The ACLU is tree tolerant and wants everyone to know it. This year, just for example, the Hawaii Civil Liberties Union has brought suit in defense of that state’s holiday tree display. The ACLU knows, of course, that most Christians are a little obsessive about associating certain vegetables matter, like trees and lilies, for example, with their alleged savior Jesus Christ. But what of it? One man’s Christmas tree is another man’s Zeusmastree, Allahmastree, Buddhamastree, Wiccamastree, Odinmastree, or Whatevermastree.
|
|
There’s no constitutional wall of separation between tree and state. The First Amendment does not say “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of trees…” No imaginative and audacious federal or state judge has—so far—found a reference to trees in any of the articles or amendments of the Constitution. Every state, city and town is free to set up a tree. Lace it with lights? No problem. Colorful decorations? That’s OK too. Christian symbols? Whoa! That’s going way too far. Your right to call them Christmas tree is protected by the Constitution, but a Christian decoration financed by public money or displayed on public property implies an unconstitutional recognition that a Christmas tree has something to do with Christ.
If we don’t pretend that there is a wall of separation between mastrees and Christ then we end up with government promoting religious beliefs and practices; just a hop and a skip and a jump away from theocracy, the Inquisition and burning ACLU lawyers at the stake. Can’t be allowed.
Here’s an interesting convergence. I read just a couple of weeks ago about a show at the National Socialism Documentation Center in Cologne. Like the ACLU, the Nazis were uncomfortable with Christian symbols associated with mastrees. Knowing that there’s no way they could separate Germans from their Christmas trees their answer was to provide a vast array of baubles more suited to an Aryan pagan winter solstice celebration.
True Germans, anxious to disassociate themselves from a pack of ancient Jews could decorate their trees with hand grenades, bombs, fighter planes, tanks, and swastikas. St. Nicholas could be replaced with images of Odin. And under the tree they could place presents with swastika wrapping paper.
Off to the East in the Soviet Union Stalin had already been there, done that. In the first years of the revolution the Communist Party banned all religious celebrations and went after the traditional decorated fir tree with angry zeal. Stalin saw that this wasn’t working out so in 1935 he decreed that “Christmas trees” should thereafter become New Year’s trees as part of a national family holiday.
In due course suitable New Year’s Day tree decorations were put on the market—rockets and cosmonauts became favorites. Soviet stars, of course. Lots of them. This, by the way, meant a triple-whammy against stars in the Third Reich. Stars of Bethlehem. Stars of David. Soviet Stars. Didn’t need no stinkin’ stars on a Nazimastree.
Irv Sutley of Sonoma County, Cal., apparently unaware of the various meanings of the star spotted one in the office of the Board of Supervisors last week and sprung into action. The county administrator reacted with an immediate decree banishing stars and all other religious symbolism county property so that employees could celebrate “the season” without threatening the destruction of the Constitution. Irv is OK with trees, lights, snowflakes, and bulbs. This is probably the merriest —mas he has ever had in his whole life.
All this suggests the need for some suitable secularmass tree decorations acceptable to the ACLU. Credit and debit cards are a natural and the surviving banks will provide them for free. Most any animal, except a lamb, will do. Swastikas would be compatible with the Constitution, but I don’t see them as becoming very popular. Dollar signs and Euro symbols should have more appeal. Santa Claus? A little iffy, Santa-saint, St. Nick has some bothersome associations. Teddy Kennedy images seem more acceptable. His figure displayed a familiar rotundity and he was a kind of legislative cornucopia of gifts. Peace symbols of course. Hybrid cars and wind mills would do.
These are just a few suggestions to stimulate the imagination of the reading public.
Merry Christmas
John,
They don’t call community college teachers “professor.” Especially those who never completed their doctorate.
The International Military Encyclopedia is a Time publication not unlike those sold on television.
You got your butt handed to you in 2008.
Now that your resume is put in perspective, why do you think you know what’s good for the United States anymore than a millwright at Verso knows what’s good for the United States.
I am consistently amazed how little you really know and how much is just opinion disguised as “fact.”
It’s not stimulating at all. Hawaii has a large indigenous population in whose name the ACLU might just object to public money being used for a religious purpose. But I won’t comment further without reading about it myself. I just can’t believe I read through this whole essay full of logical fallacies and reactionism.
“The dogs will bark, but the caravan moves on.”—Ancient Persian Proverb.
