Posted on 12/11/2006 6:37:44 PM PST by kellynla
SEATAC, Wash. — The official Christmas trees may still be missing from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, but a few individual airline employees have decided to try to put some spirit back into the holiday.
Employees at both Delta and Frontier airlines took up a collection on Monday and bought a few foot-tall decorated trees for the check-in counter.
The airlines employees' move came after airport officials removed all nine Christmas trees in the building in response to a rabbi's request to add an 8-foot menorah to the holiday decorations.
Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky made the request weeks ago, when he demanded officials add a menorah next to the trees and threatened to file a lawsuit if his request wasn't honored.
Instead, officials decided to remove holiday decorations as a whole. 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."
Bogomilsky said he was appalled by the decision.
"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 at Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish education foundation headquartered in Seattle's University District.
After consulting with lawyers, port staff believed that adding the menorah would have required adding symbols for other religions and cultures in the Northwest. The holidays are the busiest season at the airport, Betancourt said, and staff didn't have time to play cultural anthropologists.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Medved explained that the Menorah is a purely religious symbol. The Christmas tree is not.
You smoking crack?
Who made the decision to remove the trees?
The Rabbi wanted a menorah up... not the trees down.
So, of course, to you... it makes sense to blame the Jew for the stupidity of the Gentile. Things really haven't changed much in the last 500 years.
Russian pogroms against the Jews when a Russian committed a crime. Polish pogroms against the Jews when a Pole committed a crime.
And now, mass anger against the Jew for the nigh criminal stupidity of the non-Jew director.
What are you, stuck on stupid?
:-P
I have. Quite a few. None of them, including the Rabbi in question, wanted the trees removed. They just wanted to be included, that's all.
Lawyer. There was a lawyer.
Here is another individual that is also fed up with it. I don't look up the history of holidays. Just celebrate them as my family did back when I was growing up. Don't see how it hurts or insults anyone else.
Yeah, you're smoking crack.
Not into that. Goodbye.
End result: nobody can display anything out of a perceived fear of offending somebody. So everybody suffers. It's insane, really.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof
He doesn't like to notice that Rabbi hired lawyer to hold Christmas trees hostage...then got his stupid bluff called and ended up rightfully getting the blame...
Earth to nutcase...
THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO LAWSUIT HAD A MENORAH BEEN ALLOWED UP!
So, of course, the nutball of a director chose to take down the trees.
For which you blame the Rabbi.
And yeah, us flyboys are smart... it's too bad you don't have the ability to notice it.
:-P
For the sake of accuracy, a lawsuit has yet to be filed, it was merely threatened.
Why pick on atheists? As long our taxes aren't paying for your piety, who cares?
If you and Betancourt played poker, I'm betting that you'd lose. The Rabbi sure did.
If ther's a Nativity scene, there must be a Menorah....both being the RELIGIOUS symbols of the season.
Yeah, a contraction is a shortened form of a word.
You see "Holy day" has seven letters and the contraction "holiday" has seven letters...
Ahhh... nevermind.
I agree, I'm a Protestant Christian but I'd pitch in money to buy a nice Menorah if a co-worker was Jewish and asked for some reciprocity. I'd be more than happy to have a Menorah side by side with a Christmas tree.
This story is about removing religion from the Holidays.
You'd HATE the US Constitution then.
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