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.

Christmas started as a religious holiday yes, it wasn’t to celebrate someone who wasn’t born in december, it was a Pagan religious event and very much existed before a small number of christians decided to move their celebration.

If you want to talk tradition, look at Pagan...

It’s unusual but it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest, and I’m an atheist.

Exactly, thank you!!

I went to a conference where that happened too - but it was a conference organised by the Latter Day Saints so hardly a surprise.

It's very inappropriate at a Christmas party. Christmas is not a religious occasion for many in this country and employers should be aware of that.

Wouldn’t bother me one bit, especially as it’s a Christmas party.

(Do all the posters giving the history lesson on the origin of the festival REALLY think that others don’t already know that? 😂)

If we are being historically accurate, it’s been a tradition to celebrate and drink at this time of year long before someone decided that Jesus was born on 25 December (he almost certainly wasn’t but this date was picked to coincide with the existing celebrations around midwinter, like Saturnalia).

It is disingenuous to state that any and all events relating to Christmas festivities need to centre Jesus, as it completely ignores the varied history of how this particular celebration has become as much about Santa as it has about Jesus, and how many people celebrate it in the secular sense in this country. Some Christians may bemoan this, but it doesn’t make it invalid.

A work Christmas party has never been a traditional event in the Christian calendar as far as I’m aware, and I don’t believe it has ever been traditional to pray at one. If it’s a company event, paid for or not, then all employees deserve to feel they have a place there regardless of their religion. I’m sure colleagues of other faiths (including atheists there) have no issue with attending a work Christmas party but should not be expected to either pray or to feel othered for not doing so.

I think the clue is in the word Christmas. It is a Christian festival. Just as it would be appropriate to pray to the God of Judaism for Hanukkah and the appropriate Deities for Diwali.

I really can't see the problem. If someone doesn't want to bow their heads they don't have to.

I'm an atheist. I celebrate "christmas" as a secular holiday that celebrates family. The celebration at this time of year was originally a pagan festival that was hijacked by Christianity. They had an excellent recruitment department who realised that they'd never get the pagans to buy in unless they had festivals around the same time of year and thus created Christmas and Easter.

I would be offended if a Muslim preyed at me, yes. Luckily it wouldn’t happen.

Prayed at you?
You phrase it as though a simple act of prayer is something that can be aimed at a person - like attack by prayer.

Did Mavis get right in front of the OP and scream and spit the prayer at her face?

Are you exaggerating Mavis’s style of prayer so you can virtue signal about your tolerance towards Muslim Prayers while displaying intolerance towards Christians?

I bet none of the Muslims and Jews were offended, only the agnostics. If it means nothing to you it's just words.

Interesting example (putting aside that Easter is probably only indirectly linked to Eostre via a month name I think)

If a Pagan offered a prayer to Eostre at a work Easter party, I’d find it weird but not inappropriate. Ditto Christian, I’d find it a bit less weird but also not inappropriate.

The inappropriateness is in the detail though. If a senior person and/or joining in is expected then I would find that inappropriate. From the OP it sounds a bit borderline as to whether that was the case.

I think the borderline nature also comes from the fact that Christmas is a borderline Christian/general secular festival. I wouldn’t object to a Muslim prayer at a work Eid do, for example, because Eid hasn’t made that transition. That affects what attendees’ reasonable expectations of the event are.

By "everyone was expected to bow their heads" was this stated beforehand? I have been to different churches and not everyone there bows their head so I think the request of everyone to bow their head is a little strange but I dont see a problem with the prayer beforehand at a Christmas event. Except in this case it seems, people arent obligated to take part 🤷🏽‍♀️

No, it isn't weird.

The UK is a country with a culturally Christian history. Christmas Day is a bank holiday. Our stores are full of Christmas items. Our TVs are filled with Christmas shows. We perform in nativity plays at school.

Christmas is hard to avoid but you can engage in all of these things very happily without thinking very much about Jesus. I know I do.

I can assure you that my Christmas celebrations are about the real people I love and the real experience of lighting up the darkest days of the year rather than honouring an imaginary supernatural being. Now, that is weird.

So why does it matter? They're just words

I’m an atheist and yes it’s a-bit weird but I wouldn’t go as far to say inappropriate.
At the end of the day, who is it hurting…no one! If it made her better, fine.
Nothing to get worked up over.

Or they could remember the Pagan ceremony the Christian's hijacked.

my last post as this gets heated every year & I just cannot be bothered arguing.

OP, do you mean that the person said Grace before the meal? That used to be very much standard at large functions, and everyone just went with it, whether religious or not (at really smart events, Grace would be said in Latin!).
But I do agree that it's less common these days.

As an atheist I just sit and look around the room when these things occur. You usually find that there will be several other kindred spirits doing the same thing.

Odd thing though, technically Jesus was not a Christian.

Matt 5:18, he himself is saying what he is.

My personal thought is that Christians should really be known as Paulines. Paul appears to have invented a big chunk of Christianity. And he never even knew the guy.

Happy Paulmass everyone :-)

It would be as weird as fuck to me to go to someone's house and for them to say grace. I am 57 and this has never happened to me.

Saturnalia, solstice & Yule celebrations across Europe involved holly, mistletoe, feasting and song and predate Christianity by hundreds of years. Early Christian’s piggybacked on these traditional midwinter feasts to gain acceptance.

So everyone is right- it can be about Jesus and it also very credibly can be about brightening up the bleakest months with some shared alcohol, nuts and I dunno, sweetbreads or whatever.

I'm not religious at all and our Christmas is very much in Western-cultural-celebration sense - I wouldn't care about this either way. I think it's kinda nice that for some people it's still got an element of religious tradition.

If however it was designed to make some kind of insular point to non-Christians that would bother me.