In the interest of peace and giving, I thought I’d just write a simple message wishing the readers of Blog@Newsarama a joyous holiday no matter what religious affiliation they may keep.
Then I started writing and changed my mind.
Instead I wanted to point out that something unusual in mainstream superhero comics. (Or too usual, I’m afraid.) While it’s not compulsory to take time off from the normal storyline in December, it’s not uncommon to see special Christmas issues in that month. Or a extra-long Holiday special spilled with short stories that includes a ten-page Chanukah story or a brief mention of Kwanzaa so the company can say “See, we’re diverse! Really, we are!”
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to tell a Christmas story (granted, there are some pretty bad Christmas stories out there) or a bad thing to tell a Chanukah story in the spirit of inclusiveness. The part that strikes me as off is that, even though not everyone celebrates their biggest religious holidays in December, we rarely see mention of religious holidays outside of December.
I think I saw a reference to Yom Kippur once but it had to have been several years ago because I can’t for the life of me remember what issue of what comic that was. I don’t think I’ve seen mention of Rosh Hashanah or Passover at all.
Wonder Woman is from a conveniently ancient culture, so they can just make up holidays or research them to Ancient Greek festivals if they like and stick them in anywhere. (Very few writers bother.) Beyond that, there’s not much in the way of pagan faith in comics. How often do we see someone doing a ritual in a Halloween issue who isn’t calling up a Bible-based demon? Do Wiccans not exist in these universes?
Come to think of it, do we even have any Hindu or Muslim characters to celebrate holidays? (I mean, you’d think there’d be a mention of the Feast of Sacrifice in December but there are really no characters to mention it with) Or any communities in those major cities that our superheroes occupy that might have a noticeable celebration?
I can name one Buddhist character (Connor Hawke, and yes I know what happened last issue), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him observing any holiday for his own faith. I do think I’ve seen him around to celebrate Christmas with his non-Buddhist friends and family.
Even the Christian characters don’t seem to bother with anything but Christmas. Do they celebrate Easter in the Marvel and DC Universes? (Of course, they don’t bother with Passover. Maybe they don’t celebrate Easter either.)
It strikes me as very limiting. There’s a whole year of significant dates to a wealth of cultures in the real world, it seems so disproportionate for the media to only pay attention to religious diversity in December with a hat tip to Judaism and a whole bunch of Santa covers. It would be nice to acknowledge that people celebrate at other times of the year at the same time give yourself a whole year to work with rather than one little month.
Just a thought.
Anyway, tonight’s the solstice so Happy Yule to those who celebrate.
And yes, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to everyone else.
December 21st, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I think it’s just a symptom of the classic “writer writes what he knows” thing. Most modern American comic book writers are athiests or nominal believers (in any given religion), and thus most characters are as well. You don’t get yelled at (except by you, apparently) if you never mention a religious holiday, but you will get TONS OF HATE MAIL if you do mention it and screw it up - therefore, I think that those who don’t know about religions would rather keep them silent. Also, if religion doesn’t interest the writer, then it probably doesn’t occur to them to write about things like Easter or Ramadan or Passover or Purim or Yom Kippur (Easter being a great example - in a story about heroes, someone might think ‘who wants to read about a hero who needs someone else to die for his problems?’).
This isn’t true of all comic book writers, but it is true of most - and with the majority of the current writers AND readers AND publishers of comics being white 20-40 agnostic-ish males, the majority of comics will continue to reflect that.
December 21st, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Christmas is that time of year when you go home and spend time with your family. You decorate the house, Christmas sons play on the radio, people make Christmas food etc etc etc. With Easter and others, you probably just see it on the calender and the pastor might mention it at church then…. nothing.
I think other religious holidays, even Christian ones, just don’t matter to the stories unless it is the story. A writer would have to put it in weeks or months before the holiday. Also as CNN says 80% of the American population is Christian. The other 20% are Muslim, Jewish, Atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, Wiccan, various Pagan religions etc etc. I really wouldn’t expect the average Iranian writer to put in Hashanah unless it was the story.
Anyway, my point is in America, and much of the West, Christmas is king(literally for some). Maybe it’s because it’s so commercial, maybe it’s because it’s a solid date when people get together with family, get away from work/school and all that jazz.
December 21st, 2007 at 10:57 pm
And Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
December 21st, 2007 at 11:05 pm
The one Muslim character I can think of is Dust/Sooraya Qadir from New X-Men. By and large, the writers have been pretty good about keeping her religion visible without making it the entire point of her character — but now that you mention it, I don’t recall any references to Ramadan or Eid (which are pretty important, especially since Dust is the kind of very devout Muslim who would refuse to eat or drink from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan, which could be a plot point).
But the trouble with Muslim festivals is that they shift around with respect to the Gregorian calendar, so the writers might not want to mention it for fear of pinning down the timeline too firmly…
December 22nd, 2007 at 7:24 am
“I can name one Buddhist character (Connor Hawke, and yes I know what happened last issue), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him observing any holiday for his own faith. I do think I’ve seen him around to celebrate Christmas with his non-Buddhist friends and family.”
That’s not terribly uncommon. I know a few people who aren’t Christian that celebrate the holiday. They may not put up a tree or put out lights, but they will still buy a present for their Christian friend or send a Christmas card. One of my best friends is Hindu. I couldn’t name one religious holiday he celebrates–except Christmas. Christmas is different from other religious holidays in the US. Everyone, regardless of religion, knows when Christmas is. It’s so in-your-face. It’s everywhere. You’d have to be living under a rock not to notice. You just can’t say that about other religious holidays in the US. I also think it’s pretty funny that an industry essentially created and built by a bunch of Jewish guys started a tradition of annual Christmas specials.