Tis the Season to be Litigious

Our town has been embroiled in a holiday controversy for the past several years. For the last N years or so, our town has decorated our City Hall building, as well as a large evergreen tree which sits on the front lawn of the building, with holiday lights. Obviously the lights and the tree are in celebration of the Christmas holiday, so several members of the Jewish community have approached the town hall with the proposal to place a menorah in front of City Hall as a gesture in recognition of the sizable Jewish community within our town. For several years, the town council has rejected this proposal, causing some amount of ill will within the community. However, this year the town decided to allow the menorah to be displayed on public property.

However, a Christian group said that if the town is placing a menorah in front of City Hall, then they should be allowed to display a Nativity scene on public property as well! The town had no choice but to grant this request. In addition, the town decided to put up some candy canes and a blow-up Santa Claus in order to complete the display. Now instead of having just lights, which represent the commercial, secular side of Christmas, we have a several expressions of overt religion, as well as some additional tacky commercial secular expressions as well!

The interesting thing about these holiday displays on public property is that the courts seem to be quite clear about what is allowed. Secular symbols, like Santa Claus, Christmas trees, candy canes, and the like are allowed. Religious symbols are allowed if they are displayed along with secular symbols and if the governing body allows equal access to all religious groups to display their symbols. Obviously when my town was just displaying lights, it was not in violation of the courts, since lights and a Christmas tree are considered secular symbols. Likewise, now that they seem to be allowing equal access for all religions to display their symbols, they are also consistent with what the courts have rules.

Basically the choice for the town is whether to:

1. Only show secular symbols without allowing any religious symbols.
2. Allowing any religious group free access to display their religious symbols along with secular symbols.

The question becomes which choice is more appealing to the community.

Before I continue, let me say for the record that I am Jewish so feel free to take that into account when you evaluate my opinion.

My own personal feeling is that I would rather err on the side of not displaying ANY religious symbol on public property. For me, religion is not something that I feel the need to broadcast to my neighbors, and I especially feel that it is not the government's place to broadcast it for me. The government's job is not to provide land for my own religious expression. I think part of this opinion comes from my Jewish background. Historically, Jews have been the target of prostelyzation by other religious groups, so I feel that there is something in our genes which opposes us to overt displays of religion, particularly when those displays seem to be emanating from the government. In addition, the Jewish religion does not place any emphasis on missionary-type activities, so there is no imperative to advertise our beliefs to the outside world.

On the other hand, my understand of Christianity is that there is a strong emphasis on seeking out converts, so that may explain the Christian sensitivity towards any activities which seem to quash religious expression or discourse. It would seem like this would explain the need to fight to protect Christmastime religious expressions.

Now the interesting thing to me is that this whole issue of introducing religious symbols in the public space in my town was initiated by a Jewish group, which seems to go against my analysis above. It would seem more likely that a Jewish group would be in opposition to overt expressions of faith in a public space. The Christians of the town seemed to be content with secular symbols, but because of the Jewish response, they were now mobilized to provide their own religious counterpoint to the menorah.

My guess is that the Jew who proposed displaying the menorah probably felt that the lights were a religious symbol of the Christmas holiday, so he wanted to add a Jewish symbol in order counterbalance its perceived Christian overtones. I can totally understand this line of thinking. Here is a town that is something like 30% Jewish and yet our town government is only displaying Christmas decorations on public property. On the surface, it does seem somewhat exclusionary. However, if you stop and think about it, a lot of what is associated with Christmas really has nothing to do with the religious holiday. Most of it is secular "junk" that has accumulated over the years. The effect is to morph Christmas into this American, secular holiday. A similar thing has happened with both Easter and Halloween in this country. To a certain extent, Hanukkah has suffered the same fate in that it has taken on several secular characteristics that have nothing to do with the holiday's original religious origins.

I think it would be better if people separated "secular Christmas" and "religious Christmas" into two separate holidays. That way, we wouldn't get all hung up in trees and lights, thinking that they are actual religious expressions. Let's think of a new name to represent all of the secular aspects of Christmas - the lights, the tree, the gift giving, etc. For now, I will just call it SecChris, until someone comes up with a better name. Then let Christmas revert back to the religious holiday that it once was.