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Happy Holidays

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At the risk of angering the War on the War on Christmas warriors, but out of respect for the various traditions of folks who might be reading, I want to wish everyone Happy Holidays. Also, I wanted to mention that blogging will probably be very light over the next week or so.

And, remember, Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say on a bright, Hawaiian Christmas day.

Comments

  2. Karen says

    At this risk of being bludgeoned by the self-appointed defenders of Christmas, it seems to me that the reason one says any sort of greeting is to be friendly to the other person, and I guess I don’t have a problem with attempting to give someone a greeting they will appreciate. And not everyone celebrates Christmas, of course, so it seems friendlier to wish them a Happy Hannukah or Kwaanza or whatever they actually celebrate. And if you don’t know, “Happy Holidays” is the safe bet. To me it has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with just being nice.

    A friend of mine has turned what seems to be the latest in seasonal Blackberry greetings (MC/HNY) into a new word: McHeiny. So, happy McHeiny to all Blackberry users who celebrate Christmas. And Happy Holidays to everyone else.

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  3. Phillip says

    I guess I fall into one of the defenders of Christmas type people.The Federal Holiday is for Christmas but I have no problem with other groups who celebrate what they believe or want to display their symbols wherevever they so choose.My problem is with those people who are constantly trying to have the symbols I believe in taken down in public while allowing theirs to remain.

    Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!

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  6. chuckcentral says

    At the risk of angering the War on the War on Christmas warriors

    Well put Doug. I know I feel safe at night knowing that the brave “culture warriors” eg. O’ Reilly,Hannity,Cyst Ass Limbaugh are defending my right to wish everybody a Merry Christmas. Is it just me or does it seem like everytime I turn on Fox something else is under attack?

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  7. Idunno says

    Phillip — the funny thing is, the people who challenge the state-sponsorship of nativities and the like, usually have NO desire to post their own– nor for that matter is theirs left up.

    A great example of that is here in Tippecanoe County. When the debate heated up many years ago– I happened to be at that County Commissioners meeting. (Yeah, I am a meeting dork.)

    The woman (MARY PAT HALL of nativity fame) claimed that she wanted a full month of the Nativity on the lawn (as opposed to the one day display allowed to any group for anything). When the Commissioners decided to allow two days for everyone– thereby simply extending courtesy to all, she jumped back up and claimed she’d rather have nothing, if they didn’t give her all she wanted. In fact, she basically claimed that as a “Christian nation” we shouldn’t have to allow any other religions to be equal. She’s changed her tune recently.. but not by much .. see this weeks’ J&C.

    So my point would be — let all flowers bloom– embrace all of it. And frankly, I don’t know why the “Christians” would want their lit-up plastic statues of Jesus and the Wise Men besmirched by the corruption of politics. If you really want to goad secular humanists– or whoever the Grinch is this year, maybe the gays — then put a plastic Jesus on every church and private home and business. Then they can really see how much in the minority they are. They’ll also know who to watch out for.

    BTW: I am a proud Catholic Christian who feels no need to hide. Just don’t feel like making other people uncomfortable in a season of joy. If my faith does not radiate from my works and my being, then NO WORDS or plastic Jesus will convince anyone of its value.

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  9. Phillip says

    There are instances all over the United States where nativity scenes are taken down while other religious symbols celebrating other faiths and what they believe are left up.In many cases the ACLU comes in and threatens a law suit if the nativity is left up.At this time of year if a school,local or state government wants to put up a nativity like we have on our town square they should be allowed to do so without being threatened with a law suit.I believe every faith should be allowed to put their symbols up.In short let all symbols of all faiths go up or take them all down.Picking on one and insisting it be removed while others are left up is wrong no matter how you cut it.

    I watch O’Reilly on FOX and Lou Dobbs on CNN and proud of it.I`m a consevative Democrat just like the Congressman we just elected Brad Ellsworth.

    I my as well listen to O’Reilly spin rather than listening to Katie Couric,Brian Williams or Charlie Gibson who also spin.

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  10. Brenda says

    Phillip,

    “There are instances all over the United States where nativity scenes are taken down while other religious symbols celebrating other faiths and what they believe are left up”

    Please site sources.

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  11. Jason says

    Merry Christmas!

    Christmas is very important to me, as it is the birth of my religion. It is second only to Easter. It is the event that reminds me of my salvation, and something that brings me happyness.

    When I wish someone “Merry Christmas”, I’m sharig my happyness. Just like shouting “WhooHoo! I got a raise!”, I’m happy and I want to share that with others. If nothing else, I just want to share that. It is also my desire for others to realize that they have just as much reason to be happy. I can’t decide that for them, though.

    As for other religious events that might be going on at the same time. If you have something that is special to you, and you want to share your happyness with me, please do! I would never be offended by a “Happy (insert religious event here)”. I can understand someone having a similar feeling of joy that they want to share, even if I don’t believe in it.

    When someone wishing you well because they are happy, you might just want to accept their happyness. Not everyone is out for an agenda. You don’t have to agree with it, but you don’t have to correct them. Tolerance is NOT agreeing with everyone. It is not allowing your differing views to keep you from being kind to one another.

