Some Wiggle Room for Jesus at the White House

Eric Metaxas writes at Fox News about the near-banning of the Baby Jesus from the White House this "Christmas." (I've seen the creche--it's beautiful. Along the lines of questions this story raises, I recall receiving a positive word from the White House this year about the Haj, and a statement on Ramadan.)

Comments

[Ranee @ Arabian Knits]

Interesting and not surprising. Didn't both Bush and Obama have iftar during Ramadan? Again, not something peripheral to a faith, but one of the five pillars of Islam, fasting during Ramadan. I actually don't have a problem with recognizing them, or any other religion, but to exclude one on grounds that they want to be more inclusive or to imply that honoring the most common religious sentiment in this nation would somehow break the first amendment is what is so infuriating.

A friend of mine from high school posted this on his facebook. It raised some of the same questions you had about the creche for me. Why is it a sweet little story about a rabbi and an Israeli dog rather than a clash between religionists and the state? For the record, I think the former is the correct interpretation and the latter ridiculous. Why is it okay for a government building not only to have a Menorah, which is _only_ a religious article, but to have a rabbi lighting it, but WRONG for the government (or an airport, like Sea-Tac last year) to have a _Christmas_ tree, which is something pretty that people decorate for Christmas?

As an aside, we now live in a town where there is a CHRISTMAS parade and there is a creche in a public park. I just about yelled hallelujah with joy when I saw it. I won't mention the town, lest the ACLU or any people from the liberal media get a hold of the people who did it.

[Juli]

To most average Americans -- who did not grow up in an Ivy-League, inside-the-Beltway hothouse governed by the rules of the French Revolution -- the idea of keeping Jesus out of "the people's house" at Christmas evokes disturbing images of the Holy Family being turned away from the Inn, or worse yet, images of Herod.

I very much doubt that such images would occur to "most average Americans" ... and leave it to Fox News to report breathlessly in this way about something that didn't actually happen but was reportedly considered and rejected.