Posted on 12/11/2006 11:32:10 AM PST by Aggie Dad
SEATAC, Wash. - The official Christmas trees are still down at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, but a few little trees have popped up at airline counters.
An employee at Frontier Airlines took up a collection on Monday and bought a few foot-tall trees for the counter.
The initiative followed a decision by airport officials to remove its nine Christmas trees instead of adding a giant Jewish menorah to the holiday display as a rabbi had requested.
Maintenance workers boxed up the trees during the graveyard shift early Saturday, when airport bosses believed few people would notice.
“We decided to take the trees down because we didn’t want to be exclusive,” said airport spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt. “We’re trying to be thoughtful and respectful, and will review policies after the first of the year.”
Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky, who made his request weeks ago, said he was appalled by the decision. He had hired a lawyer and threatened to sue if the Port of Seattle didn’t add the menorah next to the trees, which had been festooned with red ribbons and bows.
“Everyone should have their spirit of the holiday. For many people the trees are the spirit of the holidays, and adding a menorah adds light to the season,” said Bogomilsky, who works in Seattle at the regional headquarters for Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish education foundation.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
There. Fixed it.
Welcome to liberal Seattle. All holiday trees have been removed from public schools so nobody is offended.
The only surprise here is that they allowed the trees to be put up in the first place. But let's just wait and see which airport is the first to put in a prayer room for Muslims.
That is what I've said ever since this came out last week. No overtime or Holiday pay for them either.
Just what you'd expect from the Peoples' Rep. of Washington State.
This is still a Christian nation. There's nothing wrong with Christmas, and there's nothing wrong with Christmas trees. My God, even in very liberal Alexandria, VA, there's a Christmas tree on display in front of City Hall.
Palm trees led to Palm Sundays
There is a pattern here - we must remove all palm trees in California.
as we continue on the road to the perfect world of 'political correctness' for EVERYONE,,,
with an ever-expanding more powerful, intrusive and controlling government,,,
we can someday reach utopia by,,,
FINALLY ridding the world of non-inclusive, hateful, and divisive symbols of intolerance like Christmas trees!!!
Hopefully, in the near future the government will also ban other outrageous, mean-spirited and hurtful things like Christmas cards, Christmas carols and Christmas parties! /s
All those Christmas tree lots, just out there in the open are offensive. Legislation should be passed to only allow sales of Christmas trees in enclosed warehouses, far out of town.
I wonder if he will start making this same demand on all public places that have Christmas decorations, i.e. a town square or shopping mall. Does anyone here know if he can sue all stores and businesses with Christmas decorations demanding that they display menorah's as well since ANYONE can go into these establishments? Wonder if all churches can be sued for displaying a manger scene and not giving equal time to Jewish and Muslim images. Isn't this discrimination? Doesn't it make them feel "unwelcome" not to have things visible in which they are familiar?
It's about darn time that SOMEONE finally took the lead in ridding the world of the scourge of intolerance represented by Christmas trees!!! /s
I'm speculating, but I will bet that, at the bottom of the Port of Seattle's reasoning over this issue, concern over the possible reaction of Muslims, CAIR and rabid islamofascists over the inclusion of a Menorah at an airport was a huge factor.
After all: they just got busted in Minneapolis for praying in an airport, so that would be a perfect excuse, in their eyes, to raise hell over a "Jewish symbol" in an airport.
My guess is that the POS (thats Port of Seattle folks) saw this as a potential issue and elected to punt.
Ha ha!
No because they aren't owned by the government.
I personally don't care, before anyone snips at me. I'm just stating the logic. Sears isn't owned by my county and they can do whatever they want and plaster the building in "Jesus is the reason for the season" banners for all I care. No one could stop them.
My city puts up both Christmas and Hannukah lights on the lampposts and I think it looks quite nice. It's more representative of the people who live there than just Christmas decorations.
Rush discussed this today and I'm behind the airport's decision 100%. They removed the Christmas trees so they wouldn't have to put up with the "lawyer's" Barbra Streisand and risk being sued. I hope this continues to happen across the nation. I see this as the only way to get the people riled up enough to start tar and feathering these "lawyers" and running them out of the country on a rail. I hope everyone starts doing this. Sooner or later, decent people will put their foot down and say, "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" Rush also said that the "rabbi" and his "lawyer" are upset that everyone is so pissed off at them. They really didn't want the trees to be removed. The adults at the airport just did what any responsible adult would do when a couple of children start throwing a tantrum. I think it's hilarious.
