I'm all for the Establishment Clause, but this is just silly

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is an imminently respectable organization trying valiantly to uphold Separation from Church and State throughout America, but occasionally it goes after targets that even I, a devout secularism promoter, think is simply overkill. In a letter of protest, the FFRF is now demanding that the Petoskey Public Schools in Michigan remove the naming "Christmas break" from the school calendar, which had recently been renamed from "Winter holiday break".

On Aug. 18 during a closed session, the school board voted unanimously to change the wording of the school calendar from "Winter holiday break" to "Christmas break." That was eight days after the board treasurer, Jack Waldvogel, sent an inflammatory e-mail to district staff and board members. Either make the change voluntarily, Waldvogel said, "or I will make a motion to change it at the NEXT Board meeting, and raise such a stink, and bring out every redneck Christian Conservative north of Clare, to compel the District to do so." The e-mail also said: "Our children need to know we are a Christian nation and taking all reference to a higher being out of our educational vocabulary is wrong."

[...]

"Changing the wording to Christmas break so that Petoskey school children know that 'we are a Christian nation' violates the most basic and fundamental principles of Establishment Clause jurisprudence," said Rebecca Kratz, FFRF staff attorney, in a letter to the district.

Now, anyone reading this with two critically-thinking neurons in their brains will likely pick up on a few key phrasings and words that, to me at least, strongly suggest this may be a bit of a joke; Waldvogel himself admitted that his eMail was meant "tongue-in-cheek" (despite the eMail ending with the statement, "Don't assume this is a joke. I'm being as serious as I possibly can here".

But whether this is all a little bit of jest or not isn't what I'm getting at. What I mean is that, frankly, I couldn't care less if they, or anyone else, called their winter break "Christmas holiday". Christmas is a word that's become synonymous with holidays and winter vacation, far more than it has with religion or Christianity, especially in these modern times. Anyone complaining about "Christmas season", or Easter, or anything of the sort (and it's happened plenty of times, to my consternation) is really getting bent up over nothing.

As long as they don't name the break "Worship the Holy Father God and Jesus Our Messiah Days" or anything overtly religious of the sort, I really couldn't care less what wording they chose, and nor should any reasonable person.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

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