Bricker:
Actually, I’m suggesting that you’ve provided no evidence to demonstrate that those cases are typical examples of the genre. And I’m not the only one.
School teachers hate Hungarians. How do I know? Well, I read a book once that gave a second-hand account of a school teacher being mean to a Hungarian. That’s not enough proof for you? But it’s a typical example of the genre! :eek:
Are you claiming that there are many others you could have cited? That it’s just one of those things that everything else you’ve offered has proven to be imaginary? That there is, in fact, despite your utter failure thus far to demonstrate it, a “genre” of cases?
If you indeed do have actual, factual support for your claim, kindly present it, or quit pretending. So far you sound *exactly * like a Bushite ideologue claiming that Iraq does *too * dammit have WMD’s hidden somewhere, in spite of the lack of factual evidence for that claim.
Never ruled upon by the Supreme Court. Lower court challenges have been found in favor of the disreputable “ceremonial religion” argument - if it thereby has no real meaning, why defend it? It’s also worth noting that the political effort to make that the national motto was driven by an organization that made no secret of its desire to impose a Christian theocracy.
John, as I already said, I don’t think we can take that demurral at face value.
JustAnotherGeek, constitutional limitations on federal power do apply by extension to the states and local governments. Your town can no more declare a particular religion to be its official one than it can declare slavery to be legal within its borders.
On the contrary, I suspect that these are typical examples of the genre, inasmuch as when they’re closely investigated, there’s no there there. I’m interested in seeing a scan of the letter that Bricker is trying to get; if it is indeed from the principle and says that (to quote Bricker) “the no-red-and-green decorations was intended to forbid Christmas colors,” I will be very surprised, and will concede that there’s actually something to this problem, especially in Plano. But I seriously doubt that’s going to be what the letter consists of.
Daniel
(a) There’s a difference between the number of actual incidents in which lawsuits have been threatened and the number of incidents in which schools/libraries/whatever have changed their policies out of fear of lawsuits without anyone actually making a threat
(b) Do you believe that people have deliberately been threatening lawsuits as a tactic, despite knowing their claim was invalid?
(a) What do you mean precisely by “attack the trappings of religion in society”?
(b) Do you think the number of people who are trying to do this is significant? Is it the equivalent of the number of Fred-Phelps-followers or the number of Pat-Robertson-watchers or what?
I ask because I find this claim to be one of the most disturbing and (potentially) dishonest and manipulative aspects of this discussion. Claiming that there are angry atheists out there who are trying to completely destroy Christmas is a claim designed to cause decent Christian folk to spring into action, and it’s also a claim which makes all the other aspects of the so-called-WoC look far more sinister. If you first convince people that there are people out there LITERALLY TRYING TO DESTROY CHRISTMAS, and then say “and, hey, look at this lawsuit in Plano, and consider in the light of what you just learned about the atheists…”, that makes everything seem like part of, well, gee, part of a WAR of some sort. Trouble is, I don’t think there ARE any such atheists, at least in numbers greater than Phelps. Even the atheists who are seriously condescending and insulting towards religious people tend (and they, too, are FAR rarer than stereotypes would lead you to believe) tend to have a live-and-let-live attitude, even if they can be assholes about it.
But if a totally made-up story circulates and then someone else gets worried due to that made-up story and changes store policy because of it, how can that be because of any anti-Christmas movement? Unless the anti-Christmas movement was smart enough to make up false stories about its own powers and circulate them just to make store managers paranoid, but was NOT smart enough to realize that this would also get the right’s panties in a wad?
Let’s take a step back for a moment… now that this thread has gone on for as long as it has, and given the decision you’ve come to about the phrase “War on Christmas”, would you like to take a moment to step back and completely re-phrase your initial hypothesis/question from scratch? Because, honestly, I’ve kind of lost track of what your point is.
Merry Christmas, and the federal Christmas holiday, are legal because they are now effectively secular, right? If Christmas becomes an exclusively religious holiday, wouldn’t a challenge be more likely to succeed?
Part 1 of your question – I don’t think there’s ever been a ruling on Christmas and SOCAS. In other words, no one has ever challenged the legality of Christmas as a federal holiday.
Part 2…I can’t conceive of a scenario where Christmas becomes an “exclusively religious” holiday. What would that take – a War on Secular Christmas? Banning all mentions of Santa Claus and Yule Logs from the public sphere? No singing of Jingle Bells allowed?
No, I would have to say that they are violations of the first amendment, but that even the bravest atheist isn’t going to chalenge it. I am happy to have the pledge restored, and have the words under god taken off money, but enought people (falsely) believe that Christmas is “just” a cultural thing that I don’t care to challenge it, till perhaps fifty years down the road.
I think you’re absolutely wrong that celebration of Christmas is a violation of the first amendment. I’ll ask you on Tuesday–er, make that tomorrow (sorry, don’t want to entwine the boards with religious nomenclature) how far you’d take this idea.
Daniel
Given the number of unbelievers, active atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, other pagans, and even (presumably Reform) Jews who celebrate the holiday as an opportunity to get together with family and share food, fellowship, and cheer regardless of any original Christian associations, and looking at the presentation of Christmas in the entertainment world that I posted earlier, I suspect that you would have a pretty hard time persuading many people that in the U.S., Christmas is much of a religious holiday so much as it is an “originally religious” feast that is treated as a holy day by a dwindling number of Christians.