    I hope you and your families have a safe, wonderfull Christmas.

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  15. Brenda says

    Hey, I’m an atheist, but “peace on earth – good will towards men” sounds pretty good to me. (Not to mention parties, good food, and the exchanging of gifts!)

    Happy Holidays (plural) everyone!

    Reply

  16. Phillip says

    Brenda,Braden Robinson sorry for the wait.

    Bay Harbor Islands Flordia town refuses to errect nativity scene next to menorah and Hanukkah candelabra.

    Town of Bedford in Westchester county suburbs put up menorah with lighting ceremony for Hanukkah refused nativity scene display.

    Skoros v City of New York currently being petitioned to the Supreme Court.

    In 2001 New York Dept of Education made a policy that permits the display in it`s schools of a crescent moon and stars symbol for Ramadan and a menorah in honor of Hanukkah but expressly forbids a nativity scene display.

    Mrs.Andrea Skoros a Roman Catholic mother of two sons objected to the expulsion of Christian symbols from Christmas displays while allowing Jewish and Moslem religiuos symbols to remain.

    If the Supreme Court takes this it will be interesting to see the outcome given the current make up of the court.

    There are many more instances where the nativity scene was not allowed in public while symbols from other religions were allowed but that`s a few for you to ponder and I`m not going to spend a lot of time on this subject but I stand by my earlier statements!

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  17. Branden Robinson says

    Phillip,

    Cites would have been appreciated, but you gave me enough material to Google with.

    In the first case, evidently “Christian activist” Sandra Snowden has apparently been fighting with the town council of Bay Harbor Islands, Florida, for years. She wants a nativity scene added to a holiday display that already contains a Christmas tree. The top two links I found in Google are to Alan Keyes’s website and “commonconservative.com”. Searching for something with a less obvious slant, I found that the Miami Sun-Post had an article, too, but you have to use Google’s cache to access it. On the other hand, the surname of the author of Sun-Post’s article is “Berkowitz”. I think we’ve all seen this movie before. Nevertheless, I found the article to make for interesting reading.

    I note two things in particular; one, Ms. Snowden insists the Christmas tree is not a Christian symbol, and two, she seems to have been petitioning the town council to let her place a nativity scene on public property, not to get the menorah removed. It’s interesting to me how Christian activists play both sides of the argument when it comes to the religious symbolism of the Christmas tree. Try to get a Christmas tree removed, and it’s evidence of the “war on Christmas”. If someone places a menorah next to a Christmas tree, the tree isn’t Christian enough.

    Tough titty for the Christians, I guess, who long ago decided to appropriate the totems of pre-Christian European societies to grease the skids of conversion. (Though I recently learned that, in the U.S. and U.K., the Christmas tree is an innovation of more recent origin than the American Revolution — apparently Prince Albert, the Prince Consort to Queen Victoria, brought the tradition with him from Bavaria.) So if Antonin Scalia and his so-called originalist hordes got their way and were philosophically consistent[*], they’d stop erecting Christmas trees.

    Christians play both sides of the issue when it comes to issues like the Pledge of Allegiance, too. When challenged as an endorsement of religion, the words “under God” are mere “ceremonial Deism”. When speaking among themselves, however, we’re specifically honoring God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Just keep it quiet around the heathens, okay? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We’ll be rid of that Establishment Clause in no time.

    In Snowden’s case, it looks like it was the courts who finally got fed up with the Bay Habor brouhaha and imposed a pretty rigid, religion-free arrangement:

    Due to what Lynch labels a “restrictive agreement” between Snowden’s lawyers and the town, decorations will be very limited on the town’s main thoroughfare, Kane Concourse — only white lights on the palm trees along the median. He said if the town put up any decorations at all — including candy canes, gift boxes or a gingerbread man — a minimum of six nativity scenes would be needed to comply with the court order. The town opted for the lights.

    Needless to say this didn’t satisfy Snowden — now, even with the menorah gone, she’s creaming her jeans at the prospect of a half-dozen nativity scenes with which she can club the infidel over the head.

    Merry freakin’ Christmas.

    So that this doesn’t get too long, I’ll see about checking into the other stories in separate posts.

    Thanks again, Phillip.

    [*] Yeah, I know, I slapped my knee at that one, too.

    Reply

  18. Branden Robinson says

    Re: Phillip’s case number 2:

    Town of Bedford in Westchester county suburbs put up menorah with lighting ceremony for Hanukkah refused nativity scene

    I assume that’s Westchester County, New York. Let’s see…

    The top link is “vdare.com”; the site’s “about” information includes:

    Today, Virginia Dare seems to be vanishing from American education too. But she was a fixture for earlier generations. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt felt free to give a speech commemorating the 350th anniversary of her birth. At one point, I planned to pay homage by bestowing her name on the heroine of a projected fictional concluding chapter in Alien Nation, about the flight of the last white family in Los Angeles. It seemed . . . symmetrical.

    […]

    VDARE has come into existence because many great and developing issues of the day are no longer covered in the Establishment Media—whether liberal or “conservative.”

