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I think the whole thing got out of hand, but I think if he had seriously been interested in just getting a menorah up there, he would have written a request that could have been examined next year - before the trees were up.

I'm a Christian and I do not consider the "Christmas" tree to be a Christian symbol, except in the German/English cultural context, where it has now become more of a shopping season symbol than anything else. It has no religious resonance with people who don't already believe, and in fact has so little religious resonance in general that most Catholic countries reject it and many Protestants here in the US do not accept it.

The Lubavitchers are an odd group. When I lived in NY, they were always out in the streets asking you if you were Jewish or not. I'm not, and I'm also a woman, so I never found out what they'd do if I had been Jewish. But one time I was walking with a Jewish male friend, and when he said he was Jewish, they asked him if he'd like to put on tefillim and step into the "mitzvah tank."

This is not a bad thing, but they are often way too aggressive in their actions vis a vis the rest of the (non-Jewish) world. In New York, just before I left about 6 years ago, we had two things hanging over 5th Avenue - a giant menorah, courtesy of the Lubavitchers after a threatened lawsuit, and - snowflakes. This may have changed, but somehow, if one group (the Lubavitchers) get to put up an undisputably religious symbol for something that was not even a High Holy Day, and the other group (Christians, the majority of New Yorkers) gets to put up snowflakes, I think we have a problem.

This was not done in a way that was really seeking accomodation. It was done to stamp out the majority culture, even if they weren't religious, since as I have pointed out, the "Christmas" tree is not even considered religious by most Christians, and to offend. Otherwise, he wouldn't have hired lawyers and he would have simply contacted the city in the spring and asked for a menorah next year.This is something that could have been discussed, and he would have had to present reasons for which the menorah should be accepted, even though it is not a general American cultural feature, but clearly a religious symbol.