stop making me rant!

[obfuscate]

On a whim, I happened to be looking at the editorial section of the Trib today at work. I was on break, I was bored, it was there. It was serindipitous. For some reason, there were only about four pages of the paper actually present, so my options were limited. I glanced at the reader letters. Most were mundane, some were trite, some were outraged

Comments

[horshoo]

"the real meaning of Christmas" - Retail profit!

As to religions, supposedly 85% of Americans are Christians, but the various factions barely acknowledge each other. I doubt if half of the 85% are active members. And no doubt there are some religions Bell would object to even if they met his stupidulations.

[luminousx]

Those poor Shakers will never get a display, they don't have numbers high enough to be considered anything but a nuisance.

[pyro79]

10/10, would read again!

It's a well written rant you have here, and one that I would say could almost be sent to the Trib as a response. :)

As for Norman D. Asshat.. Damn. Just. Damn.

[laughingimp]

Pagans = nuisance. Got it. Thanks, Norman.

Let's be realistic, though, a Yule display would look enough like a Christmas display that the average person wouldn't notice the difference--Yule displays involve a decorated tree, after all.

...Unless there was a sign that said This is a Pagan display, in which case people would be howling for its removal, how dare those Satan-worshippers try to ruin Christmas!

[llamachameleon]

It would look like Christmas, except for the sacrificed babies. What? Pagans do that, right?

On a more serious note, my biggest problem with this sort of thing is that it automatically prioritizes Christmas. Your religion happens to have a holiday that falls vaguely near Christmas? So long as you can scrape together enough people to lobby for it, you get a display. If your religion's important holidays fall outside the "holiday season," then you probably should have thought of that before you became a godless heathen. No Naw-Rúz display for you no matter how many Bahá'ís or Zoroastrians sign the petition.

[mrbobafett]

Seriously? From that you got Pagans = nuisance? Did I miss a paragraph?

[laughingimp]

Right here:

• Other groups wishing to participate must reach threshold numbers of people by submitting signed petitions as a candidate must for an election.
• Set the number of signatures high enough to prevent nuisance displays.

Here are my problems with this:

1) While I think the Census' counts of Pagan are low because many Pagans fear discrimination if they out themselves, there really aren't very many of us. It is unlikely that many municipalities will get enough out Pagans together to collect enough signatures on a petition.

2) On the other hand, some municipalities are likely to get enough signatures every year to support a Festivus pole--sarcastic atheist Seinfeld fans almost certainly outnumber Pagans. Since this is certainly a "nuisance display," Norman would push the number of signatures required high enough to remove the Festivus display, but Pagans will get excluded long before the Festivus people do.

3) As obfuscate and llamachameleon have said, by making Christmas exempt from the signature process, Norman's proposal prioritizes

[wetwork]

what a toad.

what isn't said is that norman is celebrating the holidays alone because no one can stand his dumb ass.