Linda Thom writes:

On Tuesday last, my husband and I flew from SeaTac airport in Seattle to third-world LAX.  As we were short of time, I skipped looking for the blue holiday poles reported by the Seattle Post Intelligencer and simply looked around at the airline counters at check-in.

The Sun Air desk sports a Ch……. tree.  Ornaments and artificial snow flakes decorate the Delta counter.  At the Korean Air counter, behind the all Korean staff, hangs a glittery, MERRY CHRISTMAS.  I didn’t notice any protesting Buddhists.

Linda Thom reporting from the Evergreen State with lots of Ch…….trees.

Most Americans have not yet laid in their supply of Halloween candy, but in Seattle, the authorities have already excised Christmas from public experience in the Sea-Tac Airport.[See previous Sea-Tac coverage here and here--contact Sea-Tac here.]

Instead of traditional decorations, leafless faux birch trees will be lit in magenta tones. So tasteful, multicultural and lawsuit-free. Diversity at work!

Above the trees will be a spiraling flock of migrating birds cut out of foam. Every once in a while, non-toxic snow will fall over the forest to the sound of wind chimes, joining the hubbub of Sea-Tac’s busy holiday travel season from the forest’s location at the south end of the main terminal, in the international arrivals hall.

Once the eye has adjusted to the changing lights, the snowfall and the strangeness of seeing a winter scene re-created indoors, the most noticeable aspect of the new holiday decorations will be their lack of religious symbols.
[Airport Will Celebrate Winter, but Not Christmas Seattle PI 10/19/07]

The change from traditional to multicultural results from a disagreement last year where a local rabbi asked that a menorah be added to Christmas decorations. That request seems reasonable enough, since many communities accommodate both, but the Seattle bureaucrats decided to bail on American religious values entirely.

Reportedly they feared demands for every holiday under the sun, presumably from Kwanzaa (the holiday created by Marxist Ron Karenga) to Diwali, Ramadan and Ashura.

Seattle airport honchos may have noticed Muslims who reside in Memphis, Tennessee, celebrating Ramadan recently by performing the large knife dance.

Diversity — it’s a slippery slope!

Peter Brimelow likes to wait until 12th Night– the Feast of the Epiphany –before closing out the War against Christmas Competition. This allows for late entries to trickle in (please send!), and for some reflection.

But one thing is quite clear from watching this year’s news flow: the other side is badly rattled. They showed it with their ludicrous parroting of the propaganda line (“lie” in plain English) that there has been no effort to suppress Christmas, an assertion propagated so rapidly, extensively and uniformly as to be comic …if it hadn’t been such a formidable demonstration of MSM power.

And particularly significantly, it showed in the attempts by various NeoConservatives to make peace, seen in Amity Shlaes’ Bloomberg column two weeks ago, and in a new column by David Frum. (”The Lord of Misrule” Is Coming to Town” AEI.org December 26 2006)

Buried beneath the usual assortment of disparaging and belittling historical factoids about the Christmas tradition (they’ve really had to hit the books on this!) are some major concessions by Frum:

the most fiercely contested of all Christmas symbols are precisely those about which Christians have historically been most dubious: the trees, boughs and Father Christmas.

These ironic facts point the way to a historic compromise.

We should recognize: There is nothing inherently Christian about the visual ornaments of the Christmas season. Quite the contrary: They are explicitly non-Christian objects that have been imbued with Christian symbolism hundreds and thousands of years afterward. A Christian can look at the Christmas evergreen and see a symbol of the eternal life promised by Jesus to his followers. But a non-Christian remains free to look at that same tree and see . . . just a tree.

Well, maybe not “just” a tree. These are trees that emerge from the ancient culture of northern Europe and the British Isles–a culture inherited by every English-speaking person, regardless of his or her particular creed or ethnicity. It is from that culture that we have derived our free society, our separation of church and state, and our rights to protest and complain. (VDARE.com emphasis)

So maybe those trees deserve a little veneration from everyone, Christian or not. And maybe, for just a few weeks of the year, those rights to protest and complain should go unexercised.

These mirror the remarks by Shlaes

In the U.S., the Christmas tree has earned a right to be a symbol of general tolerance…At Sea-Tac, the removal of the Christmas tree created a spiritual tragedy…Though the Christmas tree might be removed in the name of tolerance, the space that results makes the country less tolerant than before.

For the Christophobic left, the task is very simple. They want to eradicate American traditions. (Hat tip, View from the Right, for a particularly fine example). The NeoConservatives, however, are engaged on a far more ambitious program. While picking up concessions about symbols if easily obtainable, their main interest is getting a war fought for them. For this, they are willing to express moving, generous (and not inaccurate) thoughts.

Very attractive, if you don’t have a draft-age son.

Columns of smoke are still rising and occasional explosions can still be heard from the Seattle Christmas Tree battleground, marking what might well be the most important engagement in the War on Christmas to date. At this writing, Google News is still showing almost 600 stories on the topic; at various times this week the total has approached 1,000.

