements for Christians.

sigh
Please give your mum her account back & suggest she change the password.
GCSE RE takes in response to irony are very dull.

I'm not offended but I would find it incredibly uncomfortable and awkward when it is supposed to be a work social event. I'd feel a bit misled.

If it was openly advertised as a religious event, not just a works party then it would be very different.

Sitting there quietly is respectful, there's no need to bow my head as well.

I didn’t say sharing Iftar was a bad thing. I said promoting one major religious / cultural festival while ignoring another, at a supposedly secular workplace, is a bad thing. I actually don’t think it’s fair even on Muslims for an employer to promote Eid and Ramadan; why is there this pressure for Muslims to be devout and practicing, when Christians are said to ever declining (non-churchgoing for example). My workplace leadership isn’t telling Christians to go to church or give up anything for Lent, so why is it encouraging Muslims to fast? What if someone is thinking they don’t believe any more, but they feel pressure at home, and then also from their workplace to continue following that religion’s rules? I don’t think it’s right.

I don’t know why you find it hard to believe that my workplace has rebranded Christmas as a Winter Celebration, when others have said the same thing.

Nah, It's weird that Christians took a pagan holiday and pagan traditions, decided jesus was born that day and called it christmas.

Most companies don't even call it a Christmas party, they call it a winter party, bc that's all it is for most, a party, in December.

@NoKidsSendDogs True, if I remember anything from my teens when I was interested in paganism, they stole Yule AND Samhein (Halloween) and probably a bunch of others!

I couldn't get worked up about it.

I actually think Christmas is historically somewhat jesus-related... someone will correct me if wrong

😆 Give over, we all know it's not "respectfully" at all and no, thank you, I really don't. I really suggest you evangelicals stop projecting also, it's quite strange.

Not bringing religion or politics into a UK workplace event which will be a diverse environment is a pretty basic thing, understood by most people here. It's not really not oppression to expect people to avoid evangelising to the crowd at a work party event. With your family and friends, do feel free. (Interesting spelling of "favors" btw. Are you from the US?)

I am not so sure about that. Rather depends on what she said.

There are plenty of snowflake Christians who get offended by words spoken by other Christians. Hell, we have had loads of wars over it.

I will just park this here, an example of how loads of Christians were offended when another Christian reminded them of what their Jesus said. It would appear that many Christians are even offended by what is written in their own book :-)

Trump calls National Cathedral bishop "nasty in tone" after her sermon urges him to "have mercy" - CBS News

Are you offended personally of in behalf of other people?

Saying Grace and spreading blessings and thanks is a harmless, thoughtful thing to do. I suspect the Muslims and Jews there weren’t offended at all.

How about this ?

" Bless you all, in the name of Jesus, the one and only true Lord, And a reminder for all here, if you don't fall to your knees and worship Jesus, the only true one, you will burn in hell for eternity. Merry Christmas"

This is too often overlooked in Christianity. The whole message of the religion is to join their club, and if you don't it's off to hell you go.

Part of me thinks that this is what happens when you’re encouraged to bring your whole self to work and work events. One minute it’s great and nobody feels a need to hide their faith, or pretend that they’re married to someone of the opposite sex. The next minute, someone takes it too far and you’ve got prayers being said over the buffet, people are talking about safe spaces and Keith from accounts is wearing latex on Dress Down Fridays.

The other part of me is wondering how some random woman had the power to make you feel like you had to bow your head if you didn’t want to join in with her prayer.

Christmas has long roots that pre date Christianity. We all need a mid winter festival of excess.

Don’t be ridiculous. I guarantee that’s not what was said. I’ve attended work dos for other religions and never been offended. A lot of middle aged Muslims who attended church schools have fond memories of Christian assemblies.

I can see why white British atheists might find the grace a bit cringey. But not offensive. I think offence is such a damaging sentiment.

Exactly. I couldn't care less if another religious group said prayers at a function I was at. Inappropriate is a much overused word these days.

Some of us don't celebrate Christmas in mid winter you know. Most of us, however we celebrate, understand the meaning of it (and don't feel the need for a mid winter festival of excess).

Also, how is December 25th "mid winter"?

Why is that ridiculous, we don't know what was said.

It would be really easy to write a pre dinner prayer that could end up with a police hate speech investigation. Full on Westbro' Baptist style, or Pastor Kevin Swanson ( him of drown gay people fame).

And these folk who could be called Christian fundies, or extremists, would not be making anything up, because it is all in the Bible.

Check out what Paul said in Romans 1:32 " Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. " (KJV)

And now look up the list of things in the previous verses that Paul considers crimes worthy of death. It's a long list.

For sure, folk can point to this post and say, " Look, we seem to have an atheist cherry picking the bad bits from the Bible". To counter that, I would just point out that it is not me cherry picking, It's the people who say the Bible is all love and peace who are doing the cherry picking.

So yeah, I can certainly see how Christian prayers at a secular function could be seen as problematic.

And advent is the countdown to Christmas

It's mid winter in Ireland and UK, the longest night of the year is 21 December

I don’t disagree that Christmas has become largely a commercial holiday but it’s a common misconception that the origins are non-Christian.

I assume you are referring to the idea that it began as a distraction for saturnalia? This might make sense except that the Eastern Orthodox Church also celebrate Christmas around the same time of year and they did not celebrate saturnalia. The early church thought Jesus died on the same calendar day that he was conceived.. some maths about when that was based on the known conception of John the Baptist (as his dad was away for a religious festival when he heard his wife was pregnant) puts that around March/April for Jesus’ death. Both branches of the church plot that back to the end of December for his birth date (although a few days off from each other due to complexities in de-ciphering the Jewish calendar).

Or you could be referring to the tradition of defeating Christmas trees which people assume came from pagan traditions. This was actually Nazi propaganda and part of the justification for nazis taking Christ out of Christmas — this is where Christmas markets come from so there’s some truth to the idea there! the nazis pushed the idea that the whole of Christendom decorated trees because it was a German pagan tradition and this showed the might of the Germans.

But Christmas trees were not an tradition until late medieval times and one theory is that they were initially as part of performances of Bible stories like the creation story where they would have a tree with decorated apples etc and the tradition of decorating trees for Christmas came from that, it’s actually pretty recent in the grand scheme of things.

But a Christmas party is esssntially a celebration of the birth of Jesus. Why is it inappropriate to honour his birth at a party in his name?

Because "Christmas" does not solely refer to the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus?!

These days the word is also used (collectively) to refer to numerous secular traditions based around midwinter:

• feasting/special seasonal foods
• celebrations of fire & light (yule logs, candles etc)
• gift giving
• wassailing

I really hate when Christians try to dismiss all the secular elements of this time of year. Lots of atheists celebrate the secular traditions. The Christian church subsumed a lot of existing traditions pre dating it when it spread through medieval europe. Its not a coincidence that Christmas falls just after the shortest day of the year/midwinter, it was set then in the 4th century to coincide with Roman pre existing Saturnalia festivals & Aurelian's festival celebrating the "unconquered sun".

Loving the idea of middle aged Muslims sitting round sharing fond memories of Christian assemblies.