Why This Weekend's Convergence of Three Holidays is the Most 'Star Trek' Thing to Happen So Far This Year

Ramadan, Passover, and Easter happen to coincide this year, demonstrating the philosophy of IDIC.

APRIL 8, 2023 - A very rare thing is happening this weekend. The Muslim celebration of Ramadan, the Jewish celebration of Passover, and the Christian celebration of Easter all coincide for the first time in 32 years. Adherents of each religion are celebrating their own particular beliefs in their own special way.

Muslims began their observance of Ramadan on March 22, and it will last until April 20. It’s a month of daytime fasting and nighttime feasting, peppered with prayers, observing Muhammad’s first revelation, which led to the writing of the Quran and his founding of Islam.

Passover began for the Jewish people on the evening of April 5 and will run for over a week, ending on the evening of April 13. Commemorating the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, the celebration’s traditions range from cleaning one’s house to avoiding leavened bread and pasta to observing the Seder, a ritual that includes a feast and reading the Haggadah, a book that tells the narrative of the exodus.

Easter, which Christians celebrate today, is actually the culmination of a week-long observance of Jesus Christ’s return from the dead. A week ago, Palm Sunday kicked off the Christian Holy Week, with Good Friday recalling the day Christ was crucified. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Sunday by attending religious services and, you guessed it, enjoying a feast.

The dates of these celebrations vary from year to year and it isn’t often that they coincide. But this year they did, and that’s a good example of a Star Trekian philosophy.

When Gene Roddenberry wrote the Vulcan concept of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) into the Star Trek: The Original Series third season episode “Is There in Truth No Beauty?,” Leonard Nimoy (Spock) was outraged. The philosophy was presented in the episode as related to a little medallion, designed to be sold as Trek merchandise by Roddenberry’s mail-order company Lincoln Enterprises.

Despite the apparent cash grab, the idea stuck, and so did the symbol on the medallion. A melding of a circle and a triangle, it was a visual representation of the concept. There’s nothing more different than those two shapes, so if they can unify into a single symbol, why can’t humanity?

Despite the common thread of feasting, Ramadan, Passover, and Easter are seemingly disparate holidays, with differing tenets and traditions. But the coincidence of their dates this year has encouraged some to celebrate together.

According to Eboo Patel, the founder of Interfaith America, “The rare convergence of such a wide array of holy days is an opportunity for all of us to share what we hold sacred with our neighbors from other traditions as a way of building understanding and bridging divides.”

Patel hopes that if Muslims, Jews, and Christians celebrate together, honoring each other’s traditions and beliefs, they’ll learn to cooperate on other issues, like fighting climate change and ending intolerance. In other words, create a better world by celebrating diversity.

Gene Roddenberry may have been trying to milk his cash cow by creating the philosophy of IDIC and the symbol that went with it, but he believed in the concept and it has carried on, long past his death. It’s not simply about “live and let live,” but rather accepting each other’s differences.

An interfaith trolley tour stopping at different faiths’ houses of worship and interfaith iftars hosted by Muslims across the country, encouraging non-Muslims to join their post-sunset feast are two examples of people learning to see through each other’s eyes. What better example of IDIC could there possibly be? It could be the first step toward a Star Trek future.