Tony in Wilton,
It would be interesting to have a look at your resume! I am surprised at your broad knowledge of just what titles are applied to teachers in ALL community colleges in the U.S. How do you know what the ranking titles are at MCC. How does the publisher of a military encyclopedia effect the quality of the information contained in it or the people who put it together? About the Second Congressional District of Maine election on 2008, it was a very up hill battle to unseat Michaud, a long time incumbent Democrat career politician in a clearly liberal state. Actually, Professor Frary did very well under the circumstances. Your various attacks on Professor Frary tell us a lot about yourself, sort of a resume itself.
Admin logging in for Robert:
Associate Professor Frary (yes, Virginia, he is a Professor) pens a light hearted and historically accurate account of totalitarian attempts to suppress Christmas Trees (fascinating about Stalin’s attempts to destroy Christmas trees, etc). And he ends the whole shebang with “Merry Christmas.”
Then he gets 2 Scroogelike responses claiming the “whole essay full of logical fallacies and reactionism,” and that he is as dumb as a millworker at Verso.
Stalin was a reactionary? Who knew! And our current state rep is a millworker at Verso, and by all accounts one of the quickest minds in the statehouse.
Maybe these respondents could try READING The International Military Encyclopedia. Published by Time, huh? Now there’s the dregs of intellectual thought for ya….
Hey Jason, would you care to name the fallacies committed? Are they formal or informal fallacies? Does he commit the “affirming the consequent,” or “denying the antecedent,” or the ad hominem in any of its forms, or the ad misericordium, or direct fallacy of accident, or fallacy of complex question, ad vericundium, non sequitur, ad baculum, four term fallacy, or some others? I would like to know. Instruct us!
i never took a course in logic, so i’m not equipped to pick apart mr. frary’s piece from that perspective. but i am a bit of a scholar in the field of religion and the history thereof, and what i find fallacious is the idea of our modern commercialized notions of christmas being inviolably sacred. as a professor of history i would have hoped that mr. frary hadn’t neglected to discuss the non-christian origins of the tradition. aside from an allusion to a characteristically teutonic affinity for evergreens, we’ve missed entirely the roman, norse and germanic roots of the version of christmas many celebrate today, and let’s not forget jeremiah 10:2-4. that’s all i’ll say here about christmas, although when provoked i’ve been known to lecture at length on the fallacies of modern christian practices and holidays.
jason did raise a great point about hawaii’s indigenous population, which nobody bothered to address in their comments. and at least by my reading, i had assumed that jason was aware of mr. harvell’s connection with verso and was not implying that he was dumb, but rather that mr. frary’s professorial image seems in contrast a bit elitist. (as does his apparent disregard for what he views as rabble, that is, bulldog readers, vis a vis his dismissive response to above comments.)
finally mr. frary, i always enjoy your pieces, and your smug sense of humor is not lost on me, but godwin’s law applies.
I leave rely on BILL REID to bring any logical fallacies to my attention. He is a trained logician and used to teach the subject. There seem to a lot of people who know nothing about logic except that is a good thing to be logical, ergo a good thing to agree people they don’t agree with of being illogical.
“Smug” JONBOY? Are you so ignorant as to be unaware that my humility is admired and celebrated on three continents? Fie! I don’t see where a dissertation on the pagan origins of the Christmas tree has any place in the column, although my reference to the Odinmastree and the Nazi treatment of the occasion are glancing reference to it.
FACT: Community colleges have the usual hierarchy of academic ranks: Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor.
Oddly, the union contract equated the ABD with the PhD. A reasonable fiction since passing the course work, oral and written examinations attests to competence in the subject matter, while completion of a thesis attests to the ability to do scholarship in a specialized field. Community colleges are teaching institutions not research institutions. That I am a failed Byzantine scholar is true, but irrelevant to both teaching and writing columns on this, that and the other thing.
The International Military Encyclopedia (T.I.M.E) is published by Academic International Press, NOT Time, Inc. It produces sets like The Modern Encyclopdia of Russian and Soviet History, The Military-Naval Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union, China Facts and Figures Annual for an international institutional market.
I stated in publically more than once that my prospects of electoral victory rested precariously on the prospect of Mike Michaud defecting to North Korea with top-secret plans for a turbo-charged fork-lift. And I acknowledged repeatedly that my career was that of an academic drudge and a chalk-smeared foot-soldier in the academic ranks. So?
I’m on my way to my seventieth year—growing senile, old and confused. I need help with any factual and analytical lapses. And all i get is nyah-nyah-nyah. Have a heart!
“…a good thing to ACCUSE people…” See what I mean?
I don’t see the point about Hawaii’s “large” indigenous population? According to current figures native Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians make up about 9% of the populaiton Is there some evidence that they are less Christian and less fond of Christmas trees than the 40% who are of Asian origin? Or is this simply a strained and pointless expression of devotion of diversity?