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From The Washington Dispatch
Opinion
Banning Christmas - Ever Meet a Happy Atheist?
Exclusive commentary by Steve Yuhas
Dec 5, 2003
The day after Thanksgiving ushers in the most joyous, and busiest, time of the year. The Christmas holiday season finds most Americans shopping for gifts for their loved ones (and a few for themselves) and making preparations for office parties, school plays and concerts. Small towns across the nation bring out carefully stored holiday decorations that date from World War II and leagues of volunteers and Boy Scouts carefully put them up to bring joy to the town and to the people who pass through. Cool weather blankets most of the country and even the most tepid of Christmas celebrator secretly yearns for at least a dusting of snow on Christmas Eve. Happiness seems to be everywhere and kindness is almost as easy to transfer as a late autumn cold.
Unless, that is, you belong to a band of anti-Christmas scrooges known as the ACLU or American United for the Separation of Church and State (“Americans United”).
For the last two decades these gangs of unhappy and unfulfilled Americans have gone town by town, school by school hoping to cleanse Christmas and every reference to the real reason we celebrate it from our public lexicon. Knowing that their mission to purge Christmas, God, Christ, and other religious symbols from the public square could not be accomplished through debate and discourse in a nation where some 94% of the people believe in God and the majority are Christian they turned to the all too willing courts to impose their atheist religion.
The ACLU and Americans United take to the airwaves in early November to let America know that they don’t have a personal stake in whether or not Christmas displays, carols, and cookies are put on in public schools or the public square, but their phones are ringing off the hook by people who are offended by such things. I’m Jewish and don’t celebrate Christmas, but have yet to be offended by a Christmas tree or Oh Come All Ye Faithful being played in city hall. Most of us know people who are not Christian – ask yourself how many of them have ever said they were offended by any of these things? The probable answer is none.
People have to ask how it is that so few people can effect change for so many? Ever notice that when it comes to banning Christmas and God from the public square that the news networks can only come up with a few people to support that position and put them on every channel. You’d think there would be people lining up to get on Fox News to debate the fact that they are offended by Christmas carols and nativity scenes, but it is just the same people saying the same things over and over and over again. It almost seems that there are four people who want Christmas banned and they are accomplishing it in the most amazing ways.
Many municipalities have outlawed the presence of a baby Jesus in a manger outside city hall. Christmas is a federal holiday and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in any government office outside of police and fire departments on duty that day, but if the birth of Jesus is so offensive why not just ban the holiday all together? Not even the ACLU is saying that Christmas cannot be a holiday, but Americans are celebrating the birth of Christ – not the birth of some insignificant figure in history. To say that shutting down the government is perfectly acceptable while a depiction of the historical event that is the holiday itself is inconsistent and intellectually dishonest. The nativity scene is as much a part of Christmas, historically and religiously, as the flag is a part and symbol of the 4th of July.
Banning Christmas trees has long been a favorite debate of mine to follow. There is absolutely nothing religious about a tree decorated with lights and ornaments – there is no reference to it in the New Testament and certainly nobody can dispute that the Christmas tree is a relatively new invention. Nevertheless, some towns have decided to ban them and some have come so close to it that the trees have become multicultural displays that seek inclusion at the cost of beauty.
There is something inherently beautiful about a simple tree decorated with lights and ornaments created by the local grade school. It used to be that people would gather in the town center to wait for the mayor to throw the switch and a small party would follow with the local church choir singing carols to welcome in the season. Now cities decorate the “holiday tree” with Menorahs so as not to offend Jews and crescents to not offend Muslims – it is only a matter of time before little Buddha ornaments are created so that people who have no stake in Christmas whatsoever are not offended. Christmas trees are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to banning Christmas symbols, but it still begs the question: why?
What is it about Christmas that makes the ACLU and Americans United so unhappy? Surely it is not their stated objection that they believe that municipal or government recognition of the Christmas holiday is somehow an establishment of religion. That argument rings hollow on so many levels: how is putting up a tree or allowing a choir from a church in town to sing a Christmas song that inevitably contains reference to the reason the holiday exists to begin with establishes a church? If their position were credible there would be at least one person they could trot out to Fox News to say that they converted to Christianity because they saw a Christmas tree at city hall. Sounds absurd, but so is their argument.
It must be that there is and always will be a group of people in the United States who are so fervently against religion that they will find offense in Santa Clause and children putting on a Christmas play in order to purge it from our public square. Atheists and other anti-religious zealots choose Christmas as their most hated holiday because it is the one that most Americans identify with. They figure that if they can get mayors and town councils to ban trees, block Santa, and rid the world of Silent Night, Holy Night, in the name of tolerance that their other anti-religious antics will be easily attained using the same tactics.
It is time that people rise up and tell these religiously anti-religious fanatics that nobody has yet to be turned Christian by gazing upon a Christmas tree and given the examples that the left has provided for role models for children – Santa Clause is a pretty good alternative. If we don’t stop them now it is only a matter of time before they find a judge to find eggnog unconstitutional. Let's help these always unhappy people find happiness in a Christmas tree and choir like the rest of us do.
Steve Yuhas' columns appear weekly on various other websites. He has appeared on national radio and television including on such notable shows as Larry King Live, Fox News Channel, the CBS Early Show, and countless other national and local television and radio programs bringing common sense and a different view to issues of the day.
© 2002 The Washington Dispatch. All Rights Reserved.
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