Rep. John Ahern's Declaration

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Rep. John Ahern's Declaration

Submitted by Sarah on Sat, 12/17/2005 - 9:43am.

"Anytime you cut a fir tree down and put lights and decorations on it inside, it’s a Christmas tree. It’s not a holiday tree."

Apparently Rep. Ahern has been anointed The Power That Names. How much does he get paid for this?

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He's not wrong, though. It is

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Sat, 12/17/2005 - 1:56pm.

He's not wrong, though. It is a Christmas tree.

Calling it a Christmas tree is completely separate from the Christian religion. Granted, it's associated with the second most important date on the Christian calendar but the Christmas tree, presents under the tree, etc. are secular symbols. People who have nothing to do with Christianity are going to be celebrating Christmas in this manner.

Just call it for what it is. People don't put up a "Holiday" tree for any other holiday than Christmas.

TFI is absolutely right, as I

Submitted by Rob Richards on Sat, 12/17/2005 - 3:07pm.

TFI is absolutely right, as I pointed out on another thread, the origins of the christmas tree stem from Norse/pagan celebrations, which were actually quite gruesome, and not very "christian-like".

Calling it a Holiday tree is,

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Sat, 12/17/2005 - 3:18pm.

Calling it a Holiday tree is, in my opinion, going overboard with attempting to separate anything which might even bear a semblence of religion from government.

Of course, celebrating Christmas on December 25th is pagan in itself. We'll just ignore the history, though.

As I've said earlier, I think it's good to have a common bond between people of a country, which is something Christmas does. The vast majority of people, one way or another, will be celebrating and coming together at the same time.

I think it's harmful to attempt to dillude such a common bond.

This doesn't have ANYTHING to

Submitted by Rob Richards on Sat, 12/17/2005 - 5:06pm.

This doesn't have ANYTHING to do with Christmas or Christianity. This whole saying "holiday" instead of christmas thing started because the PC police didn't want to offend anyone. Marketing execs at top stores chose to use the word holiday so they wouldn't lose shoppers that don't celebrate Christmas. They actually think people care about this sort of thing. Most of the people, christians-nonchristians-jews-whatever, think the whole argument is dumb. People listen to the talking heads and then are afraid to say merry christmas OR happy holidays because they don't want to offend anybody. It's kind of silly that we let these hacks divide us like this, or worse when we let them convince us we're divided.

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