It is? Certainly true? Says who?

Hanukah is a very big holiday for (some) Jews. The difference is that they don't insist that it be a very big holiday for everyone else.

Sheesh. I long for the good old days when Christians used to lecture us that the true holiday had nothing to do with shopping at all!

For my family Christmas is a big deal. For me it's just a day off from work with pretty lights.

I'm an atheist in favor of letting people display their superstitious gew-gaws wherever they like, as long as everyone gets to play.

In many (most?) ways, Christmas long ago ceased to be a sacred holiday with secular components and instead became a secular holiday with a sacred history

Except even that is a little suspect, if you start digging into the reasons why we celebrate Jesus' birth in December. (Kinda fishy, that, since he was probably born in spring and the date of December 25 is awfully close to some pagan holidays.)

This whole controversy is pointless. If these angry Christians were so serious about their faith, we'd have Easter lilies and little flame stickers everywhere on the more important holidays. What we really have here is something that's been with us since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock: anti-Jewish vitriol. (Well, there's also the assimilation and subsequent eradication of the minority by the misguided outrage of a theocratic society, but that's another topic for another day.)

As for the rampant consumerism- yep, my partner and I dropped a solid grand on our nieces and nephews this year. It's a way of payback- if I knew I could fill our sibling's kids full of candy and make them happy with toys, AND then give them back to their parents to deal with... I would have never tortured my little sister (or my partner his two sisters) as a child. We also give clothes to one sibling's kids who don't have anything at all- which is the spirit of giving and I ain't tying any religious crap to that.

Let's face facts. We're not in a secular country. We live in as much a theocracy as some countries in the middle east. Haven't the past 6+ years shown exactly that? I agree that we should keep the theocrats and churchies in their respective cages, but the fact remains that we are in this country "one nation under God" Whatever God is... or isn't.

The Court's on your side. Publicly-funded property cannot SOLELY be decorated with publicly-funded religious symbols. You have to toss some secular symbols into the mix. (Note: Christmas trees & menorah's need not apply.)

The larger question as to whether your tax dollars should be supporting *any* kind of seasonal/quasi-religious decorations on *any* publicly-funded buildings is another issue.

Modern-day Christians are idiots for not remembering their predecessors simply appropriated a hodge-podge of mid-winter traditions and rituals from dozens of pagan religions, then tried to skew them to fit into their own particular mythological chronology, and couldn't even do a decent job of that. Engage a Christian in a simple Socratic argument by asking questions such as: WHY were Mary & Joseph traveling to Bethlehem? (A: to be counted as part of the Roman census). WHAT was the purpose of the census? (A: to ascertain the number in each household, and the extent of their holdings, including herds & flocks, for taxation purposes), and WHEN was the census conducted? (A: in the spring, after lambing/calving season, in order to include newborns in the headcount), and eventually you might have the pleasure of either seeing abject doubt creep into their eyes - or watch their head explode.

In fact, early Christianity got the date so wrong in their effort to co-opt and assimiliate the older pagan traditions that many of the more conservative sects (ironically the precursors to most of the fundamentalist groups that today are the holiday's staunchest supporters) refused to even celebrate it (Hellooooo Pilgrims!).

Still, they've made their bed, and so are forced to lie in it, even though the holiday itself hasn't even the remotest bearing on the event for which it was created; namely the birth of the alleged "son of God".

And don't even get me started on all the commercialism.

All that said, I can certainly tollerate the once-a-year orgy of consumer spending on the one hand, and ridiculous religious caterwauling over something that should more correctly be celebrated roughly four or five months later in the year, but what the heck.

I happen to think the lights are pretty too. Now, if only everybody would just stop with the bitching, moaning, buying, and the castigating, and just enjoy the pretty colored lights - things would be much nicer this time of year.

But you CAN display holiday and Christmas "stuff" in public places. The Court ruling referenced above specifically allowed the KKK the right to display a cross in the public square next to the Ohio State Capitol Building! The key point to the Court was in the funding. Was it public or private? Since the KKK was footing the bill, and not the taxpayers of Ohio, it was allowed. Same rule applies for Christmas decorations at Sea-Tac. If any Port Official had taken just a few moments to conduct a fairly rudimentary web search, this whole ridiculous affair would not have happened, and a menorah would be accompanying the Christmas trees for the enjoyment of holiday travelers.

I think how religious decorated trees, wreaths, candy canes, snowmen, and so on "really" are is in the eye of the beholder. To me it's a reminder to stay away from stores and malls til January. To others it's religious.

Now, if only we could require that any $$ spent on such seasonal decorating crap must be matched by $$ to a 501(c)(3) charity, then we might be onto something useful....

Search me; I ain't an attorney. I just play...

To make a guess - you bet. (Which - other than charges of anti-semitism - is probably what really,finally caught the attention of Port bureaucrats: a lawsuit by a menorah-packing Rabbi.

I'd hazard we're just a skip and a heartbeat away from a Prayer Warrior Creche in the North Satellite...

