King5: All 15 Christmas trees inside the terminal at Sea-Tac have been removed in response to a complaint by a rabbi.
What a nebbech.
Hey rabbi? You’re an educated man: do some research! The basis of Christmas is the pagan holiday of Yule. The hanging of bough of holy, lighting candles in fir trees, mistletoe, hanging stockings… that’s all Yule related. It’s got nothing to do with Catholicism. Nothing. The birth of Jesus is a minor holiday to Catholics; Easter has far more religious implications. From a religious perspective, Christmas means Midnight Mass – that’s it. Even the massive effort for donations – if you want to see that in a religious light, that’s supposed to be a year long virtue rather than a seasonal thing. In fact, I was talking to someone just today, commenting on how Christmas has less to do with the birth of Christ and is getting back to it’s pagan roots: it’s being assisted by Hallmark, Costco, and many malls, from coast to coast.
A menorah is a similar decoration: it commemorates the victory of the Maccabees in a secular battle, when a one day supply of oil lasted a remarkable eight days. Miracle? Faith is what determines that, but from a non-religious point of view, the battle a pivotal point of Jewish history.
Should there be a menorah in Sea-Tac airport? I don’t see any reason why not. Should there be a lawsuit because there’s a Christmas tree there and not a menorah there? I don’t see how there can be such a lawsuit. What would be the basis of it? Religion? There’s more religious ties to a menorah then there is a Christmas tree… there’s no religious ties to Christmas trees, aside from the name. What’s next then? Holiday trees?
And all of this crap for an airport? Because it’s a public place? Does that mean I can go to Temple this Saturday night and harass this rabbi that he doesn’t have a cross in his synagog? Shouldn’t it be enough to consider the Christmas tree an American cultural icon and leave it at that?
It’s not that I’m a Gentile or not – it’s more that I’m American and the majority of the nation is losing it’s Freedom of Speech because of the seemingly selfish protests of a whining single person.
How is it that one person can take away my Freedom of Speech and it not be viewed as an injustice?
Back to sanity….
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/12/airport.christmas.trees.ap/index.html
And sans menorah… craziness.
Lou Dobbs has a few things to say about it as well: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/12/Dobbs.Dec13/index.html
Spot on.
Hi,
We have the same problems in Quebec, with the fundamentalist muslims and now with some hassidic jews. There was a big stir here in Montreal a couple of weeks ago when a rabbi requested that the windows of the YMCA facing the hassidic school be replaced by “frosted” windows since the young boys in the classrooms could see the ladies exercizing through those windows. The rabbi said his church would pay for the expense. So, the YMCA decided, without consultation of any kind upon its members and clients, to replace the windows with frosted ones.
Then there was such an outcry by women and by everybody, that they changed their mind and put the ordinary windows back.
There have been hassidic jews in that neighborhood for more than a century now and this kind of s*** never happened before. What’s happening??
And with the muslims, they demand spaces for prayer everywhere; they demand women doctors for their wives even when hospital emergencies are overloaded, they demand that fathers cannot be there to watch for their children at public swimming pools since some muslim women are in the pool at the same time, taking swimming lessons.
So now what? The guests are bullying the hosts. And don’t you dare express any kind of annoyance with it, or you will be tagged a racist.
Here in Quebec the new term for the wishy-washy solutions applied is “reasonable accomodation”.
Is there such a thing in the US?
For lack of a better term: welcome to America.
Americans have gotten so frazzled by being “politically correct” that it’s impossible to say or do ANYthing these days. I mean, if you do something that pisses someone off, you have to stop doing it “or else”. So basically you have minority opinion shoving the majority opinion aside and winning yet still trying to BE the minority opinion.
Sorta like the inmates running the asylum.