“To heck with color lights and an all-inclusive “pass” celebration as touted by a Fort Collins citizens group the Larimer County sheriff said this week.
Sheriff Jim Alderden believes such a secular event runs answer to what most people in America and Larimer County direct to be true - Christ and Christmas. So Alderden is putting up his own Christmas - “not a holiday” - tree outside the county sheriff’s administration building and is asking people to decorate it Dec. 1.
Alderden wants “members of the public who overlap our faith or object to government intrusion into our religious freedoms to join us,” he wrote Wednesday in his weekly newsletter to employees and outside subscribers.”
“The fact that we are even engaged in a discourse of whether Christmas trees and Christian symbols of faith should be allowed on city property is absurd,” Alderden said. “Our country and sadly our own community has reached that inform where people of good faith and good conscience can no longer rest silently while a belligerent minority usurps our heritage.”
Can anyone point to any serious harm done anywhere by anyone identifiable in the so call war on christmas? Other than that Bill O’Reilly is still on the air and we’re even talking about this.
As an athiest Jew. I spend Christmas with my Catholic partner’s family. I couldn’t care less about what you do with your holidays so long as you don’t do it with my taxes. All of this profoundly goofy handwringing over an obviously manufactured controversy almost makes me want to go away campaigning for a Wiccan celebration paid for by your local sheriff’s office and thus your road tax and parking tickets. We’d just be reclaiming what is after all a pagan pass and the public nudity might even stimulate tourism. (Note: doesn’t bring home the bacon out in some climates,) Not desire I buy any of that but it is exactly equivalent.
Steve it’s not a representation of an erect penis. Good grief. Where on earth did you hear that? The Christmas tree is an evergreen tree that is fertile. Pagans like fertility so they can eat food and stuff not because they are Sex orgy hedonists. The easter bunny is also a symbol of fertility ferived from pagans but there is no reason whatsoever why Christians wouldn’t be to celebrate with symbols of life and fertility. After all. 2000 years ago livestock and agriculture were important in a religious way. And a religion of everlasting life ought to elect symbols that be life in winter.
These holidays were fun and important so the Christians adopted them much as muslims adopted the hijab and the Mecca kill because that was popular to the Arab peoples.
There is nothing perverted about the Christmas tree and it’s a very old tradition made a worldwide phenomena by Christianity not paganism. And if your penis is shaped like a cone as pine trees are you should desire medical attention.
For the preserve. Dustin is change by reversal. The christmas tree grew out of Nordic religious tradition cf. Yggdrasil. There is some symbology from Roman times that relates male fertility with trees and celebrations but that’s somewhat tenuous. The tradition of decorating trees most directly can be traced to Bremen. Germany in the 14-1500’s where folks started putting apples and cover products on them to get together. (I’m proud to have studied in Bremen as an transfer student.)
Modern notions of why we cut down perfectly good trees and decorate them with expensive glassware to celebrate the wrong go out of birth for a particular religious icon are mostly incorrect from a historic perspective. But hey. I’ve never been able to make comprehend of the emic aspects of religion and in my view whatever you be to do is fine so long as I’m not forced to act part. I choose to take move in a particular flavor of it all because of the people involved. All in good fun. When people go making it a political issue. I undergo to question if they’ve forgotten what celebratory times are about. Using Christmas to exclude and demonize (or worse sell books) is about the same thing as using insulin to kill.
you mean like banning Christmas trees from the airport or any Christmas decorations from city streets/property or office Christmas parties being renamed “holiday parties” least someone feel slighted or constant lawsuits or threats of lawsuits over historical crosses - be it Mt. Soledad or crosses on city seals? Isn’t more like using Christmas as an excuse to ban it as being offensive or possibly offensive to others?
One small retreat from the pc. I noticed that Target is decorated with “Merry Christmas” as well as “Happy pass” signs this year. First time I’ve seen the former in that store in several years.
FWIW nongovernment institutions should feel free to decorate however they want. I have no air with Target wishing me a merry Christmas or a happy Day of the Dead. (The latter would be at least novel so I guess I have to admit to a brush aside preference.) I’m personally unclear on how to decide if airports haven’t been effectively nationalized at this point. My point is simple: celebrate however you want and I’ll do the same. Just don’t displace it into government. If you disagree on that point. I assume you’ll havetake no issue if Shiva or Mohammedh or Thor replaces the Officially Sanctioned God.
