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Mayor of Jersey City Fights To Keep Alive The Symbols of The Holidays
Originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer
Just about every year, one hears
about a clash over a public display
of symbols of the holidays.
For four years now, one of those
sites has been Jersey City.
Each year the mayor of Jersey City, Bret Schundler, has battled he
American Civil Liberties Union
over a display of a creche, Hanukah candles and a Christmas tree.
each year came objections from the
ACLU that the display violated the
constitutional separation of church and
state.
For the last two years, the mayor has
been forced to put his holiday symbols in
storage.
Unlike in other towns, where such
holiday symbols were eventually
removed and forgotten, the mayor is
determined to continue his battle to
reinstate his display. This year, he even
began running a radio advertisement
soliciting donations to a fund to defray
the legal costs of defending it.
I think the mayor is right. Why have
we become so wary of Christmas,
Hanukkah and their religious traditions?
Why have we as a nation, founded on
the principle of religious freedom, come
to be so wary of religion itself? Why all
the to-do about holiday symbols in public
places?
And why has the ACLU become so
Scroogelike? Like the Grinch who stole
Christmas, it wants to deny the nation its
celebration of the season. The ACLU is
determined to put coal in everyone's
stocking, in the process negating the
season's traditional good will.
We live in a society in which freedom
of religion has come to mean no religion
at all. In the public schools, for example,
carols, like ,"Silent Night," that used to be
traditionally sung as a part of the
common culture, are no longer permitted.
Indeed, traditional songs are classified as
acceptable and unacceptable. Christmas
scenes and menorahs are unacceptable; "Rudolf the
Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Jingle Bells"
are acceptable.
Isn't this the equivalent of censorship?
Similarly, the reading of Bible stories is
forbidden, while stories om mythology and Aesop's fables are
OK. But isn't the Bible a cultural s
well as a religious document? Without
mention of its stories, how are our
children to understand an essential
part of our culture?
When the holidays are taken out of
their religious context, all we are left
with is a sanitized holiday season of
toy soldiers, reindeer and snowmen.
Indeed when we reduce the holidays
to such a display, what do they really
mean, if anything? The festive season is
deprived of its initial meaning and
turned into a celebration of
consumerism. (And every year, that
buying season seems to come earlier
and earlier as retailers prepare for the
season sooner and sooner.)
It's beginning to look like
consumerism is becoming the new
American religion.
Besides, does the constitutional
separation of church and state really
mean the eradication of all religious
tradition that has been linked with our
culture? Does it mean the eradication
of our very culture? Indeed, these
days, any thing that even hints at
religion is becoming suspect. I doubt
that's what our Founding Fathers
intended. Unfortunately, in this
country, it looks like religious
freedom is coming to mean no religion at all. To
please everybody, the ACLU wants
to exclude everything. And, we end
up with nothing.
 It's time someone objected to all this nonsense. This year in Jersey, City passersby will see the same, sign at city hall as last year: "Due to a lawsuit, our traditional menorah and creche may not be displayed this year. We are fighting to return these beautiful displays to you next" year." All this makes one wonder how far the ACLU will carry on in its quest to obliterate holiday traditions. What will they attack next? Will festive choral singing be excluded from TV? How about the annual presentations of Amahl and the Night Visitor? Will Handel's, Messiah eventually be banned from public concert halls? I hope the Jersey City mayor wins and we regain some sense of proportion of the real meaning of the holiday season.
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