http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2253
Andrew Boucher
Why isn’t the Fort Collins (Colorado) City Council meeting on Christmas Day? After all, Dec. 25 falls on a Tuesday this year. If the logic of the Holiday Display Task Force is to be applied city-wide, there’s no reason why City Council shouldn’t meet for their regular work session on the evening of Dec. 25.
Following a New York Times article eleven months ago about the City Council’s refusal to let a Jewish group put up a Menorah on public property in Old Town Square, City Council decided to create a citizen task force to create a more inclusive policy for holiday displays on public property.
After months of deliberation, The Holiday Display Task Force delivered their recommendation to City Council. The task force went far beyond just being more inclusive. Instead, they decided to purge all religion from public displays and relegate Christmas to a museum.
(As an aside, “task forces,” like “Blue Ribbon Committees” are what politicians create when they want to avoid responsibility for controversial decisions. Anyone willing to volunteer to serve on such a committee should be appreciated, no matter how misguided their recommendations may be.)
Citing Fort Collins’ cultural diversity, the Holiday Display Task Force recommended that publicly-sponsored holiday displays not favor one religion or celebration over any other. For displays on public property, the task force recommended that the city adopt a purely secular winter theme for the winter season. (Please note that it’s difficult to even write a column using the secular terminology: “Winter theme for the winter season?”)
Over the past few decades, Christmas itself has become more and more secularized by government and business. Manger scenes have been replaced by candy canes and Christmas trees. Yet the task force apparently decided that even secular Christmas trees are too evocative of religion. In fact, the task force recommended “decreased use of decorated greenery that carries connotations of particular holidays; for instance, removing red ribbons from wreaths and removing stars and ornaments from trees.” Further, they recommended the use of white lights instead of multi-colored lights — multi-colored lights being evocative of Christmas trees.
Instead, we’re going to get “secular winter symbols” and “unadorned garlands of greenery (not decorated with ribbons or ornament).” The task force handily provides some suggestions for “secular winter symbols”: Snowflakes, snowmen, snow balls, ice skates, skis, penguins and polar bears.
(I considered including a passage like “Maybe the use of snowflakes is meant to remind us of the city’s inability to plow the roads during last year’s blizzards,” but I decided against it. After all, it’s the Christmas – oops, Holiday Season.)
Oh, but Christmas will have its place in Fort Collins … at the museum. In order to be appropriately multi-cultural, the task force is recommending that the city create a seasonal display at the Fort Collins Museum (“designed and produced by Museum staff”) that will be “an educational, multi-cultural presentation that respectfully presents our differences and our commonality … Both religious and non-religious celebrations should be included, with careful thought to broad representation and balance among different religions.”
http://www.fortcollinsnow.com/article/20071114/NEWS/71114004