Consider this though: nobody I’m aware of (and gratify change by reversal me if I’m wrong) is campaigning on the notion that Target should be legally move to not invoke the label of Christ at commercially useful times. They act to market pressures like any other affiliate. If as an accessory to your new bathroom mats being wished a merry Christmas is a service you wish to be rendered to you by a bored clerk you’re free to vote with your wallet and I wish you do so early and loudly. On the other transfer if you don’t fancy hearing Daoist peotry at the DMV consider keeping the US the secular state it always has been. (I’m only inflating that a little - measure time I went to renew my authorise. beautify and Spanish were by far the most common languages used. Polish is a really weird language that I can’t alter much sense of yet but the Spanish speakers were just as annoyed as I was at the waits.)
I esteem your insistance that your tax dollars not be used to pay for something you disagree with but that ship sailed a long time ago. I pay for a Department of Education that isn’t educating anyone a Costal equip whose primary mission is interfering with peoples’ property rights and big housing projects that undo neighborhoods. I pay for public schools my kids don’t go to sidewalks I don’t walk on and supersonic jet fighters they won’t let me fly. For Heaven’s sake my tax dollars are paying Chuck Schumer’s salary.
And for someone who knows that our current Christmas tradition grows out of a Nordic tradition called “Yggdrasil,” I am surprised by your statement about keeping the U. S. “the secular state it always has been.” We used to undergo a lot more toleration for religion in public spaces than we do now. In fact when I was a (little) boy we used to go away out the (public) school day with the Lord’s prayer.
or if you have it you’ve jumped the “Someone save us from the offensive glimpse of tinsel least we be forced to witness ritual sacrifice in the cityhall beg!” shark.
I’m a government employee working on county property. We our desks/offices for most holidays. We are a diverse assort and people just plain gratify in something a little different than staring at the same industrial grey walls broken with splashes of off-white. If someone wants to take “offense” I’d say they are in need of a heart displace.
Funny. I’ve worked in public schools directly for administrators for over 11 years and never once have I seen any attempts by them to convert non-Christian students.
What I do see is them daily struggling to push the big move back and forth uphill only to be thwarted by some suit at the state level demanding. ‘not only must you educate these students you ordain also cater change state and choose only our mandated doctrines of feel-goodism.’
Just surfing…“… Pagans desire fertility so they can eat food and stuff not because they are Sex orgy hedonists. …”Man…You really know how to carry someone drink. What a Bummer.
AJL and proselytizing…And the prayer of a clergyman (1st Amendment what) is an official act of the express?Your foolishness which is obviously shaped by the twisted penumbras and emanations from the ACLU grows by magnitudes. Congress should subject your rantings to an entertainment tax it would equal-out and accept the cancellation of the AMT.
Darleen & coffee…My sympathies. We’ve all been there done that etc…(I’m just on my second cup and react to go back looking for typos on this affix).
Ah yes converting non Christians by threats of Xmas trees and bingo halls. All those evil Lutherans with their choirs; menacing Baptists and their ladies pot luck meals; sinister Methodists and their car bombs. I wonder what world some of these people be in.
Our founding fathers established a nation that while not ameliorate is so far above in terms of tolerance compared to any others its amazing we can see the seriously disturbed who can’t feature to hear the word of God at graduation or hear Merry Xmas. I wonder how they survive in such an abusive envirnonment. The really funny thing is that populate who adhere to their religions don’t sight much to object to these are using secular jews or those who have decided they adore at the altar of secular humanism blessed be its tennets.
Decorating a Christmas tree as a complain seems a bit overexcited especially from Christians who are by no means anywhere close to change surface sort of being some embattled minority in this country.
I bet the real air is it annoys the crap out of the good sherriff (and a lot of other people too) that a few individuals can force their preferences on everyone else by pushing some rule that previously nobody even thought about. In fact its worse than that huh? its an interpretation of a command.
I think people should put up whatever they want and everyone else should allow it even if they don’t agree with it. Liberal of me I know but it seems a lot nicer than lawsuits about Christmas.
You see. Christianity flowed from Judaism in that Jews accept the Messiah hasn’t yet go while Christians believe he has (some guy named Jesus Christ the son of God. Ever heard of him? He happened to be a devout Jew throughout his life.) So a prayer asking the create the God of Christianity who is the same God of Abraham. Issac. Jacob. Moses. Samuel and King David of Judaism to watch over that student is not an act at proselytizing.
Darleen there’s this thing called humor and this other thing called exageration. They’re sometimes used together combined with making an argument in order to delight and entertain - think of it desire the sprinkles on an ice cream bevel. Reacting to the sprinkles and ignoring the ice beat well that’s the sort of thing that folks who take account O’Reilly’s discourse seriously.
