All Faiths Day

I remember once hearing a story that on a particular Christmas day in World War I (or perhaps it was WWII) the soldiers in the trenches on both sides of the battlefield stopped fighting and started playing soccer in celebration of the holiday. An odd, and moving, sight that must have been: mortal enemies putting aside their differences to have some fun. That inspired me to come up with the following idea. I invented a holiday (hey, if they can do it for Kwanzaa, I can do it here).

Basically, here's the gist of it. It is based on the assumption that most people on the planet want peace. Perhaps this is a faulty premise, but I don't think so.

I hereby designate this holiday "All Faiths Day." It is intended to recognize the contributions of all the world's religions to the spiritual development of the human race. The most difficult part of making a new holiday, particularly this one, is coming up with a date to celebrate it on. The problem is that one must pick a date that no other religion can lay claim to-so we are not accused of playing favorites. Keeping that in mind, I arbitrarily designated February 29th as "All Faiths Day." It only comes around every four years, so it is a rare day indeed. But perhaps that just makes it more special. Anyway, to make it official, I hereby designate February 29th, 2008 as the first "All Faiths Day."

To celebrate this holiday, I will light a solitary candle and encourage military personnel around the world to take the day off of killing (unless, of course, someone else is trying to kill you). I invite members of all other religions to join me. Can we have one day of world peace every four years? I would like to think we could accomplish that little bit, if not more.

If German, French, English, and American soldiers can play soccer and bring a temporary halt to bloodshed so many years ago, perhaps we can accomplish something similar here.

As a side note, I originally was going to go with "International Peace Day," but figured such was too austere and secular. Religion can be a strength, not a weakness. Let us make it one, and cry in a single voice that we can choose our future and end the bloodshed that has so marred our past.