Supreme Court Ignores "War on Christmas"

A yuletide favorite of Bill O'Reilly and other pundits has been the "War on Christmas", a fictional barrage from a non-existent leftist cabal supposedly seeking to usurp all of Christianity by banning public displays of Jesus. The city of New York, another popular villain in the conservative pantheon, entered into the fray with a decision that allowed the simultaneous display of a menorah, Christmas tree, Muslim star and Kwanzaa.... symbol simultaneously in schools to help children celebrate the holiday season (amazon.com and best buy logos would probably be more appropriate for the way Americans choose to celebrate December, but that's an entirely different discussion.)

However, for some, like the Catholic League, this time being represented by Andrea Skoros, parent of two in the NYC public school system in her suit against the city of New York (Skoros v. City of New York) (requires free registration to view) the decision went both too far and not far enough. Too far in that the city appeared to be endorsing both Islam and Judaism, while illegally forbidding students from erecting a nativity scene. In her attorney's words: “impermissibly promoted and endorsed the religions of
Judaism and Islam, conveyed the impermissible message of disapproval of Christianity, and coerced students to accept the Jewish and Islamic religions in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”

She lost, and appealed to the 2nd circuit, who found her arguments wanting in their majority decision:

1. The holiday display policy serves a secular purpose: teaching pluralism by
celebrating the City’s rich cultural diversity and by encouraging schoolchildren to show respect and tolerance for traditions other than their own.
2. Although the policy mischaracterizes the menorah as a secular symbol, the policynevertheless adequately ensures that the menorah is displayed in public schools
only with a variety of other holiday symbols to promote pluralism and tolerance, not to endorse religion. The same conclusion applies to the policy’s treatment of the star and crescent.
3. Because the City’s secular characterizations of the menorah and the star and crescent discipline only government speech with no government authorities intruding into religious affairs and no religious authorities intruding into civic affairs, the display policy involves no excessive entanglement of church and state.

We hold that no different conclusion is dictated by the City’s decision not to allow the crèche to represent Christmas in public school holiday displays. We do not here decide whether the City could, consistent with the Constitution, include a crèche in its school holiday displays. We conclude only that the defendants do not violate the Establishment Clause when, in pursuing the secular goal of promoting respect for the City’s diverse cultural traditions, they represent Christmas through a variety of well recognized secular symbols at the same time that they represent Chanukah through the menorah and Ramadan through the star and
crescent.
Still, not good enough for Skoros or the rest of the culture warriors, and they pressed on towards Washington and the newly conservative (supposedly) US Supreme Court. Who decided to let the decision stand by not hearing the case.

The US Supreme Court has declined to enter the fracas over what some conservatives are calling the war on Christmas.

Without elaboration, the court issued a one-line order on Tuesday refusing to take up a potentially important church-state case concerning the use of religious symbols in public school holiday displays.

At issue in Skoros v. City of New York was whether the city's public school system is impermissibly promoting Judaism and Islam while conveying a message of disapproval of Christianity. School rules allow the Jewish menorah and the Muslim star and crescent in multireligious holiday displays but not nativity scenes depicting the birth of Jesus.

The case had been relisted on the high court's private conference calendar seven times in recent months, raising expectations that the justices were taking a close look at the issue.

"We are obviously disappointed," says Brian Rooney of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which was urging the court to take up the case. "What this says is the [war on Christmas] is ongoing. It is going to continue festering state by state, county by county, and city by city."

While the policy, written with the help of city lawyers, bars nativity scenes, it allows depictions of Christmas trees to represent the Christian celebration of Christmas.

"We are not celebrating the birth of an evergreen tree," Mr. Rooney says. "We are celebrating a historic religious figure's birth that is recognized by the nation and every state in the Union."
Well actually, you're celebrating Saturnalia, a pagan holiday that sounds like a lot more fun than modern incarnations of Christmas, which often involved throngs of people running around naked, bosses and underlings switching places for the day, and legalized gambling for everyone. Early Christians looking for a way to increase membership and popularity of their religion decided to coopt the same time for the birth of Jesus.

What Rooney and the rest of the Thomas More law center are trying to do is slowly slip in more and more direct, religious references to Christianity to see what they can get away with. It's a win-win scenario for the "war on Christmas" people. If no one notices they can turn an essentially secular occasion as religious (their religion) as they like, and if people get anxious about respecting religious freedoms and the separation between church and state they get to play the victim and wring their hands on national TV, talk radio and in court. The bottom line is that they're still trying to push their religion on to anyone they can find, and in a public school that's still unconstitutional.

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