(www.RemnantNewspaper.com) The sixtieth anniversary of National Day of Prayer was celebrated in the United States on May 5^th without a great deal of fanfare; the popular focus of the day was the celebration of the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo, the commemoration of an unlikely (the Mexican troops were outnumbered two to one) Mexican victory over invading French forces on 5 May 1862, a fact which few of the drunken revelers who “celebrate” the “holiday” are aware. Strangely, the celebration is more significant in the USA than in Mexico itself: the U.S. Congress issued a Concurrent Resolution ON June 7, 2005, calling on the President of the United States “to issue a proclamation recognizing that struggle [“for independence and freedom of the Mexican people”] and calling upon the people of the United States to observe Cinco de Mayo with appropriate ceremonies and activities,” per Page H4151 in the Congressional Record of the 109^th Congress (2005-2006). The National Day of Prayer (36 U.S.C. § 119) is celebrated on the first Thursday of May, which in 2011 fell on 5 May.

Needless to say, the National Day of Prayer law has been legally challenged, though a 2010 decision by a federal judge in Wisconsin that the law was unconstitutional was overturned in a unanimous decision by a federal appellate court in April of 2011, according to a 14 April 2011 article in the Christian Science Monitor. The plaintiff—a group that calls itself the “Freedom From Religion Foundation”—“seeks to promote strict separation of church and state,” according to the article, apparently claiming that members of the group feel unwelcome or excluded, which the court determined did not constitute “genuine injury,” in the words attributed by the article to Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, who was quoted as having written: “Hurt feelings differ from legal injury.”

It is refreshing to see a sensible legal decision such as the above in the face of the absurd deference to “political correctness” with respect to such subjective silliness on the part of atheistic secular materialists who are in fact practicing a pseudo-religion of their own, a belief system they wish to impose upon all within societies suffering the misfortune of their endlessly contentious presence.

Do they feel “excluded” from Cinco de Mayo celebrations if they are not of Mexican-American ancestry? Are their feelings hurt when Mexican-Americans parade with statues of saints? Do they believe that Mexican-Americans are doing them harm by venerating Our Lady of Guadalupe? Or do they simply chug down some tequila and chow down on tacos in the name of “diversity” and be done with it?

Cinco de Mayo, like St. Patrick’s Day, has sadly become an excuse for a pagan saturnalia rather than the occasion to seriously celebrate a specific culture’s patriotic or religious holiday within the context of a “multicultural” society. Will the Freedom From Religion Foundation next insist that St. Patrick be banned because he was a genuine Catholic saint, and therefore “hurts their feelings” because celebrating his feast day “excludes” them? Perhaps if he were turned into a leprechaun there would be less danger of hurt feelings and everyone could put on a green derby and pretend to be a druid while drinking stout until they fall down in the street.

Societies have priorities, and sad to say a National Day of Prayer is not ranked as highly as the various “celebrations” of national and international days of drunken revelry masquerading as celebrations of culture.