The airport that stole Christmas

Today I arranged for a Muslim writer who contributes sometimes to my section to write a piece about what he teaches his kids about Santa and American Christmas traditions, given that they don't observe the Christian faith. To my surprise, he told my colleague that he and his family, though observant Muslims, put up a tree. I thought that was marvelous: for that family, the tree doesn't represent faith in Jesus Christ, but a tradition that's pretty much secularized. If I lost my faith in Jesus tomorrow, I'd still put up a tree. It's what we do in this country. European pagans did it as a festal sign of life in the dead of winter, before Christians adopted the tradition to their own uses.

I can't tell you how cheesed off I am at the gutless officials at the Seattle-Tacoma airport, for taking down all the trees in the airport in the face of a lawsuit threat. Why do public officials run scurrying to hide under the bed when jerks like Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky of Chabad Lubavitch threaten to take the airport to federal court over it? Well, one possible answer would be that Chabad Lubavitch had a gun to their head, so to speak: "It was either, 'put up the menorah,' or they would go to federal court and sue us 18 hours later," Port of Seattle Commission President Pat Davis said. "They wouldn't wait."

Now the rabbi feels like crap, as he certainly should. He and the sniveling Sea-Tac officials ought to be put into a room and forced to watch the "Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo" episode of South Park, which offers a sane take on all this Christmas offensensitivity stupidity.