Religious Holidays

I spent my whole life having to ask permission to celebrate my holidays. As a college student, I often felt that I needed to justify how religious I was in order to have the luxury to have the day off on my major holidays (something that no one is expected to do for majority-group holidays, like Christmas or Easter). As faculty, I no longer have to ask permission — I have control over when my class does and doesn’t meet. But in class, my job becomes harder for choosing to partake in my holidays (having to cram material), and because I’m forced to make the choice either to give up class time or have religious observance, I feel I can’t afford to cancel for any other reason, while my peers can cancel for necessary professional events (conferences) or even just personal reasons.  Rather than being allowed to simply have a holiday, ultimately I’m forced to accept a variety of professional and personal tradeoffs in order to be a religious minority.