25% of the plots to children movies seem to be around Christmas being banned/cancelled in some way, usually by way of the mayor or overpowered city council somehow having the ability to literally prevent people from individually celebrating Christmas in their own homes.
I realize how absurd this is but am curious the extent an American town/city/county/state could theoretically try to “Ban” Christmas. And by that I mean completely prevent Christmas being celebrated in the open, not just having everything be labeled “Happy Holidays” instead. And let’s keep this “realistic” so we aren’t having the Army break down people’s doors and taking away Christmas trees, but maybe like how Home Owner’s Associations have in the past prevented residents from decorating their houses with Christmas lights.
I imagine there would be three different variations of this.
The “easiest”, simply prevent all public buildings (such as libraries) and streets from even acknowledging Christmas and not allowing any decorations put up at all.
Banning private businesses open to the public from celebrating Christmas (so McDonald’s can’t have Christmas stuff on display, but you can still have a holiday party at your work)
Banning all open displays of Christmas over the entire town (so no Christmas lights or decorations allowed on people’s private houses at all but you can still have a tree in your house)
No, of course not. Freedom of…well, basically everything. They might as well quarter some soldiers in your home while they’re doing it so that they can get the full gamut of broken amendments.
But I’m having a hard time thinking of a single example of this that isn’t blatantly magical (i.e. the “cancelling Christmas” thing involves Santa being unwilling/unable to show or somesuch). Can you give some examples?
Option 1 seems possible. Not putting things up in government buildings is not a violation of the first amendment. Plenty of holidays don’t get recognized. I don’t recall Easter (a less secular holiday) decorations. Not that this is likely.
It doesn’t matter what a town does to try to ban Christmas. The spirit of Christmas will prevail and Santa will deliver presents to all the little children in town, and the frozen hearts of those cruel councilmen will thaw and they will rename the town to Christmasville.
Ban Christmas, but make the Second Amendmenteers happy: Declare open season, no bag limit, maybe even a per-head bounty, on flying reindeer.
Okay, here’s a story that really did happen, must be about 25 years ago, in Pismo Beach, CA or one of the smaller surrounding towns, as best I remember it:
City put up a Christmas tree on top of a city-owned hilltop overlooking the main freeway through town, or maybe it was a big cross that was there all year round. Diehard militant atheists screamed. (Don’t remember if a court order got involved at this point.)
Christian citizen offers to buy the hilltop from the city, whereupon he will then put up the tree (or cross), the hilltop then being his own private property. City agrees to sell. Christian citizen buys. Christian citizen installs tree (or cross) as expected.
Diehard militant atheists still screamed, claiming the city sold that land deliberately so the private citizen could put that tree (or cross) there, knowing that he was planning to do that, so it was just as bad as if the city still owned the hilltop. Diehard militant atheists take city and/or new hilltop owner to court.
Comes now the part that boggles the mind, as I remember it: The court agreed with Diehard militant atheists. :smack: So private Christian citizen hilltop owner was not permitted to put up his Christian display on his own hilltop.
A bit of actual history about “banning Christmas”, at least some pieces that I remember:
It actually was a thing about “militant atheists” making a fuss. About 25-30 years ago (say, early 1990’s) was the earliest I remember this stuff happening, although maybe it was going on earlier.
Cities commonly put up, or permitted to be put up, Christian displays in public parks or similar public spaces. These often included lots of lights or other electric devices, which were plugged in to electric sockets about the property. Atheist groups began to scream that this was the city putting forward Christian beliefs ahead of other beliefs. One response was to begin putting up Hanukkah displays in the parks too. I don’t think there are really any other traditional holidays of other major religions around that time of year. (Pagan religions, with their Winter Solstice festivities, didn’t count for much.)
A specific complaint was the expense of all that electricity, which was paid for by the city, and hence, by the taxpayers. The atheists really didn’t like that their tax money was supporting Christian displays. That was one of the really big screaming arguments they made.