Neither beats Bitlord though.

THANK YOU. christmas trees are really pretty. i do like seeing them around during the holiday season. i even have fun helping friends decorate their trees in their homes. but a few years ago, my roommates and i got into a really heated discussion about whether or not to have a tree in our apartment. one of my roommates and myself are both jewish. the idea of having a christmas tree in our home made us uncomfortable. our other roommate, who was catholic, really wanted a tree. in the end, we put a couple of jolly ranchers in, on and around the bonsai, because that was the most secular compromise we could come up with.

I agree with others that Christmas is not a major "Christian" holiday, so in keeping with the recognition of minor holidays during the winter season the menorah should be up with the tree. Or better yet both should be gone from public space.

All the shopping and excessive spending makes me ill. I hate the trees in public places although I'm always excited when my neighbors do lights. I also have a special place in my heart for people who put out nativity scenes on their own property.

I love Winter Solstice celebrations and many other old time pagan things. However, I can't get behind the sickening consumerism supposedly in the name of Jesus. I give books to the kids in my life, that's it. Also, for those of you that don't know, Kwanzaa is all about homemade gifts. It is one of the many reasons why I love the cultural, non-religious celebration.

Nevermind, that's an awful idea. They would have to reserve the right to veto displays to avoid controversy, and that would cause controversy too. The Port and government property managers everywhere are just fucked.

Lots of Jewish folks living with or married to goys like to ban Christmas trees in the home. Can you imagine the goys trying to ban menorahs? That kind of attitude seems petty, narrow-minded, and lame to me.

My wife and I are atheists, but our house has a Christmas tree and a menorah, and our kids get lots of gifts.

Actually it's pronounced CHRIStmas tree.

This is a sticky mess, but IMHO, I don't care what people put up as long as my tax dollars don't fund it. Some religious group wants to put up a manger at the airport? Fine. A Jewish family wants to make a 100 foot menorah and set it up? Sure. As long as there is no public money in it, I could care less. Does that mean that I would see more religious symbols? Yep, but it doesnt bother me. That's just my opinion though, regardless of the lawsuits it would spawn. Gotta love America!

A blazing 1,600 light, 10-foot Christmas tree helps this atheist celebrate a very Merry-Fucking-Xmas! No way some azz-backwards religious BS takes away my favorite inherited cultural/family tradition... I'll take a double helping of Xmas cheer - just hold the baby Jesus, please.

PRESS RELEASE
University PressWire (UPR)
Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Hand Gesture Conveys New Message

Sociologists at the University of Okoboji have determined that the meaning of a hand gesture common in North America has undergone a recent, dramatic shift. Semioticians, who study signs and symbols, and how their meanings are constructed and understood, have theorized the possibility of what is called "sudden denotative shift," but only a few considered it a real possibility.

"We have vindicated the SDS (sudden denotative shift) theory," said Peter Watson, a member of the UO research team that conducted the study. "These new findings should open up completely new avenues for research."

Watson likens his team's efforts to recent work in evolution, which had long been thought to move so slowly as to be nearly undetectable. "Just as Hoffman at Melbourne showed a species can evolve in as little as 20 years, we have shown that the meaning of a gesture can evolve--but even faster," Watson said.

Watson was referring to the work of Ari Hoffman at the Center for Environmental Stress and Adaptation Research at Latrobe University in Melbourne, Australia, who determined that the Australian fruit fly had adapted to global warming in the last 20 years. His findings were published in the journal Science.

James Pike, a statistician and member of Watson's research team, said that gestures, like languages, were also assumed to move very slowly. "Population dynamics and stable communication media, such as the printed word, audio and video recording, were thought to make SDS nearly impossible," Pike says. "Their value as media depend on a stable substrate of meaning. However, meanings are constructed by humans as an abstract process, making them susceptible to nearly arbitrary changes."

To ensure the objectivity and quantifiability of their study, Pike and Watson, along with a group of student volunteers from UO, collected data on the frequency of a gesture involving the use of a raised middle finger at local shopping malls and parking lots during the year, and correlated the data against weather variables, times of day, days of the week, and finally, to days of the year.

"The strongest statistical association between use of the RMF (raised middle finger) came out in the final correlation," Watson said. "In fact, time of the year was the only statistically significant correlation with changes in the rate of the [RMF] gesturing."

Because of this, the researchers conclude that use of the RMF no longer denotes "opprobrium or disrespect," but something more positive in meaning. "Use of the RMF now actually denotes, or conveys, 'Happy Holidays' in the most general sense," Pike says. The gesture was found to have a generic meaning, rather than an association with a particular sectarian holiday, during follow-up interviews with gesturers. The RMF was used in nearly equal proportions by Christians, Jews, Wiccans and atheists.

Watson does not believe this signals a wider cultural use of the RMF. "Since the RMF now denotes 'Happy Holidays,'" he says, "we predict that its use will merely become increasingly more prevalent during the holiday season."

###