Rabbi gets hate mail over airport Christmas trees
Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:18pm ET

News article from Reuters today

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A local rabbi is receiving hate mail and angry phone calls after Seattle airport officials took down its Christmas trees in response to his request to include a giant Menorah in the airport's holiday decorations, his lawyer said on Monday.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport removed its Christmas trees on Saturday after Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky threatened to sue the Port of Seattle, which operates the airport, if it did not include a menorah into its holiday decorations.

The rabbi works on behalf of Chabad-Lubavitch, a branch of Hasidic Judaism and an Orthodox Jewish movement.

The removal of the trees sparked a public outcry over what some say was political correctness run amok and part of a trend to adopt a secular tone toward Christmas.

[...]

Update: Trees return. Whatever ... How traditional. Plastic trees.

Do you agree with Christmas?

Not?

Do you believe that Christian signs of the season are better set up somewhere other than taxpayers' property with taxpayers' money in the face of taxpayers who are not Christian and will never be?

I do.

Political correctness gone amuck?

How hard is it to realize that there are an increasing number of Americans who are not Christian and, perhaps, all the fa-la-la-la-la just grates on their nerves?

Sure, put up those little trees at the Frontier check-in counter. That's a private display.

Should our tax dollars be used to put up Christmas displays?

I don't believe Christmas displays should be foisted on the non-believers (and paid for by believers and non-believers) just because the majority of people here believe.

We are not a Christian nation. Our bills, mind you, say something about "in God we trust" but, even so, they don't say "Jesus died for our sins."

Are you Jain? Are you Buddhist? Are you ... anything but a Christmas-tree Christian? How many of us-you-them are there?

Ditch the trees.

OK?

I have a tree in my house. I don't need a tree at City Hall to reconfirm whatever religious leanings I may have.





... but hate mail?!??!

That's weird.

Judging from dealings I've had with people claiming hate mail and judging from dealings I've had with people claiming brutality and other weirdnesses, who have turned out to be perhaps not the world's most honest folk, I'd love to see what sort of "hate mail" our rabbi has had.

n.b. I'm not saying he didn't have hate mail, mind you, but maybe he did, maybe he didn't.

My days back in the days tell me that people fib ... sometimes.

It's all grist, eh?

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:47 PM|| |