Arushi Sharma | Holy Mary mother of...dog?

The Penn Bookstore still had a post-Christmas card sale when I went to return my books on Saturday.

Standing in line, I thought that maybe, just this once, I should go the Cathy Guisewite way - buy my cards now and make fun of the people who pay triple the price for the same stuff 10 months later!

Ha ha, I win.

As I was sifting through the boxes, I saw one card set featuring dogs in Christmas attire.

"Awww," I thought.

I looked more closely and took in the circular arrangement, the halo and hay, the Three Wise Dogs. Baby Jesus, ears cocked, sat illuminated on a central pedestal against a starry night sky as Mary the Mutt lovingly gazed down at him.

I adore dogs. I will drop all my books (sorry, Mom and Dad), my columnizing duties (sorry, Editor dearest) and all my social commitments (not that I have any this semester) to go on a walk with Jackson Bower, resident pup of the Stouffer House Annex.

The one bond that I feel exemplifies sheer loyalty and love is between humans and dogs.

But I was disturbed by this card. It had taken one of the most revered scenes from the Holy Bible and robbed it of its beautiful, divine meaning and turned it into a royal dog pound.

I didn't buy any of the cards. Instead, I downloaded an image I found online of the nativity card and showed it to an assortment of students across religious and cultural spectrums at Penn, wondering what we thought as a student body about God as a Dog.

Turns out, not much. Many of the students I showed the image to thought it was no big deal, but yes, they could see very religious people being offended by it.

Engineering sophomore Johann Diedrick said that he thought "Christians would find the card cute." His view is pretty accurate given that online stores like "Danes-R-Us" successfully market Christmas cards with scenes like the Nativity, all figures depicted as various species of dogs.

As Economics graduate student Karam Kang reasoned, it's obvious that Christians buying and exchanging these cards are not offended: "A company will do what is profitable" and the animal theme is just another successful moneymaking strategy.

So what's my problem?

The card itself isn't such a big deal. It's the message behind it. There is an embedded disrespect, mostly an unknowing one, in business's powerhouse drive to sell creative products by commercializing religious themes.

Commercial "innovation" is introducing increased amounts of religiously themed branding both here and abroad, and this trend is slowly stripping away at the significance of sacred images, symbols and doctrines that people hold to their hearts all over the world.

The Sanskrit holy scriptures that thousands of people recite in prayer every morning are being stepped on by oblivious teenagers who found flip-flops with "funky writing" print at boardwalk sales.

On the other side of the equation, we the market have an active fondness for things with spiritual brand value not for their innate religious meaning, but because they're something "cool" or "exotic" for us to show off. Urban Outfitter's 2004 "Jesus is My Homeboy" t-shirt was described by Sharon Tubbs for St.Petersburg Times on May 30, 2004 as a way to "set aside religious clarity for the sake of coolness."

For kids, it was just another trend. Jesus ended up in a rumpled, last-season pile in their closets.

I know what you're thinking-I'm a batty traditionalist. Everyone has a right do what they want, so what if someone is offended?

I'm not contesting rights to do what we want. I love my rights, your rights, our rights.

I am pointing out, however, that blatant commercialization of religion (backed up by freedom of expression) quietly effaces a duty to respect. Our society is tolerant to the extent that complaints about religious insensitivity seem like conservative nonsense and thus shouldn't be tolerated.

Sittin' Pretty Design introduced Hindu gods on their toilet seats in 2000.

It's a free society. They can do what they want, right?

A worldwide protest forced them to pull their product line.

If we truly are enlightened liberals, a conservative attitude should sometimes factor into the choices we make when it comes to religion. This is the minute but crucial distinction between a liberal society and an unbridled one.

Just because everything is up for grabs, that doesn't mean we should grab it.

Arushi Sharma is an College junior from Rockville, Md. Her e-mail address is sharma@dailypennsylvanian.com. A Case of the Mondays appears on Mondays.

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