Santa Claus is coming to town

You better watch out
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town...
with Krumpus.



On a related note... I wholeheartedly agree with Alexandra at TomPaine.com's Uncommon Sense:
Missing The Forest For The Christmas Tree. Those who seek to de-Christianify the Christmas season by renaming the "Christmas Tree" as the "Holiday Tree" are actually working directly contrary to their own apparent goals by offering up a sort of Strawman argument instead of confronting the real issue.

The real debate should be whether Christmas trees should be present in public at all, not whether they should be called Christmas trees or holiday trees. Dancing around the issue by playing with the name of the tree is plain disrespectful to Americans of other religions, or those who don’t believe in any religion at all.

You’d think the Constitution’s defenders would seize on this opportunity to trumpet the rights of religious minorities. But their most prominent spokesperson sees it differently. Speaking out in favor of the “holiday tree” label, Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told USA Today that “using the term ‘Christmas tree’ excludes people of other faiths and backgrounds.” No, Barry, pretending that a Christmas tree can somehow be divorced from its religious connotation simply by giving it a generic name excludes people of other faiths and backgrounds. To offer up the most widely recognized symbol of Christmas as a generic symbol of the season and somehow think people of other faiths (or no faith) won’t still see it as a Christian icon is disingenuous. It undermines the religious plurality on which this nation is based.

Alexandra is right. Our's is a society that cherishes it's religious plurality. Does any rational person actually believe that calling Hanukkah menorahs "holiday lamps" would change the fact that they are universally and instantly recognizable as Hanakkah menorahs? No, of course not. Is Christianity, or atheism for that matter, somehow threatened by calling menorahs "menorahs"? No! Of course not! Likewise Judiasm, Christianity, Buddhism, Atheism, et al are in now way threatened by calling the evergreen trees associated with Christmas: Christmas trees. That's what they are!

The real question, as Alexandra points out, is whether or not we should be officially sanctioning Christmas displays in the public square, not what those displays ought to be called. By reframing the issue along the lines of a Strawman naming debate, self-described champions of Church/State separation are playing directly into the hand of religious zealots.

The well-meaning but misguided efforts by public officials to call evergreen trees strewn with ornaments a “holiday tree” are tantamount to declaring Christmas the nation’s official winter religious celebration—which is what Christian conservatives want. We all know the evergreen tree is associated with Christmas, regardless of how often it is pointed out the tree has its origins in pagan traditions.

Hear, hear!