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 ...
Just pointing out that this was not a custom in this country for "hundreds of years," and that many Christians opposed trees as secular when the custom spread from German immigrants.
Where did I knock the Constitution? It's the only thing preventing true believers from voting a theocracy into place.
Please tell me you realize that "holiday" is a contraction for "holy day".
Yeah I realize the meaning of holiday. The word has been reduced to meaning a paid day off from work. Christmas still means the day of Christs' birth though. When this story first broke the trees were referred to as holiday trees, not Christmas trees. When they were replaced they were called Christmas trees. This story is more about beurocrats trying to avoid religion than anything else
Earth to tcrlaf...
Congrats. You got it as it was.The trees that were removed were secular trees. The Menorrah would have been a religious symbol. Can't have that. Don't know about the Rabbi's affiliations, but he was right on this one. Could the aclu(lower case intentional)be right for once?
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