The Board of Education Montgomery County, Maryland has cancelled all religious holidays. The move by the rather politically liberal county came in response to demands from Muslim groups to add Islamic holidays to the school calendar.
In an essay in 1n 1997, predicted the demise of conventional, innocuous Christian public observances as the obvious consequence of what I called the “Menorah Principle” – the notion that religious minorities must share equal, not pro rata, space with the majority religion makes public (i.e., governmental) religious symbolism effectively unworkable. In a nation with a multitude of religions followed by less than one percent of the population, giving everyone a turn will in the long run render public religious displays or any kind either meaningless, incoherent, or excessive. (Today, Buddhists (0.7%) Hindus (04.%) and New Agers (0.4%) make up a comparable share of the population to Moslems (0.6%).)
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