Our Governor’s Mistake

So, by now everyone is thoroughly familiar with the Rhode Island Holiday Tree Debacle. There have been phone-calls. There have been articles. There have been people shouting down the voices of young children. This may be the first big battlefield in the annual “War On Christmas” (trademark Faux News).

With a tree paid for by our taxes and placed on Public property, Governor Chafee had a good idea to try and make this government sponsored celebration a little more open to the people of his state who are not Christian. His evocation of Roger Williams’s desire for full religious tolerance is as patriotic and modest a request as a man can ask. In reaching out a hand to his fellow Rhode Islanders who are not of the same faith as him he seeks to bring the promise of a secular government back into view.

This was not his mistake.

As we have seen around the country for the last several years holiday displays have become very controversial. From the FFRF’s signs in Wisconsin, Washington and Illinois to a “Knowledge Tree” in Pennsylvania and Washington, non-believer groups have been getting their message added to the seasonal displays due to the legal requirements that a government not discriminate on matters of religion. This has led municipalities to make the stark choice: include everything or nothing at all.

This was also not Governor Chafee’s mistake.

The Governor was trying to make inclusive something that was exclusive.  He was attempting to apply an open, tolerant and peaceful desire to a closed and insular symbol. Forget the changing nature of the history of the Christmas tree itself, it has a current meaning to many people as a Christian symbol of a central Christian doctrinal celebration. And as much as the songs and homilies speak of “Peace on Earth” and “Good Will Toward Men” many Christians expect peace as the result of Christian domination of the world. The words are kind, but the history of deeds is more telling, and that history is of a closed and tightly controlled doctrine.

And as ignorant as the critics sound when they asked if a Menorah would become a “Holiday Candle Set”, they might actually have a good point. Is it OK to re-purpose a cultures symbols for new uses? Lincoln Chafee, as a Catholic, is reworking his own symbols, but as a governor his “secular culture” is doing the co-opting. Is it unreasonable to expect Christians to not see that as slight against their religion?

Sure, sure, sure… I know that many (if not most) Christian symbolism is itself lifted from some other source, most notably European paganism, but does this mean it’s OK to steal it from them?

Well, symbols are symbols, not property or person. They have no feelings nor desires. Akin to art, they mean what you want them to mean.  And like art they evoke emotion. That may, in fact, be their only purpose and what you do to a symbol will, without fail, evoke even more emotion. Not all of it positive. I suppose it all depends on the result you were going for.

The outpouring of emotion of the last week has been anything but inclusive. Fueled by sensational news stories and one-sided radio hosts people have attacked the Governor. They see him as trying to take Christ out of Christmas and as bowing down to the forces of “political correctness”. They were angry that his was trying to make the celebration of Christmas match its story.

That was the Governor’s mistake.