Chicken and Vacations

So, Tyson chicken agreed to allow Muslim employees to use their paid Labor Day holiday (a day they usually have to work, anyways) and take a paid holiday on Id al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. And, apparently, this is a problem for people. One protestor wrote to the union, “A union in the U.S.A., a country based on Christianity. You call yourselves Americans? Have you forgotten 9/11?”

Ignoring the “the US is a Christian nation” canard, what do we make of this kind of reaction? It seems entirely reasonable to me that we would make adjustments and concessions to a large minority. Or even a small one: if you decide you’re Wiccan and you want to give up your Labor Day so that you can do whatever it is that Wiccans do on holidays, more power to you. The idea of the US as a nation of gruff individualists is obviously a simplistic fantasy (ask Ward and June what they would have thought of Id al-Fitr), so perhaps this kind of reaction is inevitable when a large minority group becomes more prominent in US life. I’m sure that in the 1850s, Irish immigrants would not have gotten St Patrick’s Day off, either (or any day, for that matter, so I guess some progress has been made).

My question is, like with the Irish, do we simply ignore this kind of reaction and allow time to take its natural course? Recent immigrants don’t assimilate – their children do. It’s not asking too much to meet people halfway – if anything, Tyson and the union’s compromise seems like the very height of cultural plurality. So, what can we say to the “Love it or leave it crowd”? I think it’s an interesting and important question, but I don’t have an answer.