The Shopping Bag of Shame

On the corner of Mont-Royal and de Lanaudière, looking for some gift for my godson’s birthday. I’m holding in my hand The Shopping Bag of Shame, which I received as a token of my presence at the Forum Solidarité Grand Plateau held last november at the Jeanne-Mance school on the Plateau. The event’s organizers had decided to give a reusable bag to the attendees in order to encourage them to do their shopping on the avenue Mont-Royal’s boutiques and shops.

But why would I call it The Shopping Bag of Shame ?

« Joyeux décembre », meaning Happy December, was written on the bag, instead of what ‘should’ normally have been written, that is ‘Happy holidays’ or even ‘Merry Christmas’. This was enough to cause an outburst of emotional letters-to-editor and outraged articles from our traditionalists, who saw in this value-neutral wish the sign of a will to annihilate Quebec’s finest traditions and values (that is, Christian values). One of the Québécois right-wing natio-traditionalists rising star (a student in sociology writing his PhD thesis in UQAM) wrote in an article published symbolically in the Christmas Eve in Le Devoir that those kind of gesture of self-negation were caused by “multiculturalism, which tries to neutralise the founding heritage of western societies and which leads a never-ending war against their national identity” (My translation: see full article here)

Whereas I personally consider the erasing of Christmas vocabulary and Christian symbols in general from the public sphere futile and even counterproductive (even though I like to think myself as a secularist), I find the kind of accusation quoted above misleading and dangerous. It is misleading because it fails to take into account the western origin of the contemporary multicultural ideology and the pluralist origin of our own province ; western societies are at their very foundation multicultural and pluralist (even the first settlers in New France came from different parts of the Kingdom of France, and from many other countries, so much so that there are no such thing as Pures laines)(Thanks Esther Delisle for having reminded us this); it is dangerous because it uses a preemptive-strike-style vocabulary, saying that the multiculturalism ideology, who is in fact way of predisposing oneself positively towards diversity (and which doesn’t mean one should accept everything in the name of diversity and is by no way a morally relativist doctrine), has been waging a war against national identity and cultures. Such non-sense and irresponsible talk is build around the false notion that there is a group (the multicultural ideologues) plotting against national identities and cultures in the western hemisphere, whereas all there is are individuals, politicians and intellectuals (sometimes local Chamber of commerce, however clumsily they do it) trying to promote pluralism.

More will be written in this blog around this issue, for I think it is an important one in this particular riding of Laurier-Sainte-Marie, which is a culturally diverse and pluralist riding. Meanwhile I will continue to use my reusable bag, with no shame but with pride, a reassurance to know that business owners care enough about diversity, even if sometimes honest mistakes are made.