No offense, get over holiday hang-ups
By HOWARD TROXLER
Published December 17, 2006
They got into a flap the other day in Crystal River over whether to keep praying to Jesus all the time at City Council meetings.
Somebody said that maybe they should rotate the invocation among council members.
One member preferred a moment of silence. Another said he would use something "calm and peaceful."
And Mayor Ron Kitchen, who until now handled the invocation, said he would keep right on praying to "the only God I know, Jesus Christ."
This seems fair enough, except for the folks who don't want anything at all. The best they're gonna get is the minute of silence, I think.
Kitchen didn't like the change much, according to the account in the paper. He complained about how people object to, as he put it sarcastically, "that terrible name of Jesus Christ."
He also said something else that people sometimes say.
"Before long," he warned, "they'll start saying you can't read your Bible in your own home."
Now, at the risk of offending His Honor, there surely is a difference between the public doings at City Hall and what the rest of us do on our own dime.
The rest of us get to do as much durn-tootin' prayin' as we want. Or not, as we see fit.
But the government cannot. The government is Caesar. The government takes our tax dollars by force, no matter our faith or lack of it.
It isn't a question of which majority is running the government, either. The Baptists don't get to say, we have the most votes so everybody has to pray like we do. (And by using them as an example, I am not being anti-Baptist. Sometimes I use the Presbyterians and Methodists, too.)
Lastly, nobody is about to bust into anybody else's private home. Sheesh!
Basic consideration in the public square is all, just basic courtesy.
Did you hear the news about the Seattle airport?
The Seattle airport had a bunch of Christmas trees. Nice, festive. Anyway, a rabbi out there said, hey, why not have menorahs too?
That was not a new idea. Christmas trees and menorahs often appear together, as a sort of general acknowledgement of the season. If I might speak flippantly, I think our Jewish brothers and sisters even have a little seniority working for them.
But instead, the airport yanked all the Christmas trees and blamed the rabbi. A big stink broke out. Defiant airline employees put up their own Christmas trees. And the rabbi got hate mail and threats for being part of the "War on Christmas."
Good grief! Just put up the menorah and be done with it. And if somebody else wants to sue for that too, then let 'em sue. Nothing wrong with recognizing the general holiday season, in my book.
Lastly, about this "happy holidays" business, which some people have taken to complaining about.
If I say "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" to you, it is because I have said it all my life, because lots of people have a holiday this time of year, and it ain't intended as no deliberate insult to the Christian religion in which I myself was born and raised. (Don't complain to me about grammar neither. I am working my way out of a bad mood here.)
For Pete's sake! And by saying that, I mean nothing against people named "Pete." Can we just quit?
Wait, don't answer that. Happy holidays, that's all.