Free Republic

You know it from the first few notes of Thurl Ravenscroft's barrel-chested performance — singing "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" with the same flair he brought to playing Tony the Tiger in Kellogg's cereal commercials — Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a holiday classic. The animated film turns 50 this year, airing on NBC about three weeks before its actual birthday. And it is, admittedly, a little weird to call a 26-minute cartoon about a green guy who learns not to steal Christmas presents an enduring masterpiece. But The Grinch, which CBS debuted on Dec. 18,...

When the Honolulu City Lights show opens tonight on the City Hall lawn, there will be four displays celebrating the birth of Jesus. Nonprofit organizations are permitted to present their holiday messages in a corner of the municipal holiday exhibition that features bigger-than-life displays of toys, elves, snow people and Santa. In other cities the use of public property for religious displays has led to lawsuits, protests and bans. In Honolulu a complaint about a Christmas Nativity scene on the City Hall lawn was resolved in 1998 with a system in which five spaces are set aside for private displays....

The "war against Christmas" rages on. A Wisconsin elementary school has changed the song "Silent Night" to "Cold in the Night," and secularized the lyrics. Ridgeway Elementary School in Dodgeville may be taking a cue from the White House, which as been sending out greeting cards in the last few weeks, wishing recipients a happy "Holiday Season" rather than "Merry Christmas." The school's "Winter Program" features a secularized version of the traditional Christmas carol "Silent Night" with the following lyrics: Cold in the night, no one in sight; Winter winds whirl and bite. How I wish I were happy and...

SEATTLE -- Two suburban school districts have had to do some backtracking over holiday religious issues, one for lunch menus with the words "Merry Christmas" and the other for a "giving tree." In Federal Way, between Seattle and Tacoma, December lunch menus for all 23 elementary schools were recalled and reprinted with the words "Happy Holidays" at a cost of $494 after a new nutrition services employee mistakenly prepared them with the greeting "Merry Christmas," spokeswoman Diane Turner said. The 11,500 misworded calendar-style menus were never distributed and were recycled, Turner added. Using "Merry Christmas" on the menus violated school...