Bah, Humbug! I'm sick of those darn trees everywhere, bringing Glad Tidings and Joy to the world. Everyone should live a scurvey life without and any Holiday Spirit. Oh, the Noise, Noise, Noise!
Really? I didn't think a tree represented anything other than a christmas tree? Does a fence post also represent a cross?
I stand corrected. You learn something every day.
The Origins of the Christmas Tree
The custom of a Christmas tree, undecorated, is believed to have begun in Germany, in the first half of the 700s.
The earliest story relates how British monk and missionary St. Boniface (born Winfrid in A.D. 680) was preaching a sermon on the Nativity to a tribe of Germanic Druids outside the town of Geismar. To convince the idolaters that the oak tree was not sacred and inviolable, the "Apostle of Germany" felled one on the spot. Toppling, it crushed every shrub in its path except for a small fir sapling. A chance event can lend itself to numerous interpretations, and legend has it that Boniface, attempting to win converts, interpreted the fir’s survival as a miracle, concluding, "Let this be called the tree of the Christ Child." Subsequent Christmases in Germany were celebrated by planting fir saplings.
We do know with greater authority that by the sixteenth century, fir trees, indoors and out, were decorated to commemorate Christmas in Germany. A forest ordinance from Ammerschweier, Alsace, dated 1561, states that "no burgher shall have for Christmas more than one bush of more than eight shoes’ length." The decorations hung on a tree in that time, the earliest we have evidence of, were "roses cut of many-colored paper, apples, wafers, gilt, sugar."
It is a widely held belief that Martin Luther, the sixteenth-century Protestant reformer, first added lighted candles to a tree. Walking toward his home one winter evening, composing a sermon, he was awed by the brilliance of stars twinkling amidst evergreens. To recapture the scene for his family, he erected a tree in the main room and wired its branches with lighted candles.
By the 1700s, the Christbaum, or "Christ tree," was a firmly established tradition. From Germany the custom spread to other parts of Western Europe. It was popularized in England only in the nineteenth century, by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s German consort. Son of the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (a duchy in central Germany), Albert had grown up decorating Christmas trees, and when he married Victoria, in 1840, he requested that she adopt the German tradition.
The claim of the Pennsylvania Germans to have initiated the Christmas tree custom in America is undisputed today. And it’s in the diary of Matthew Zahm of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, under the date December 20, 1821, that the Christmas tree and its myriad decorations received their first mention in the New World.
It is not surprising that, like many other festive Christmas customs, the tree was adopted so late in America. To the New England Puritans, Christmas was sacred. The Pilgrims’ second governor, William Bradford, wrote that he tried hard to stamp out "pagan mockery" of the observance, penalizing any frivolity. The influential Oliver Cromwell preached against "the heathen traditions" of Christmas carols, decorated trees and any joyful expression that desecrated "that sacred event."
In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law making any observance of December 25 (other than a church service) a penal offense; people were fined for hanging decorations. That stern solemnity continued until the nineteenth century, when the influx of German and Irish immigrants undermined the Puritan legacy. In 1856, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow commented: "we are in a transition state about Christmas here in New England. The old Puritan feeling prevents it from being a cheerful hearty holiday; though every year makes it more so." In that year, Christmas was made a legal holiday in Massachusetts, the last state to uphold Cromwell’s philosophy.
Interestingly, Godey’s Lady’s Book, the women’s publication of the 1800s that did so much to nationalize Thanksgiving, also played a role in popularizing festive Christmas practices. Through its lighthearted and humorous drawings, its household-decorating hints, its recipes for Christmas confections and meals, and its instructions for homemade tree ornaments, the magazine convinced thousands of housewives that the Nativity was not just a fervent holy day but could also be a festive holiday.
Xmas. The familiar abbreviation for Christmas originated in the Greeks. X is the first letter of the Greek word for Christ, Xristos. By the sixteenth century, "Xmas" was popular throughout Europe. Whereas early Christians had understood that the term merely was Greek for "Christ’s mass," later Christians, unfamiliar with the Greek reference, mistook the X as a sign of disrespect, an attempt by heathen to rid Christmas of its central meaning. For several hundred years, Christians disapproved of the use of the term. Some still do.
The rabbi should be ashamed of himself.
Then, with all due respect to your pastor, he's full of baloney. The Christmas tree is pagan. Period.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.