Backlash Greets Efforts to Scrap Christmas Traditions
by By AFA Journal
February 21, 2005
(AgapePress) - Across the nation during the holidays, efforts to strip away some of the traditions associated with Christmas met with determined resistance. The issue promises to be a hot spot in the culture war this year.In one of the most dramatic demonstrations of citizen indignation, voters in Mustang, Oklahoma, voted against bond measures that had asked citizens to pony up almost $11 million for new education projects. The reason for the vote results? The superintendent had decided that a Nativity scene did not belong in the elementary school's Christmas program.
According to Associated Press (AP), closing Christmas plays with the Nativity and the singing of "Silent Night" has long been a tradition in Mustang.
But Superintendent Karl Springer, concerned that the Nativity might be in violation of the so-called constitutional separation of church and state, was advised by the school district's attorney to drop the scene. However, symbols of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa were included in the play, as were a Christmas tree and a Santa Claus, AP said.
Springer took the attorney's advice, and paid the price at the ballot box. The bond issues were defeated, marking the first time in more than 10 years that the school district was denied the money it had asked the voters to provide.
Tim Pope, a former seven-term member of the Oklahoma state legislature, led the effort to defeat the bond measures. "You have to send a signal and tell them you're not going to stand for it," he said. "You've got to tell them you're not going to sit by and let them take away your rights."
The next step may be a lawsuit against the school district to ensure that Christianity is treated fairly, said Shelly Marino, one of the parents who complained about Springer's actions. "We are all educated people, we could work this out and not have it split the community," she said. "We don't want a lawsuit, but we're not going to go away. The fight has been started and we're going to see it through to the end."
Similar fights sprang up in other communities across the country. In Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, citizens demanded that "Merry Christmas" simply be added to the "Season's Greetings" sign that adorned the main government building, according to AP.
Attempts to extirpate Christmas also produced brouhahas in Kansas, Massachusetts, Colorado and elsewhere. In Plano, Texas, parents had to go to federal district court in order to preserve the right of school children to hand out items with religious messages at "winter break parties."
In the private sector, some Christians alleged that more and more businesses were replacing signs and personal greetings of "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings."
In California, for example, the Committee to Save Merry Christmas was organized to sponsor a boycott of Federated Department Stores, which owns such names as Bloomingdale's and Macy's. The group's website claimed that Federated "deliberately and intentionally removed from their decorations and advertising" the traditional greeting in favor of the more politically correct one.
And according to the Rutherford Institute, a non-profit civil liberties group, some drivers for United Parcel Service (UPS) complained that the company told them not to wish customers a "Merry Christmas." UPS has denied those claims.
"I think the businesses and the schools have just gone too far; this is the final straw," said Rutherford Insitutute president John W. Whitehead.
This article appeared in the February 2005 issue of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association.