You can kinda see how they may have had sort of a point, in principle. I doubt that the actual dollar amount that each citizen paid in taxes for these displays added up to much. But it was the principle of the thing. But apparently this thinking began to gain traction in some quarters, and in the courts.
The above story about the private Christian hilltop happened during that period of time.
And that, as I remember it, was part of the beginnings of the “War on Christmas”.
There’s a difference between “banning Christmas” and keeping overtly religious creches and such off of city property. But consider: Christmas (unlike pretty much all other religious holidays) is a federal holiday, so banning it outright simply won’t happen.
Also, most retailers (clothing, books, electronics, most everything but groceries) make over half of the money they’re going to make all year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, and facilitating business is every city, town and municipality’s first priority in the US. I don’t personally know anyone who has gone to jail for breaking the law, but I know plenty of people who’ve been incarcerated for being bad for the business climate. Shutting down Christmas would be bad for the business climate. And that’s un-American.
The premise of this thread starts with a statement for which I can find little or no evidence.
Could you perhaps provide a link to what actually happened? The use of such terms as “diehard militant atheists” and “screamed” makes me question your impartiality.
Will come back with cites later today, as I recall the story it was a divorced dad suing on behalf of his minor daughter (whom he did not have custody of) to have a cross removed.
Happens in my town, eh, regularly if not often. The Jr. Chamber of Commerce owns a bit of land that over looks the city and has a lit cross on it, sort of a city landmark. Various groups have been erroneously suing the city since it was first put up to have it removed. (The bit of private land the cross is on us inside a public park) Sometimes the JCC gets sued but the cross is still there.
I lived in that area up until a couple of years ago. I can tell you a few things:
there are about 4 or 5 hilltops in the area with crosses or christmas trees on them. They are privately owned. So the issue isn’t with a person putting up a cross on privare property (if it actually even happened, which I can find no cite for so far). It was with the city selling land (against the interest of the city and its constituents potentially?) For the Express purpose of circumventing the establishment clause
Pismo proper had a bigass christmas tree at the end of their pier last time I was there over the holidays.
Sorry for no cites or links, but this was 25-or-so years ago, and I’m recounting it substantially from memory.
The hilltop story took place in or near Pismo Beach, in San Luis Obispo County.
The Christmas lights in the park story, at least the one I paid most attention to at the time, took place in Paso Robles, also in San Luis Obispo County, but I think there was similar stuff going on all around the county, if not all around the country.
San Luis Obispo is a mostly rural-ish area, especially in the Paso Robles area, and quite conservative. So when anybody starts complaining about Christmas trees in the park or crosses on the hilltop, you might well imagine the strongly polarized yelling and screaming on all sides of the issue going on there. If I sound exaggerated, it’s because I’m reflecting the tone of the whole controversy in that county, as I remember it.
ETA: Regarding babale comment just above – well, sounds like they’ve at least toned down all the yelling and screaming on all sides a bit. One thing I don’t know is whether that sale of the hilltop was done against the city’s interests, for example, if they sold the land for $1 or something like that. I don’t recall ever seeing that little detail mentioned in all the controversy.
The closest thing I can find is that in 2013 they lost a court case and had to stop holding prayers before city council meetings. Someone needs to sue the town I’m in (a large city in SoCal…) because last time I went to a city council meeting here, they did the same thing: 20 minutes of prayer before the meeting started, and none of that vague and generic “higher power” stuff – they were specifically praying to Jesus Christ.
What exactly is your definition of a “die-hard militant athiest”? Is it just “anyone who hasn’t accepted Jesus Christ as their lord and savior”? Because the linked article seems completely reasonable to me.
I’m sure you’d be OK with the government placing a giant Islamic crescent on that hill instead, to honor our soldiers? Or can we only honor them with Christian iconography?
So-6 years ago, not 25 or so years ago. San Diego, not Pismo Beach. War veterans of different religions, not “militant atheists”.
And now for the rest of the story:
From the Mount Soledad Wiki-