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THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE

Legal Feature

The Twelve Rules of Christmas (Compiled by attorneys for The Rutherford Institute)

Unfortunately, Christmas has become a time of controversy over what can or cannot be done in terms of celebrating the holiday. In order to clear up much of the misunderstanding, the following twelve rules are offered:

(1) Public school students’ written or spoken personal expressions concerning the religious significance of Christmas (e.g., T-shirts with the slogan, "Jesus Is the Reason for the Season") may not be censored by school officials absent evidence that the speech would cause a substantial disruption.

(2) So long as teachers are generally permitted to wear clothing or jewelry or have personal items expressing their views about the holidays, Christian teachers may not be prohibited from similarly expressing their views by wearing Christmas-related clothing or jewelry or carrying Christmas-related personal items.

(3) Public schools may teach students about the Christmas holiday, including its religious significance, so long as it is taught objectively for secular purposes such as its historical or cultural importance, and not for the purpose of promoting Christianity.

(4) Public school teachers may send Christmas cards to the families of their students so long as they do so on their own time, outside of school hours.

(5) Public schools may include Christmas music, including those with religious themes, in their choral programs if the songs are included for a secular purpose such as their musical quality or cultural value or if the songs are part of an overall performance including other holiday songs relating to Chanukah, Kwanzaa, or other similar holidays.

(6) Public schools may not require students to sing Christmas songs whose messages conflict with the students’ own religious or nonreligious beliefs.

(7) Public school students may not be prohibited from distributing literature to fellow students concerning the Christmas holiday or invitations to church Christmas events on the same terms that they would be allowed to distribute other literature that is not related to schoolwork.

(8) Private citizens or groups may display crèches or other Christmas symbols in public parks subject to the same reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions that would apply to other similar displays.

(9) Government entities may erect and maintain celebrations of the Christmas holiday, such as Christmas trees and Christmas light displays, and may include crèches in their displays at least so long as the purpose for including the crèche is not to promote its religious content and it is placed in context with other symbols of the Holiday season as part of an effort to celebrate the public Christmas holiday through its traditional symbols.

(10) Neither public nor private employers may prevent employees from decorating their offices for Christmas, playing Christmas music, or wearing clothing related to Christmas merely because of their religious content so long as these activities are not used to harass or intimidate others.

(11) Public or private employees whose sincerely held religious beliefs require that they not work on Christmas must be reasonably accommodated by their employers unless granting the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the employer.

(12) Government recognition of Christmas as a public holiday and granting government employees a paid holiday for Christmas does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

1 posted on 12/03/2004 2:43:25 AM PST by kattracks
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To: Budge; sweetliberty

PING!


2 posted on 12/03/2004 3:01:36 AM PST by Budge (<><)
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To: kattracks
That list is a breath of fresh air.

ACLU = Atheists Communists Losers Union. Funny how they've gone from promoting civil liberties to abolishing Christianity.

If the election was about "moral values", then it was about liberal activist judges legislating from the bench. Well, guess what group enables this kind of dysfunctional judicial behavior - the ACLU (well, among others).

4 posted on 12/03/2004 3:21:47 AM PST by searchandrecovery (No clever ideas in over: 17 days.)
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To: kattracks

Show me where in the constution it says "seperation of church and state" This country was established as a Christian country and will not survive any other way.


5 posted on 12/03/2004 3:43:53 AM PST by G-Man 1
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To: kattracks

ping


6 posted on 12/03/2004 3:46:50 AM PST by CriticalJ
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To: kattracks
(12) Government recognition of Christmas as a public holiday and granting government employees a paid holiday for Christmas does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Of all the nauseating, hypocritical statements in this list, this one is the biggest, and makes the rest of the list a joke. They don't want Christmas celebrated in any way, and will establish micro-rules to prevent that from happening, which all the sheeple and administrators will follow, but they're smart enought to know that if they try to take away the holiday, every one will rise up and raise hell.

They know just how far they can go without getting their noses cut off, so they just blithely negate their own position with one statement to avoid that. Evil, fascist, socialist b@$tard$.

7 posted on 12/03/2004 3:52:19 AM PST by Hardastarboard
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To: kattracks

Do us Christians still have to use a separate water fountain?


8 posted on 12/03/2004 3:56:38 AM PST by bad company (I'm a new Grandpa.)
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To: kattracks; Budge
"There is an irrational bias against anything remotely religious unless its sanitized and secularized"

Oh, there is no bias against anything religious, as long as the religion isn't Christianity. Why are they so threatened by Chrisitanity, you may wonder. I would suggest that it is because Jesus Christ is the only Name under heaven by which men might be saved, therefore, the teaching (and learning) of the Scriptures is the only insurmountable obstacle to the implementation of their socialist/communist agenda.

10 posted on 12/03/2004 4:49:18 AM PST by sweetliberty (Proud member of the Pajama Posse!)
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To: kattracks

my 2 rules of Christmas

1> It is the day that we celebrate the birth of our savior Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate.

2.> tell the civil rights groups to go fornicate themselves.


13 posted on 12/03/2004 7:30:02 AM PST by weshess (I will stop hunting when the animals agree to quit jumping in front of my gun to commit suicide)
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To: kattracks

I made 10 copys and e-mailed it to 2 friends


14 posted on 12/03/2004 7:40:06 AM PST by LtKerst (Lt Kerst)
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To: kattracks

This could also be called the 12 ways to fight the anti-Christmas cops without losing the Christmas spirit.


19 posted on 12/08/2004 7:39:00 PM PST by Grig
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