Frank Greenhall, the superintendent of the Warwick public
schools, is not feeling the joy yet. Parents are grumbling that
his new winter wonderland strategy of inclusion is "anti-Santa":
"Maybe the Gingerbread Man is insulting to someone. Then you have
to say Gingerbread Person. If you don't like the Gingerbread
Person in the picture, get a picture with the winter scene. I'm
not pushing any one agenda," an exasperated Greenhall sputtered,
"I just look forward to when this is over." In Yorktown, interim
superintendent Vincent Ziccolella is singing the same tune: "I
would really like to get busy and do some education issues
instead of ... creches," he told a local reporter.
The Christmas wars are not about ideology, in other words, but
bureaucracy: Busy officials have better things to do than
negotiate the hurt feelings of an increasingly fired-up (also
lawyered-up) public. It would be easier to just ban
everything.
You can't help but sympathize. You also can't help but pause
and give thanks to God that we share a country where religious
wars consist of fights about what Breakfast With Santa will be
called this year.
Still, I can't help but feel there is something of great
educational value in these earnest, repeated attempts to get the
Christmas thing right. The world is suffering right now for a
model of how people of different faiths can live together in
genuine community, without sacrificing their conscience and their
faith to the great secularizing god of government. If humanity is
going to find the answer anywhere, it's going to be here, in the
United States.
Breaking news: In Honolulu, Rabbi Itchel Krasnjansky was
inspired by the Seattle brouhaha to ask that a menorah be added
to the Hawaiian airport this year for the very first time.
Harried holiday airport managers in the middle of the busiest
travel season of the year responded: "Sure."
Now was that so hard?