[SUGGESTION] Minority Holiday & Culture Recognition

I'd like to add that many minority groups aren't recognized for their religion or culture. I believe, because there are a lot of people from around the world, we should recognize those different religions and cultures by at least adding more than Christmas or Thanksgiving. For example, we should make note of the Jewish holiday, Pesach (Passover), which starts in April. We should start this no later than April because April is Celebrate Diversity Month. So if anyone wants their culture more recognized, feel free to post here! I've noticed that we mainly have holidays centered around the U.S. and Christianity. We have a couple holidays of other cultures noticed, but that's probably because we have those in the U.S. too. I want all cultures noticed and everyone to be able to share their experiences on Empire, not. just the same major holidays every years. Please post your suggestions here. If you like, we could make this an Empire Revolution of Cultural Recognition.

Thank you all for reading this Empire Minecraft suggestion. I hope we can improve EMC together. Remember to vote on the Poll because we need your opinions to achieve this. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed this.

Here's a link to "2020 Diversity Holidays."
https://www.diversitybestpractices.com/2020-diversity-holidays

This is a new start for a new decade!

Well, TBH, I'm an atheist. One of my parents is Jewish. Personally, I don't believe in much, but I choose to take the time and discover great experiences with my family and friends. I cannot do that with all my friends leaving EMC due to the update being delayed so long and some of the many bad rumors. I don't want to lose playtime with anyone else, so I'm here to do everything I can to keep your server alive. If you don't make holidays centered around religion....then why do you give out Christmas promos? That's a big religious holiday. And I never said it had to be specifically about churchy, speechy, or preachy, stuff. All I said is that we can recognize other religions and cultures. Everybody believes something different because an example is that a Jewish person does not celebrate Christmas. The holiday is only controversial if the people are controversial. It's fine with me if you make the holidays you create are highly commercialized. I'm just pointing out that that Christianity is a well-known, wide-spread, and popular religion, but that doesn't mean it's worth more than the others. So please take the peoples' suggestions and fulfill their wishes to the best of your ability from the comments in this thread. Those of us who are still here most likely want to improve this place. The staff can't do that alone. That's why we players are here to help. Thanks for reading.

Krysyy, please...

I know it’s not what you mean to say, but what you’re implying is outrageous.
I don’t really care that much about the problem at hand, but I do care about the way it is handled.
By stating that it is only uncontroversial to celebrate holidays commercialised, like in the US, you imply that there are two belief systems: Capitalist Christianity, and controversial, and I really dislike that.

Your point seems to be that the only context in which you would accept celebrating a minorities’ holidays, is when it has been properly appropriated by the US, even though getting rid of this US-centred-ness is exactly the point of celebrating minorities’ holidays. You’re trying to move in by burning the house you were going to live in, this is not at all how it works.

Most of this would be mirrored in how, for example, homosexuality is generally covered in the US: There are two modes: Heterosexual and political. There are two types of identifying: Cisgender and political, etc. This is exactly what you’re stating here. There are the holidays you think everyone celebrates, based on your US upbringing, (which I feel like I can assume is republican,) and then there are the “controversial” holidays. Fighting this idea of what is controversial and what isn’t, is exactly the point of representation.

Representation of homosexuality in stories is important exactly because it needs to be normal and uncontroversial. Representation of religions is important exactly because it needs to be uncontroversial, according to the ones who want the representation.

What is and isn’t controversial is exactly the thing that is controversial.

I think I can anticipate your response to this: You would probably argue that you’re not Christian-centred, but you simply don’t want to talk about or represent any religion, nor do you professionally want to support capitalism or socialism, or any idea on gender or sexuality.
This is not possible, sadly, because I would have wished it were and I would have loved it if it would have been as easy as you seem to think it is, but it is not. We are not in a society where you can simply claim you’re a Pyrrhonist, where you can just sit back, and suspend judgement forever, which would be lovely in my professional life too, but it simply does not work that way. Life’s not that simple, and it never was, and it never will be.

There is no such thing as an objectively uncontroversial statement, there is only what is and is not controversial within a certain culture and because we live in a society “not acting politically’ is the same as politically agreeing with the status quo of the society.
To make this all less abstract, let’s come back to what we were talking about: celebrating holidays. The only truly uncontroversial thing I can think of is not celebrating holidays at all, or making up your own. Or is it? Someone with a strong religious belief system who lives in a theocratic dictatorship will find this an act of atheism, or anyway an attack against their religious belief, exactly because celebrating it is considered controversial. They don’t see it as controversial, they see it as normal, but this server seems to do.
No matter which action you take, you can always imagine a background in which someone will find the decision on how to act controversial.
In other words: your attempt at being uncontroversial is futile, and it will always be. By celebrating holidays, or by not celebrating them at all, you necessarily make a political statement, so, please, make it a good one. And, please, don’t act like it is not.