    Ah, we’re in the rarefied heights now, where not even Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Fox News Channel are conservative enough.

    The third-ranked link is to freerepublic.com, a site which I trust needs no introduction to any reader or writer of a blog covering contemporary politics.

    And whaddya know, Alan Keyes’s site is all over this one, too.[*]

    Anyway — the case is Skoros v. City of New York.

    Here’s a part of the Federal Circuit Court’s decision I found noteworthy:

    Plaintiffs argue that, despite its stated purpose, “by purposefully excluding the Christian Nativity scene or crèche, [the DOE] policy actually narrows or reduces understanding and respect.” (Pls. Brief at 23.) Specifically, plaintiffs allege that the true purpose of the DOE holiday display policy “is to promote and endorse observance of Jewish and Islamic religious holidays and seasonal observances and to secularize Christian religious holidays and seasonal observances, in particular, the Christian holiday and seasonal observance of Christmas.” (Am. Compl. ¶ 14.) However, there is simply no evidence sufficient to establish such an insidious purpose on the part of the DOE. The DOE decided to include the star and crescent among the permitted symbols with secular dimensions at least in part in response to litigation brought by the Secretary-General for the National Council on Islamic Affairs. (See Vignola Decl. ¶ 22.) The only evidence as to the reason for the inclusion of the menorah is that the DOE’s holiday display policy was formulated after consultation with lawyers, DOE’s counsel, and the Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, with an eye towards parity and a concern that the holiday displays do not promote or celebrate any single religion or holiday. (See Joint Stip. of Facts, Exs. 9, 13.)

    The problem would appear to be that the New York schools want to avoid promoting any particular relgiion over another; such favoritism is clearly prohibited by my understanding of the Exercise Clause (though, I freely admit, it likely differs from that of Brian Bosma and others who are attemping to establish a United States of Jesus Christ through underhanded means rather than by simply convening a Constitutional Convention — maybe they’re afraid not enough Christians would show up?).

    Letting religious activists dictate the content of displays that attempt to avoid favoritism would seem a nearly foolproof way to torpedo the whole exercise. Maybe the idea is to produce a self-fulfilling prophecy?
    Interestingly, SCOTUSblog noted some reticence on the part of the U.S. Supreme Court, whom you’d expect to seize upon this case with zest given its newly burnished conservative credentials thanks to Roberts and Alito:

    The Court took no action, again, on a case testing the constitutionality of New York
    City public schools’ policy on displays of religious symbols during holiday seasons. The Court has examined the case of Skoros v. New York City (06-271) at three Conferences without taking any action on it. Because the Court is now in recess until next month, no action on it is expected until after this year’s holidays are over.

    While researching this, I came across another dispute, one from Briarcliff Manor, also in New York state.

    There are two places you really don’t want to be during the holiday season: the malls, because there are crowds, and federal court, because there are lawyers. We suspect Henry Ritell would just as soon have steered clear of the latter had the village of Briarcliff Manor given him half a chance; it didn’t, Ritell sued, and Friday a federal judge ruled that the village resident had been wronged and that the village board shouldn’t have turned its collective nose up at his donated creche.

    If you are keeping score at home, and apparently a lot of us are these days, score this “1” for unrequited religious expression – Ritell’s – and “0” for Briarcliff Manor, which decided that discretion had nothing to do with valor: It opted to take down all of its holiday displays rather than accommodate Ritell’s court-approved, 28-inch-tall nativity figures. Non-legal term for that: taking your ball and going home.

    Since we are keeping score, go ahead and award a point to the “There’s a war against Christmas” crowd; there’s no such thing, the “war,” that is, but Briarcliff’s approach will doubtless add unnecessary fuel to that fire. Instead of getting its municipal knickers in a bunch, it should have accepted Ritell’s creche and maintained the pre-existing menorah and holiday tree in Law Park, as permitted under the order by District Court Judge D.J. Connor. Doing so would have given village residents the inclusive holiday display to which they were entitled – no, to which they were obliged once the village decided to make merry on public land.

    Holiday displays on public land are a minefield for litigation, yet the challenges are hardly insurmountable. The Establishment clause of the First Amendment bars government from touting one religion over another; the Free Exercise clause bars government from interfering with an individual’s free exercise of religion. Where did Briarcliff trip itself up? It rebuffed Ritell’s offer of a creche when it already displayed a large, lighted menorah – what the court called “indisputably a religious symbol of the Jewish faith.” It said the dressed up, naturally growing evergreen in the park was merely “a secular symbol of the holiday season.” Like a snowman.

    (original article)

    Again, the object everyone calls a Christmas tree doesn’t have enough Christ in it to suit the Christians. And again, it sounds to me like the courts saw things for what they were. The difference here is that the town (perhaps poutingly) ended up with the correct solution, and didn’t need the court to spell it out for them.

    If the crèched crusaders succeed only in further secularizing the Christmas season through their obnoxious, ostentatious efforts at infantile idolatry, I for one will have little choice but to cheer them on.

    Onward, Christian soldiers! Save us form yourselves!

    [*] The preview didn’t like this URL for some reason.
    http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/gaynor/061201

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