Are We Giving Away the Greatest Gift?
Posted in Liberty's Lady by R Lee Wrights on January 7th, 2006 by Lady Liberty
I recently sent a congratulatory note to a young woman about to have a birthday. In part, I wrote, “Never forget we are all born free. The question is whether or not we can live that way.” Freedom is among certain rights to which we are all entitled, merely by virtue of being born. Our Founding Fathers codified that notion when they wrote a list of some of what they called “unalienable rights.”
While the young woman in question celebrates her birthday with her friends and family, it occurred to me that millions around the world are celebrating other recognitions of birth. On Christmas Day, Christians honor their belief that their savior was born some 2,000 years ago. With the Winter Solstice, pagans look to the shortest day of the year as being the one that signals a turning point toward longer days and the rebirth of the sun god. Those who mark Hanukkah not only commemorate the anniversary of an event believed to be miraculous, but more symbolically the birth of religious freedom for Jews in that place and time. Even the recently invented Kwanzaa points in part to matters of harvest, one of the earliest and most obvious symbols of birth, growth, and death that there is.
