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by Zach Bigalke

Created on: May 29, 2007

The tradition of setting up a Christmas tree in the White House began on Christmas morning 1889. With his children and grandchildren in town, President Benjamin Harrison commissioned the candlelit tree to be set up in the second-floor Oval Room. A small, close-knit celebration was held amongst family and White House staff.

The example set by the White House provides the precedent for local governments to implement government funds to decorate public buildings in celebration of Christmas. This precedent supercedes the Constitutionally-uph eld separation of church from state, and effectively sanctions a majority religion and leads our nation ever closer to religious rule. What begins as a few commemorative decorations leads too soon to legislative moralizing through Judeo-Christian lenses - such as bans on same-sex marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, contraceptive education....

Begun as a familial tradition, Christian holiday customs have found official sanction from a purportedly-secular government. And, in a time when our nation needs diverse acceptance of and increased sensitivity to minority faiths, it is wholly imprudent and ultimately un-Constitutional to continue the official sanction of any religious ceremony. Just as it has been ruled improper to place the Ten Commandments on or in federal and state buildings, there is no excuse for drawing the ire of a cross-section of society simply to appease another. Perpetuating a hypocritical (given our current preaching of secular freedoms to the Muslim nations of the world) and discriminatory (excluding those who happen not to practice the faith of the majority) system of religious celebration is damning to both domestic and international policy.

Consequently, I would further argue that it would be just as ignoble to place a menorah or Star of David or a star and crescent or any other religious symbol - of any religion or sect - to commemorate that faith's holiday on secular grounds. Yet, not only are decorations allowed to adorn our local, publicly-owned parks, roads and buildings, we as taxpayers (even those of us who celebrate faiths other than Christianity) are paying for their purchase, set-up and post-holiday removal. Funds which could be put to use saving another poverty-stricken life or educating one of our increasingly-ignoran t children is instead being spent burning electricity to illuminate public trees.

In the end, no secular government should have the right to spend constituent money for sectarian celebrations. Our assertions of full freedoms become dishonest when we perpetuate this ostracizing tradition. Hypocrisy of this magnitude causes the United States to lack the luster of credibility among the other nations of the world. It breeds new generations of those opposed to American double standards. And it creates a breeding ground for domestic terrorists disenfranchised by exclusionary government policies.

The precedent set by the executive branch in 1889 was originally intended as a celebration for the Harrison family. The time has been long overdue for people to return their Christian celebrations back over to individual families and to churches. After all, these are the true centers of where religion lives. The government has no place hindering free expression of spirituality, and it also has no place enhancing that same free expression.

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