A measure of the importance of the event is that a discussion of it has appeared on Bloomberg News, which by virtue of its finance orientation comments only selectively on social issues.

Defending Christmas Tress, a Stand for Tolerance By Amity Shlaes Dec.14 (Bloomberg) is very unusual, elegantly praising the traditions of Christian America:

There’s something about a Christmas tree at the center of a public place…that makes us feel merry, many non- Christians included. We welcome the trees, wreaths and songs as a comforting national celebration.
This is true not merely because Christians founded this country. It is also because Protestant Christians, with some notable exceptions, have been good hosts over the years to those of who don’t believe precisely the same things they do. In the U.S., the Christmas tree has earned a right to be a symbol of general tolerance.

I am Jewish, but most of my education came by way of Christian, or formerly Christian, institutions and people…. the experience of my generation at the hands of the successors of [the Yankee founders of New England] was entirely benign.

Concluding that

At Sea-Tac, the removal of the Christmas tree created a spiritual tragedy

Shlaes ends by essentially proposing a cease-fire.

When a member of the NeoConservative media establishment like Shlaes (her husband is Seth Lipsky, editor of the New York Sun) feels the need to be conciliatory on an issue like this, something has been achieved.

And what, one might ask, has been the discussion of this controversy over at National Review, where Peter Brimelow initiated the Christmas defense counter-attack some 12 years ago? Especially at The Corner, that well-populated hang-out of energetic news junkies?

Zero.

Perhaps the biggest single controversy in this debate attracted no comment whatever. The web site has just belatedly posted the Kathyn Jean Lopez column predating the Seattle story, calling for abandoning the struggle.

There were, however, several postings denouncing the recent Iranian Holocaust Revisionist Conference. NRO, it seems, is prepared to defend observance traditions which are important.

Ask Corner editor Lopez why the treatment of Christmas is no longer important at National Review.

Ann Althouse has post on Sea-Tac,

The Seattle Christmas tree incident. It’s an American holiday tradition: arguing about religion and threatening litigation. What would the season be without it?
Althouse: The “litigious Orthodox rabbi” and the “overzealous, politically correct officials terrified” of everything religion-related.

One of the first commenters comes up with the following very bad suggestion:

VICTOR said…

I’m thinking there should be a mechanism in place so people can prosecute those complaints on an anonymous basis (I guess an association is an easy way). From what I can see in Seattle, the Rabbi sort of took a beating in the press and the street corners, and was almost intimidated into withdrawing his claim. This is not exactly what happened, but my reading between the lines. There were many complaints and people whispering about this around town.

This is stupid, because while you can have an anonymous complaint to the authorities, you can’t have an anonymous lawsuit. Who would the defendant pay if they lost?

And an association, of course, is already involved–Rabbi Bogomilsky is Director of Northwest Friends Of Chabad and was bringing this suit on their behalf. Various commenters on Althouse’s blog have already answered this, of course,( one wrote “‘Letters and e-mails sent to the airport ran 99-1 against the decision.’ That’s democracy, pal. “) I’m just pointing out that our tactic of always giving email addresses where you can complain is working.

When people are willing to complain, we win.

This year there has been a deluge of newspaper articles, letters to the editor, and blog postings all asserting that there is no War against Christmas. This seems to the party line. However, the word did not get out to the Seattle/Tacoma area:

All of the Christmas trees inside the terminal at Sea-Tac have been removed in response to a complaint by a rabbi.

A local rabbi wanted to install an 8-foot menorah and have a public lighting ceremony. He threatened to sue if the menorah wasn’t put up, and gave a two-day deadline to remove the trees.

Xmas trees removed from Sea-Tac by Kim Holcomb King 5 News Saturday September 9, 2006

The real issue here is not the successful imposition of its preferences by a religious minority, but the enthusiastic cowardice of the authorities

Sea-Tac public affairs manager Terri-Ann Betancourt said the trees that adorn the Sea-Tac upper and lower levels may not properly represent all cultures….”[W]e don’t want to litigate with this individual, we want to reach some kind of solution,” Betancourt said. “But that is going to take some thoughtful discussion and we would like to have time to have that thoughtful discussion.

….

Until then, no Christmas decor at Sea-Tac. The same decorations have been put up for at least 10 years, she said.

How much litigation was likely in the two weeks before Christmas? Indeed, why not let the man have his Menorah? (Assuming he really wanted it.)

Some of my most precious memories as a small child are images of Christmas scenes in public places, briefly glimpsed and remembered forever. Now the season’s flow of children through the Seattle Airport will not have that chance there, as they would normally have done.

It would be easy to blame the domineering selfishness of the complainant. The true culprit is the conniving pusillanimity of the Airport management.

Complain to Mark Reis, the Airport’s Managing Director, or to the Commissioners of the Port of Seattle, to which it belongs–they are elected.