Saturday, December 11, 2010

War on Christmas

There is a small subset of Christians that go into an uproar easily, like when a nativity scene was removed from a ferry terminal on Staten Island. The religious display was not authorized to be in the location that it inhabited. Other holiday signifiers, including a Christmas tree, remain at the ferry terminal in the spaces in which they were authorized. At least one right-wing blog posted a snippet of the local news article along with the extensive and non-vacuous commentary "The madness continues..."

So the city removed a display that wasn't supposed to be there, what's the big deal? The President of The Catholic League (probably an adversary organization in one of the Justice League comics), Bill Donahue complained, "We take this as an enormous affront." I doubt many Catholics believe that removing a display that was not supposed have been on the property is an affront. Or would that automatically make removing graffiti with the Lord's name in it sacrosanct?

The real affront is that a group of citizens thinks that it can and should impose on every American person and institution their religious beliefs. Getting outraged because stores aren't "christmas-friendly"--meaning only celebrating Christian traditions--is an absurd intolerance towards fellow citizens and businesses. If Rush Limbaugh doesn't want to eat at a Halal cart, that's fine. But he shouldn't label it as anti-Christmas.

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