Can I get an update on the current working definition of “War on Christmas” that we are arguing exists?
Yup. In my town if only Christians went Christmas shopping the stores would all go bankrupt. If the true believers wanted to restore the true meaning of Christmas, they’d have to ban the Grinch, Santa, Rudolph, and the reindeer who ran over Grandma.
I say let them do it. Their kids would probably kill them in their sleep. 
What do you mean by “celebrate”? The original point was that of having it as a federal holiday. Is that what you mean?
I’d certainly agree that that doesn’t violate the establishment clause as it was understood in the early days of the republic. However, it’s getting pretty damn close to how we interpret that clause today. Christmas, the day, is hardly “cerimonial deism” even if it has become highly secularized. The day itself is still a religious holiday, and the secularization is more associated with the build-up to Christmas than the actual celebration of the day itself. Of course that would assume some logical consistency in the jurisprudence surrounding the establishment clause. Frankly, though, my eyes glaze over at the dance we do around the various 3-part tests to rationalize, I mean determine :), if something violates the establishment clause.
My thinking is this:
There are two holidays celebrated on Christmas. The secular holiday involves Santa Claus, reindeer, the Grinch, Christmas trees, Jingle Bells, egg nog, acrimonious family gatherings, and lots of presents. The religious holiday involves Jesus, stable animals, King Herod, the Star of Bethlehem, O Come All Ye Faithful, egg nog, acrimonious family gatherings, and lots of presents.
Some people celebrate the secular holiday. There’s nothing wrong whatsoever with a public-school-sponsored celebration of the secular holiday that happens on December 25.
Some people celebrate the religious holiday. There’s nothing wrong with a public-school-sponsored celebration of the religious holiday, provided that it’s in the context of studying cultural traditions. When it crosses the line into proselytizing, into teaching about Jesus as though his birth were a fact, into pressuring children to take the message to heart, it becomes unconstitutional.
THere is also, and this is an important point, nothing wrong whatsoever with not celebrating either aspect of the holiday. Schools are primarily academic institutions, and while it’s important to have parties and make them fun sometimes, that’s not their primary purpose. Criticizing a school for not having a party is silly; criticizing it for not having the party with the color scheme you want is beyond silly.
But I do believe in the dual holiday model for Christmas. Many things in our society that were once religious are now either not religious or are optionally religious (e.g., the days of the week, Christmas, saying, “Gesundheit!” when someone sneezes, etc.) Their etymologies are less important that their present realities.
Daniel
Well, unless you’ve both got me on ignore, I spoke to this issue in post #205. Again, the Plano Independent School District has no policy whatsoever that would exclude red and green as Christmas colors, or any such district policy banning Christmas symbols from the school properties. Their administration building has THREE Christmas trees in the lobby every year. Feel free to search their Policies & Regulations as thoroughly as you’d like, as it’s published on their website for anyone who wants to see it. I guarantee you that you will find no such policy.
As do I, since our member who works for PISD (though she doesn’t want to post anything personally, out of concern that her posts could even remotely be construed as representing the school district, since they’re involved in litigation), has reiterated that any letter that might exist would have come from the PTA, which is not in the least the same as the school DISTRICT, and that it’s highly unlikely that there was any such wordage that could be construed as forbidding Christmas colors as a matter of policy, seeing as how that’s factually incorrect.
The specific school in question, in case anyone’s interested, is Thomas Elementary. They happen to have a very diverse group of students, representing more than 22 different cultures/ethnicities. From their brochure:
Wow, they emphasize respect for all cultures. How positively anti-Christian of them!
Note that the District hosts an annual Holiday Card contest, and on the application form it states: [
](http://pisd.edu/news/documents/holiday.art.contest.entry.form.pdf) Note, as well, that one of the 2004 finalists’ drawings contained Christmas trees!
I think you’re barking up the wrong tree on this one.
And a zephyr of sanity wafts into the thread. Great post!
I don’t think you answered my first question. By “celebrate” do you mean designate it as a federal holiday? If so, let’s get working on Easter! It’s all about the Bunny, and because it’s on Sunday, we’ll take the Friday before off. Nothing religious about that day, right? It’ll be “good” to have that Friday off, se we’ll call it “Good Friday”.
Anyway, you’re two part test fails the SCOTUS challenge-- it has to be a three part test, apparently. Otherwise it’s not nuanced enough.
Nice post, Shayna.
Beat me to it, so “ditto”
I was directing my commentary more toward the collective Christian community not you in particular, except in the sense that you’re arguing the point that a “war” on Christmas does exist.
By hypocritical, I mean that a particular group, the collective Christian community, undertakes a particular action (to drive the topic of homosexuality and homosexual acts from the public and private discourse). They see this as a normal, typical action.
However, when a similar action (driving the Christian message of Christmas from the public and private discourse) is taken, the collective Christian communty complains that they are being victimized and that a “war” is being waged against them. They feel their own actions are right and correct, yet when those same actions are taken against them, they complain. That’s hypocrisy.
Indeed you did, and I’m inclined to believe you’re correct. If, however, Bricker’s friend produces a scan of the letter that matches what Bricker believes it is, that’s be pretty strong evidence that you and I are both incorrect.
My answer ought to be implicit, but I’ll make it explicit:
There. Daniel’s patented three pronged test. Bring it ON, Supreme Court!
Daniel