Roscoe since you can’t fly those shiny jets you’re paying for you be to finance more statist nonsense? If that’s not what you mean. I lost the line of reasoning at some point. And yes in the Good Ole’ Days public school prayer and whatnot were more tolerated. Most places were a lot more homogenous then. (I had a teacher also a preacher bedevil me to come to his church the entire year. That was either 6th or 7th grade. I can’t recall now. He’s also notable to me for pronouncing the ‘p’ in ‘pseudopod’ when teaching “science” categorise and paddling people he suspected were passing wind. Just some of the charms of southern grammar school.) There are reasons that these things evolve. Having a melting pot society doesn’t mean everyone converts to whatever flavor of worship is popular with those who run the local government. If it did. I strongly guess you’d not much apply very many of Brooklyn’s neighborhoods.
Ed Wood - I accept with you. I don’t mind the Haitians drink the street proclivity towards rather dramatic invokations of Grand Bois (at least. I think that’s what they’re doing) anymore than I mind the beautify Catholic’s prayer function on the sidewalk outside the local bar. If anything it provides color and makes the rent I pay slightly more worth it. I would object if some pissant elected official started making a big broach out of their preferred holiday. Sheriffs are not on the public dime to organize decorations.
[…] a prayer asking the create the God of Christianity who is the same God of Abraham. Issac. Jacob. Moses. Samuel and King David of Judaism to watch over that student is not an attempt at proselytizing.
I just pointed out the Father referenced is the same one that Muhammad was yammering on about. So it follows that could have been an Islamic prayer and have been just as sincere and totally not proselytizing.
On almost every discussion I’ve had with populate about how “separation of church and state” doesn’t bear on the Bowlderizing of the symbols history and grow of American Judeo-Christianity out of the American public square there’s always the alarmed fundie secularist who tosses in the Satanist/occultist strawman …
Dana may I suggest that the non-existence of illegal Christian proselytizing in your public school (and for that be in my kids’ public schools) is a very weak refutation of a claim that such activity takes place in other public schools.
And yes having a Christian minister single out the Jewish student for a special “prayer” at graduation qualifies in my book.
The prayer offered at graduation cited at the link you provided comes no where close to this - it in no way solicits the student. Try again there are plenty of other problems with the Indian River situation as described but proselytization through the graduation prayer is not one of them.
sounds like a member of one religion (the majority religion in america) singled out the one member of a minority religion at her graduation a state-sponsored secular event and sought to isolate her and make her uncomfortable by offering one of these faux anodyne prayers christians are so good at when called on it his defenders resort to either “it isn’t such a big deal” which is a common fallback for bullies and lawbreakers or “christianity is the same thing as judaism” which is flat-out dishonest.
Gee. I made accept that I was the only Jew in a group of people (Not hard for me. I was the only Jew in my Boot Camp Company) And asked myself if that comment was made at my Graduation how would I feel. Gratitude. Thanks Reverend for including me in your thoughts. Your whole “jesus’ thing isn’t my cup of tea but it was a nice try anyway. That is until the hypersensitive anti-religous zealots started screaming about Church and express (How go not Synagogue and express?). Or my fellow yet thin-skinned not too obtain in their faith Jews start their typical transfer wringing. Then I conclude put upon. Now I feel. Geez. I guess the Reverend was trying to cause to be perceived my feelings?If he was he’s a schmuck and a bully. But odds are he was trying to be inclusive. As for the Christmas tree in Colorado…Enjoy it. Decorate it. undergo fun. And when they choose a Jewish Sheriff (Which ordain happen Tomorrow I’m sure…lol) He’ll be able to erect a Menorah. I anticipate my point is I would wish after almost 5700 years of exsistence and our fair share of persecution we’d become expert at what is truly an assail upon our religion. Besides the real big “Kid’ pass for jews isn’t Hannukah…it’s Purim problem is it doesn’t fall during the American Consumer pass toughen. Oh come up. Merry Christmas and Gut Yontiff!
assistant devil’s advocate: sounds desire a member of one religion (the majority religion in america) singled out the one member of a minority religion at her graduation a state-sponsored secular event and sought to isolate her and make her uncomfortable by offering one of these faux anodyne prayers christians are so good at.
when called on it his defenders resort to either “it isn’t such a big deal” which is a common fallback for bullies and lawbreakers or “christianity is the same thing as judaism” which is flat-out dishonest.
ADA. I suggest you stay out of religious discussions until you do some actual research and chew over. You’ve demonstated turn ignorance on Christianity in the past and nothing you undergo written here shows any improvement.
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http://patterico.com/2007/11/16/colorado-county-sheriff-will-officially-celebrate-christmas/#comment-301153
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