THE ALWAYS PREDICTABLE CAVE-IN TO THE AMERICAN STREET:

Christmas trees being returned to SeaTac airport; rabbi won't sue over decoration (AP, 12/12/06)

Christmas trees are going back up at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Pat Davis, president of the Port of Seattle commission, which directs airport operations, said late Monday that maintenance staff would restore the 14 plastic holiday trees, festooned with red ribbons and bows, that were removed over the weekend because of a rabbi's complaint that holiday decor did not include a menorah.

MORE:
Treeless in Seattle: The greatest threat to America’s essential freedoms is not excluding a menorah from an airport, but trivializing important issues (Marc Gellman, 12/11/06, Newsweek)

The cowardly response of the airport officials was to order workers on the graveyard shift on Sunday night to quickly remove all eight trees. Their first articulated (and insane) reason was that the airport officials did not have time to play cultural anthropologist and evaluate whether other local religious symbols should be included. Then all hell broke loose as the conflagration burned its way through the wire services Monday and the sheer lunacy of this decision became obvious to most. The next reason the public relations geniuses at the airport came up with to justify the removal of the Christmas trees was that they did not want to authorize an outside organization to erect any display and conduct a public ceremony for its lighting. Now, the Port of Seattle commissioners who oversee the airport Christmas tree display and are promising to reconsider the tree removal at their meeting Monday night. One of the officials is reported as saying that he knows at least three of the five commissioners want the trees put back up.

So what, as they say in the Talmud, do we learn from all this? First we learn that the rabbi should never have threatened to sue the airport. (His lawyer now says he won't no matter what happens.) Using our courts to prohibit the displays of Christmas trees is more than frivolous. It is stupid, divisive and frivolous. It generates ill will towards Jews or the ACLU or whoever brings the suit, and it unnecessarily burdens the court. People who are offended at decorated trees with no angel, no star and no crèche need to get a life, and need to reconsider what constitutes a true offense against the First Amendment.

The right solution here is obvious. Put back the trees and erect a menorah display paid for, like the trees, by the airport and not by a small Hasidic group.