On 25/12/12 21:47, Majken Connor wrote:
Hi all. I have some concerns about the posts on the official facebook and
twitter accounts.
For those not on Facebook and/or Twitter, and for clarity, would you
mind quoting the posts you are concerned about?
Most places celebrate the winter solstice either religiously or culturally.
For most of december the posts referred to generic holidays. Today and
yesterday there are posts about tracking santa and getting presents. While
there were no direct religious references and many people don't celebrate
religiously (I try to refer to it as yule myself) it's still very much
entwined with the religious festival.
Santa, as he manifests himself in Western cultural celebrations today,
has about as much to do with the true meaning of the Christian festival
of Christmas (celebrating the awesomeness of the birth of Jesus Christ)
as snow has. In fact, Santa represents much that is _wrong_ about
people's perceptions of God. For an awesome explanation of this, see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpu3v5uxZTY
So I don't agree that a reference to Santa is a religious reference.
But even if it were, I also don't agree that references to current
religious festivals by the Firefox Facebook/Twitter accounts are
inappropriate. Mozillians may not all agree on the significance of such
things, but I hope we can agree not to be upset by the fact that others
find them significant, and the fact that they find them significant can
be referred to.
BTW, "Yule or Yuletide ("Yule time") is a religious festival observed by
the Northern European peoples, later being absorbed into and equated
with the Christian festival of Christmas. The earliest references to
Yule are by way of indigenous Germanic month names (Ærra Jéola (Before
Yule) or Jiuli and Æftera Jéola (After Yule). Scholars have connected
the celebration to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin and the pagan Anglo-Saxon
Modranicht."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule
So if, by that name, you are attempting not to make a religious
reference, I'm afraid you'll need another one. Or, we could all just
agree not to get stressed about the fact that it's a religious festival :-)
What is/should the policy be in terms of how we use cultural celebrations
to promote firefox, especially in light of the community guidelines?
I would be surprised and disappointed if the community guidelines were
actively used to try and make Mozilla a culture or religion-free zone.
As well as being impossible, the attempt would IMO be damaging and lead
to sterility in our personal interactions.
Gerv
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