Because you try to be uncontroversial, most of the actions you take are what would be uncontroversial in the capitalistic and Christianity-centred US, but please don't act like you don't know that the US’ “uncontroversial” beliefs are highly controversial in other countries. What you're doing, in my mind, for example, is supporting the capitalist status quo and oppressive religious, sexual and gender normalities from the US without question. By trying to be uncontroversial, you have, in my mind, chosen the far-right option, exactly because I am not from the US, nor am straight, nor am from a traditionally Christian upbringing.

Do keep in mind that, in most of the Europe, if not the world, the US is seen as so far right-winged, Christian centred, and capitalistic it often is the subject of ridicule and satire. Bernie Sanders would be a moderate right-winger in most of Europe, where the Republican party would be so far out right that it is incomprehensible to most of us that people even vote for it. There is prime-time TV trying to understand Republican ideology, people going to the US staring at republicans and their ideas in disbelief. I am not joking. You live in Texas, a state in which the party that wins regularly that has been called "the Neo-Fascist party of the US" in Trouw, the major Dutch Christian newspaper.

I do want to restate that, honestly, I don’t personally care at all about which holidays are celebrated. I am, as you know, an Atheist with a Buddhist upbringing. I would personally argue that people who really make a point out of which holidays are celebrated should just learn that this is a US-server and that it will therefore be US-centred politically.

I do, however, and as expressed, have a problem with your way of handling this small issue. You seem to be completely unable to understand the geopolitical questions at hand, and you honestly seem to believe that US-centrism is uncontroversial, and that Pyrrhonism is a thing that works, and is possible. Again, I really suggest you read the essay I wrote here, as it tackles many of these issues far more in-depth than I can do writing this all out in a stream-of-conscious writing style in half an hour, like I do now.

Let’s recap: Nothing is inherently uncontroversial, things can only be uncontroversial within a culture, and EMC consists of people from many different cultures. Additionally: There is no such thing as a neutral statement, there is always someone who will find what you say or what you do controversial, no matter how hard you try to please everyone.
So: instead of arguing that what you’re doing is uncontroversial, like you’ve been doing so far, let’s acknowledge that every action you can possible take is political, even not acting at all, and that therefore people will always disagree with you on political basis.

I am trying to make this clear to you because it can be really annoying when someone state that something is uncontroversial, or common sense, when you think it is outrageous. I sincerely hope that that, to you too, is common sense.

No, you're not understanding what I mean to say: I am not bringing politics into something, am arguing that not doing that is impossible, and that your politics shine through, even though you (rightfully!) don't want them to. I am stating that you should not forget that someone can rightfully disagree with you on political basis, and that that is not bringing politics in to it, but acknowledging the politics that would have always been on the ground of the decision you made.

You're seemingly trying to position yourself in a tower above the field of politics, trying to suspend judgement and hide behind phrases as "uncontroversial" and "EMC is a game," sadly, this tower only exists in your mind.

Let's change the example to something from the Netherlands. Here you can state "Everyone who doesn't agree with the experts on climate change is unnecessarily bringing politics into something that doesn't need it. It is trivial to follow the experts, and everyone who does not do so is either dishonest or deluded." This would not be a controversial statement in the Netherlands. You see, climate science, or any science at all, isn't controversial here, but stating it on EMC, it is a political claim, but it's more than that, by assuming everyone agrees with me, this, to someone who doesn't agree, will probably feel punched in the face, and rightfully so.
You are currently doing the exact same thing, but the other way around. You are stating something that is completely uncontroversial in the US, but politically loaded in most of Europe. (Probably with the exception of the UK)

All I am doing, is stating that you should acknowledge that; that you should not state "This decision is trivial, and everyone who doesn't think so is unnecessarily bringing politics into the mix," but instead state "This is a decision based on the marketability of the server in US, which is not up for discussion to be our goal."
Stating that something is uncontroversial or trivial will always punch someone's politics in the face, but stating that it is trying to be uncontroversial based on US-centrism, is a factual statement, which people will feel far less punched or, better, ridiculed by.

