{"id":1516,"date":"2006-12-12T18:53:58","date_gmt":"2006-12-13T01:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/?p=1516"},"modified":"2006-12-12T18:53:58","modified_gmt":"2006-12-13T01:53:58","slug":"the-supposed-war-on-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/?p=1516","title":{"rendered":"The Supposed &#8220;War on Christmas&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OK&#8230; let&#8217;s get a couple things straight here.<\/p>\n<p>[-] <strong>There is not a vast left-wing conspiracy to secularize Christmas.<\/strong>\u00c2? At least, there isn&#8217;t a conspiracy to secularize it any more than it already is.<br \/>\n[-] <strong>Not every person on this planet celebrates Christmas.<\/strong>\u00c2? Thus, &#8220;Happy Holidays&#8221; is sometimes the better choice, especially since you normally can&#8217;t tell who is Jewish or Wiccan at this time of year.<br \/>\n[-] <strong>There is no religious significance to a Christmas tree.<\/strong>\u00c2? There is nothing Scriptural about it.\u00c2? It&#8217;s a pagan custom that was integrated into Christianity and is now a secular part of the holidays.\u00c2? Ditto with the yule log, miseltoe, and holly.<\/p>\n<p>Having said that, I&#8217;d like to tell my fundie Christian and Orthodox Jewish blogging friends who are up in arms over the holiday trees being taken down at Sea-Tac to <strong>CALM DOWN<\/strong>.\u00c2? Sea-Tac was *not* trying to discriminate against the Chabad rabbi who requested permission to put up an electric menorah.\u00c2? Likewise, taking the trees down was not an assault on Christmas &#8212; rather, it was trying to neutralize the situation because there was a lawsuit being threatened.<\/p>\n<p><strong>To the rabbi who started this mess:<\/strong> your timing was not good.\u00c2? With the increased holiday traffic going through Sea-Tac, getting the menorah up would have been a logistical nightmare.\u00c2? If you had gone to them in October and asked, I think the board of directors would have been more than happy to accomodate you.<\/p>\n<p>Sea-Tac has actually said that they will start figuring out a way to exhibit holiday symbols for all religions celebrating December holidays next year.\u00c2? Maybe the rabbi could work with the board on that, maybe donate a small menorah so that there could be a display that includes a creche, an Advent wreath, a menorah, some kinte cloth, and a yule log or something?<\/p>\n<p>Or&#8230; perhaps we could find some neutral decorations like a wreath in a peace sign with candles since this is a season where we&#8217;re all praying for peace.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s just please not make this a season of lawsuits and backbiting over whether it&#8217;s more appropriate to say &#8220;Happy Holidays&#8221; or &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK&#8230; let&#8217;s get a couple things straight here. [-] There is not a vast left-wing conspiracy to secularize Christmas.\u00c2? At least, there isn&#8217;t a conspiracy to secularize it any more than it already is. [-] Not every person on this &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/?p=1516\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,2,11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-life","category-faith","category-media","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p38xoO-os","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}