Last year, Denver tried to keep religious floats out of the Parade of Lights. Big controversy. It all ended ugly with Mayor John Hickenlooper admitting, “He didn’t know Jesus but he hoped he could count on a DNC contribution for him.”
This year, it’s the city of Golden where the local rabbi suggested he wanted to put a menorah by the city’s 800-foot tall Christmas tree in honor of Hanukah.
Harmless, right? Nothing ever bad happens putting a giant candle by a Christmas tree. But city leaders, always worried about setting a precedent, thought it would open a Pandora’s box. The Kwanzaaians, not to be confused with the Kiwanis, would want to put up their own Mishumaa Saba. The Lutherans would want to put their coffee and donut table right in the middle of Main Street. And if you know Lutherans, they can mill around for hours and would really plug up traffic. The Scientologists would deposit Tom Cruise in front of the local Cineplex with a wreath on his neck. And the atheists would gobble up all the city’s open space for an accurate depiction of, well, nothing. Breathtaking.
So the city of Golden said no. And the rabbi countered that Christmas lights are religious in nature because if you look really close at the bulb, you can see the Virgin Mary. The rabbi also argued that all the trees should be deflocked because any flocking whatsoever, outside the sanctity of marriage, is forbidden.
City councilors determined that the lights stay up and the menorah stays down. They also agreed that the Santa Claus on Washington Avenue could stay because of its perch atop the historic welcome arch. Though I’m pretty sure Santa is a direct descendant of the Gimmegimme cult, founded by young kids in front of storefronts in the mid- to late-1950s.
The logical resolution would be to dump everything on Santa. He could grasp a menorah, draped in a Bendera, holding a bag full of nothing and a donut hanging out of his mouth. This idea was suggested but Santa called it offensive since he is actually an Amalgamite, which sounds like a rock but is actually a group of old, fat men who spend 364 days a year making lists.
But Golden city councilors only want secular displays. That’s just terribly ironic because, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, its roots are really not secular. So the challenge becomes being fair to all the other holidays that fall around it like Hanukah and Kwanzaa. That would be too much. So, in order to exclude them, we just say Christmas just isn’t a religious holiday. Which means at some point down the line it won’t even be Christmas anymore, it will be X-mas, Holiday Day, or Fruitcakeivus.
Here’s a better idea. I’d rather have someone focus on the display of some displaced Wisconsinite in my neighborhood. It’s the likenesses of Brett Favre, Forrest Gregg, Mike Holmgren and Vince Lombardi cooing over an infant Cheesus.
If that isn’t non-secular, I don’t know what is.