I am not, at all, trying to argue with your decision an sich, I am disagreeing with your way you decided to frame that decision, because I feel, or better, because I know, that what you’re doing will unnecessarily ridicule someone’s political ideas.
I am not trying to bring politics into it, I am trying to show you that you are, and I am trying to help you avoid it. I do not think it is that important in this case, but I have seen you do this quite often, and you’ve hurt people with it. I know you didn’t intent to, but I can also sum up quite a list of mostly European people who felt like you ridiculed their political ideas precisely by stating that something isn’t political. I want to ask you do work on it.

Krysyy already covered a lot of the big points, but to add/emphasize, yeah, it's a US server, it's going to be US-centric in terms of holidays. There's nothing necessarily wrong with trying to celebrate more holidays or events, but the problem is we would be celebrating them for a literal handful of people. The problem with that in turn is that if we celebrate everything that only a couple people request, we would wind up having to have WAY more events in order to be fair to everyone because there are probably a ton of different holidays that only a couple people on the server celebrate.

Edit after reading through the other essays in this thread:

Please stop trying to drag the topic down with politics. And please stop making me read about them. You're trying to change the American way of handling holidays, and while I say go for it, more power to you for trying to change the world, this isn't the place to do it nor is it the place to preach about a system built over decades by the most influential country in the world, which then spread it everywhere else. Ironically, this commercialized system IS fairly inclusive to other countries and cultures because its been adopted into their own. For example where I live, there are the cultural/country holidays as normal, and then all of the American commercialized holidays as well meaning even though none of the cultural holidays are celebrated on EMC, anyone can feel welcome and included because they can share in the celebration of these non-controversial, commercial holidays.
Like Krysyy said, Fortnite and other games don't have holiday events for every holiday, nor almost any other large game, and nor will EMC. You're complaining that a company (Technically LLC I guess) is acting like a company by only appealing to marketable, commercialized holidays. EMC, while also being built out of a love of a game, is still a company that needs money and a playerbase to run. Sure, trying to appeal to the world is a marketing strategy for a wider playerbase, but not for a minecraft server where you have issues like ping and it's English-only. Like yourself, some play from other countries, but the primary audience for EMC is Americans.

I want Bonfire Night

Also genuinely sick of St. Patrick’s day stuff and I say that as an Irish person smh, switch it out for St. David’s Day stuff

I would also like to celebrate the anniversaries of Al Capone’s birth and death

I’d also like to commemorate the surrender of Germany in the Great War every year and have “TWO WORLD WARS AND TWO WORLD CUPS” emblazoned on Union Jack flags, and have them distributed as promos.

Also the anniversary of the first Doctor Who episode should be celebrated on EMC by giving every player their own TARDIS that allows you to travel anywhere you want and go back to earlier versions of the wasteland so you can mine the same items over and over again

The reason these debates go absolutely nowhere is because no one can agree on what is right and what is wrong.

Very true but also I think that most of that is due to the political nature of this topic, which is why Krysyy wanted to separate what's good for EMC as a business and politics are or aren't behind the decision. I think in terms of what the most profitable choice is, there's definitely a right answer, but sometimes people aren't happy with that.

I was a little surprised that the message in chat this winter holiday was something about "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays" I would like to see that changed.

I am gonna suggest Ground Hog Day - something with a clock? maybe repair something (for turning back time, unless you want to do the shadow part, shrug)

Minecraft release date anniversary May 17 (2009) make it a stone sword with ridiculous enchants but breakable

Just "happy holidays" doesn't say anything at all though. I would get mad/sad that I perhaps don't have holidays at that time. Holidays, yes, cool, but what for/why? Perhaps "new years holidays" or so would be better.

For the sake of the thread, possible disagreements, and disappointment, I will change the concept of this thread. Since it's too hard for staff to handle making all holidays and events. Why don't we share our ideas that we have, but suggest them for real where Krysyy would like. For this thread...
Can we just suggest idea by
1. Suggest the idea.
2. Explain what the occasion is.
3. Say why you want it.
I don't want to make any trouble for anyone. So, can we please leave out the feedback unless we suggest an idea that goes along with it. If we can, so we don't argue, please follow the format above. Sorry, I hope you can understand that I don't want to make trouble for those with their beliefs.

Thanks all! 😁

There is nothing stopping you creating your own holiday threads, more than welcome to do that. Just realize it may not get the same attention unlike larger holidays that EMC supports

You are free to host your own community events and acknowledgements about whatever holiday/event you wish. Whatever you choose, I will respect.