This year’s battleground in the War On Christmas: public displays of nativity scenes.
For instance, in a small town in Connecticut, a town had a long tradition of having a Christian nativity scene on the town square (a public park). After a protest by an atheist, the town agreed to allow the atheist organization to post its own holiday season display, and the result was a three-paneled sign that included an image of the World Trade Center with the slogan “Imagine No Religion.” In response, the town’s mayor ordered a Christmas tree to be put up, partially blocking the view of the atheist sign.
And in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the city council voted to erect a nativity scene in front of City Hall. They did so after a group advocating separation of church and state objected to a nativity scene in the nearby small town of Pestigo, inviting the group to “pick on someone their own size.” So then, a local Wiccan asked for — and was granted, out of necessity — permission to erect a pagan wreath to the public display. So then, another resident asked for — and was denied — permission to add a Festivus pole. The Mayor of Green Bay justified his decision by saying that Festivus is not a religious holiday but rather a pop culture phenomenon.
Here’s what I say — no public holiday displays at all. These kinds of displays belong on people’s houses and their churches. Public property needs to be business-as-usual, nothing more and nothing less. I offer three reasons for this:
First of all, if it’s not appropriate for a city to promote Christianity by making the town square available for a nativity scene (and it’s not), it is also not appropriate for the city to promote atheism by making the square available for the atheists’ sign urging people to abandon their religions. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and having a governmental entity impliedly urge abandonment of religion is as much an Establishment as it would be to promote any particular religion.
Oddly, though, this seems to not be an option. “…if the town were to put a stop to all the displays, then the atheists win, [a Connecticut town councilman] said.” That’s not so much a win for atheists — who now have a dog in the fight for primacy in placement of their holiday display — but for people who advocate separation of church and state. Religious people, too, like the separation of church and state (or at least, they ought to).
Secondly, this makes people have to start asking a lot of unnecessary questions. For instance, I think the atheist sign in Connecticut played too easily with an image that political; the atheists there would have been better-advised to invite people to join a solstice party and spread a positive message — like conveying wishes for peace and health. We also have to ask whether the Connecticut town’s decision to later place the Christmas Tree in front of the atheists’ sign is an endorsement of Christianity as being better than atheism, which completely defeats the purpose of being inclusive and non-judgmental. Public officials should not be wasting their time deciding whether a Wiccan is being serious when he offers a wreath with a pentagram as a genuine expression of religious sentiment or not — or inquiring into the nature of Festivus.
Finally, it’s not good public policy but also good religion to conform to the safest, truest, and best reading of the Establishment Clause. Why do public officeholders who are religious feel the need to use their public resources to promote their religions anyway? It’s particularly obnoxious in Green Bay, where the City Council seems to have deliberately picked a Constitutional fight, whether or not they are in the right in that dispute (which they partially are and partially are not). But Green Bay’s taxpayer’s dollars could have been conserved by simply doing nothing and better spent doing something else, or nothing at all.
For instance, here’s a story about a town in Michigan that got it right and agreed to move its nativity scene to a church, where it can be as public a display of religion as anyone could ask for, without violating the Constitution. The “atheists” didn’t “win” in that town. Everyone did, including the Christians who now get to have their nativity scene displayed without incorporating secular or non-Christian elements, as would otherwise be required in such a holiday display.
