Pushing Back

“Here we go again. The December war of religion is among our most cherished traditions. Somebody is always angry or hurt over something.” That’s from a last December column by John Leo, but get ready: here we go again. Last year’s campaign for the utterly naked public square was notably virulent. It is no longer over crèches or signs explicitly mentioning Christmas. Under attack now is any display of Santa Claus, Rudolph, Christmas trees, poinsettias, holiday lights, and even the colors red and green—all of which are condemned for being “religious,” and the very worst kind of religion, meaning Christian.

Leo again: “The word ‘inclusion’ comes up all the time as a term used by those who wish to obliterate rather than include. This is certainly so in Plainfield, Ill., where elementary school principal Sandy Niemiera made a startling announcement: because of diversity concerns, students will no longer be allowed to celebrate any holidays at all. So goodbye Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and Thanksgiving as well as Christmas and Hanukkah, because the school needs to ‘respect each individual’s uniqueness but also to help us look for and celebrate those things we have in common.’ What the students will have in common, of course, is a sterile, tradition-free public environment. And the school-induced sense that religion and ritual are inherently dangerous.

“In plain English, the term ‘inclusion’ has come to mean ‘exclusion.’ In New York’s Central Park, we have a Christian nativity scene, a Jewish menorah, and a Muslim star and crescent, all privately paid for and displayed on public property. That’s inclusion. Banning all signs of religion from schools and public property (neither of which is called for by the Constitution or the Supreme Court) is exclusion posturing as inclusiveness. There’s another new wrinkle in inclusiveness ideology. Call it the sensitive person’s veto. Last year, the city of Eugene, Ore., barred Christmas trees from public property, then backed down a bit and allowed firefighters to put up a tree on Christmas Eve and Christmas. But the city manager said that if one person objects, the tree must come down. This allows the most sensitive person in town to set policy. Kensington, Md., banned Santa Claus from this year’s tree-lighting ceremony because of two complaints.

“The sensitive person’s veto was born in the antismoking campaign and spread to other fields. Now it’s showing up in the wars over Christmas and Hanukkah. Those who want to keep those traditions alive in the public square had better push back. The sensitive person’s veto requires only one vote to topple any norm. And that vote will always be easy to find.”

The Right to be Different

Pushing back has nothing to do with “insensitivity” and everything to do with devotion to a free and democratic society. Majority rule, with protections for minorities, is not the whole of democracy, but it is at the heart of democracy. Minorities do not have a constitutional right to be protected from public expressions that remind them that they are in the minority. To be different from the majority does not mean one is, as it is commonly put, a second-class citizen. On the contrary, it is precisely as a first-class citizen that one has a right to be different. What one does not have the right to do is to force others to deny that there is a difference between the majority and the minority.

A complicating factor, of course, is that the most assertive minority when it comes to opposing the public celebration of Christmas is, more often than not, Jewish. Christians are, with very good reason, painfully sensitive on this score. The late Jakob J. Petuchowski of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati wrote wisely about “A Rabbi’s Christmas” (FT, December 1991). He was nothing if not Jewish, and he relished the carols, festivities, and pageantry of Christmas. He never missed watching on television the papal Midnight Mass from Rome. “Still all of that is a matter of mere externals,” he wrote. “What really intrigues [me] is the fact that millions of [my] non-Jewish fellow human beings are celebrating the birthday of a Jewish child. And they are doing so by extolling the values of peace and good will. All the more misplaced . . . are the efforts by some supposedly Jewish organizations to arouse, through their battles against Christmas symbols in public places, the ill will and resentment of Christians—at the very time when the Christian religion, more than at other times of the year, inspires its followers with irenic and philanthropic sentiments.”

Rabbi Petuchowski notes that it is the Orthodox Jews from Eastern Europe who may have the most bitter memories of living in a “Christian society.” But they are not the ones leading the charge against the public observance of Christmas. “In other words, what we are really dealing with in this annual battle against public Christian observance is not so much a ‘Jewish’ attack on that observance as it is a secularist one”with some of the prominent secularists identifying themselves as Jews. They are the same people who fight nondenominational prayers in public schools, the use of public school facilities for meetings of high school religious-interest groups, and state support of private schools. They fight with equal vigor the attempts by other Jewish groups to have Jewish religious symbols exhibited alongside the Christian ones, such as the efforts of the Chabad (Lubavitch) group of Orthodox Jews to place a Hanukkah candelabrum on the public square when a Christmas tree is put there, which would be a fitting demonstration of America’s religious pluralism. They are, in other words, not singling out Christianity. They are against the public manifestation of religion per se”even (or perhaps particularly) against the public manifestation of the religion of their own ancestors.”

The naked public square, Petuchowski observed, is not good for Jews or anyone else. Jews should recognize in the Christian observance of Christmas “one of the factors that help maintain the religious character of our society—in which Jews, too, with their own beliefs and practices, and with their very lives, have a considerable stake.” He concludes: “That is why this writer will continue to wish his Christian friends a ‘Merry Christmas’ at Yuletide, and rejoice in the fact that those friends join the angelic choir in proclaiming glory to God in the highest, and peace among humankind on earth. He will most certainly not object at all to the public display of his friends’ symbols of religious faith. Indeed, he will continue to be moved by awe and wonder that, through the influence of one of his own remote cousins, some of the words of Judaism’s Torah have spread to the far corners of the earth.”

It is objected that the distinction between “them” and “us” is a threat to social cohesion. The distinction between Jews and Christians is but one of many important distinctions. Among Americans there are, in fact, many distinctions, that are differences of greater or lesser degree, between “us” and “them”—economic, racial, educational, political, cultural, religious. Such distinctions and differences are cross-cutting, sometimes putting one with “us” and sometimes with “them.” For the umpteenth time it needs to be said that it is a pseudo-pluralism that requires us to pretend that significant differences make no difference. Genuine pluralism is living with our differences, especially our deepest differences, within the bond of civility. When e pluribus unum is misconstrued to deny the pluribus , it is the end of pluralism. Both those in the minority and those in the majority should push back against those who would impose a naked public square. Push back, not because it is your right (although it is that, too) but because it is your democratic duty. The denial of cultural expression, which almost inevitably includes religious expression, in public is the death of democracy. That is true for Central Park, the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Salt Lake City, Louisville, or anywhere else in the—if I may borrow a phrase—gorgeous mosaic that is America. Do your democratic duty. Push back.