Holiday Smackdown: The Creche and the Menorah and Santa vs. the Tree of Knowledge
This holiday season, the iconoclast’s delight can be found in a suburb of Philadelphia, on the lawn of the Historic Chester County Courthouse, where eight lights, the baby Jesus, and Santa are kicking back, free for the first time in years from the long shadow cast by the Tree of Knowledge. The Tree of Knowledge is a Christmas tree (or a holiday coniferous evergreen, if you prefer), which for three years had enjoyed a place on the lawn next to the more traditional yuletide symbols. It is sponsored by the Freethought Society of Greater Pennsylvania, a chapter of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and it is decorated with books. But not just any books. Past selections include:
“Evolution and the Myth of Creationism,” by Tim M. Berra
The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce
“The Pillars of Religion: Ignorance, Indoctrination, Inadequacy,” by Jane Kathryn Conrad
“The Origin of Species,” by Charles Darwin
“The God Delusion,” “River Out of Eden,” “The Extended Phenotype,” “Climbing Mount Improbable,” “Unweaving the Rainbow,” “The Selfish Gene,” “The Ancestor’s Tale,” “The Blind Watchmaker,” “A Devils Chaplain,” “Growing Up in the Universe,” all by Richard Dawkins
“The Trouble With Christmas,” by Tom Flynn
“The World Famous Atheist Cook Book,” by Anne Nicole Gaylor
“Infidel,” Ayaan Hirsi Ali
“God is not Great,” by Christopher Hitchens
“Why I Am Not a Christian,” by Bertrand Russell
“Why I Am Not a Muslim,” by Ibn Warraq
The Bible
The Koran
And many, many others (see a complete list here).
As any student of the history of religion knows, the way to go about converting a native population is to appropriate or destroy its symbols. The Tree of Knowledge folk quite savvily created a display that fit in nicely with tradition:
But two can play at that game, and this year there is no tree. The official reason is that Chester County officials decided not to allow private groups to erect displays, and to decorate the lawn of the courthouse themselves (the display will include a Santa, a holiday train, a creche, and a menorah). But members of the Freethought Society who protested the absence of the tree last Sunday claim that there was some shady business: “There’s been a lot of backroom deals with the Pastors Network, I guess, who put up the creche,” one member told the Chester County Daily Local News. The article (reported by Katrina Dix) goes on to ask one of the protestors whether he believes that the tree constituted an “attack” on Christianity. On the contrary: “If the message is to believe something or you’re going to burn in hell for eternity, that’s a terroristic message.”
A society member said that it may take its complaint to the courts, because what else can Americans do when they feel terrorized by each other (other than steal the baby Jesus from the creche)? I don’t often think of the here and now when I think of iconoclasm—eighth-century Byzantium, the French Revolution, or even the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue come to mind. But in fact we are living through one of the more fascinating iterations of a centuries-old struggle. Historically, the struggle has been bloody, but ours is waged in protests, media coverage, public polls, and political elections. And it all comes back to the courts, where such questions are asked as, What if a group wanted to erect “a monument to chocolate chip cookies”? (That’s Scalia during a 2009 case. A summary of more key cases in the religious-display-on-public-land fight can be found here.)
I should probably withhold my opinion, because, frankly, if I designed a display for a courthouse lawn, I’d want it to be a big American holiday mess—with a creche, a menorah, a holiday train, a Santa, a Tree of Knowledge, a Tree of Literary Fiction, a Tree of Holiday Childrens’ Books, and definitely a Chocolate-Chip Cookie monument (yum!). I get why religious groups wish that the holiday season weren’t such a colorful, commodified mishmash, and I understand that seeing a Christmas decoration in the form of a book called “The Trouble with Christmas” is a real bummer, but if our choice is between no decorations (which is where such endless fighting could lead) and lots and lots of decorations, I vote for the latter. Chocolate-chip-cookie monuments for everyone!
(Image via MargaretDowney.com)
Dickens “is referred to as the man who invented Christmas but he didn’t exactly do that,” said Michael Slater, author of a new Dickens biography, ” It’s the same year, 1843, that the first Christmas card is recorded. There was definitely a revival of Christmas, and Dickens with his little story incorporates so many different aspects of the festive season. He stamped his image on it.”
