The news has been hopping all over this, both locally and nationally, and the outrage has been huge.  It is no surprise they reversed their decision and are reinstalling the trees.  More on that in a moment.

The back story:  A few months ago a Sea-Tac Employee asked for permission to add a Menorah to a Christmas tree display.  He was initially granted permission, but after a second look it was denied.  The Port of Seattle determined that adding a religious icon to the Christmas display, which was primarily intended to be secular would violate the law, as Sea-Tac is technically a government facility.  The Employee consulted his Rabbi who engaged in a discussion with the Port of Seattle official.

Finally after getting nowhere, the Rabbi consulted an attorney who presented the POS the threat of a lawsuit, if they did not comply.

So rather then engage a legal debate, the POS pulled the trees, arguing that none was better then a lawsuit.

For more, look here:

Airport puts away holiday trees rather than risk being "exclusive"

As odd as it might seem, Sea-Tac Airport officials were hoping to avoid controversy when they had maintenance crews working Friday’s graveyard shift dismantle nine holiday trees festooned with red ribbons and bows.

The airport managers ordered the plastic trees removed and boxed up after a rabbi asked to have an 8-foot-tall menorah displayed next to the largest tree in the international arrival hall.

Port of Seattle staff felt adding the menorah would have required adding symbols for other religions and cultures in the Northwest, said Terri-Ann Betancourt, the airport’s spokeswoman. The holidays are the busiest season at the airport, she said, and staff didn’t have time to play cultural anthropologists.

"We decided to take the trees down because we didn’t want to be exclusive," she said. "We’re trying to be thoughtful and respectful, and will review policies after the first of the year."

The problem was they angered all the people who like Christmas, including atheists, Jews and Christians alike.

Michael Medved summed it up this way:

There’s an outrageous story out of Seattle (my home base) that shows the way that good intentions can occasionally produce disgusting results. Because of the prevailing climate of political correctness, a decent guy and honorable clergyman looks like a horse’s rear end and has provoked appropriate indignation from millions of people.

The story rapidly became one of good intentions, unintended consequences, overreactions and a lot of media hype.  The Rabbi, Elazar Bogomilsky, never intended to imply the decorations had to come down, nor was a lawsuit their real intention.  Their lawyer, I think, got a bit trigger happy in trying to make a point to the POS.

The POS was oversensitized to the litigious society of political correctness we live in, and frankly panicked, opting to avoid the issue altogether.

Ken Schram awarded them both Schrammies, 2 days before his normal award ceremony, such was his digust:

So, because of one rabid rabbi and an exclusive group of - pardon the redundancy - spineless public officials, Sea-Tac airport has officially outlawed Christmas.

The result is a "Double-Whammie Schrammie."

Port Commission President Pat Davis gets the "Santa-Baby" bobble-head for her complete lack of common sense, her weak-kneed leadership and a cover her own butt mentality.

Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky gets the hasidically orthodox "Schrammie for his un-kosher attitude of disdain and arrogance, not to mention his chutzpah in acting surprised that the Christmas trees disappeared.

So, take a bow you two.

You’re quite the pair: One a "scrooge", the other completely meshugeneh, and this special Monday "Schrammie" is for you.

I love that guy sometimes.

But he really got to the essential nature of the debate.

This has had unexpected consequences.  It became an international sensation, with many people labeling it the next exhibit in the war on Christmas.

They are wrong though.  Oh, not about the war on Christmas.  Yes Virginia, there really is a war on Christmas, where a lot of groups try to not only sanitize the religion from the Christmas holiday, but even remove the sanitized secular aspects of it claiming they are too close to religious.

The POS had already attempted to make the display as secular as possible, and they were well within their rights to do so.  Christmas is a Federal Holiday, celebrated by people of all faiths, in many countries, and not all of them do so out of obedience to dogma.

They do so because it is fun to give presents and for a few days pretend there is peace on earth.

As a Christian/Catholic hybrid, I suppose I should be offended by the secularization, but I am not.  My childhood memories are filled with many a Christmas before I understood the significance of a nativity scene.  I knew who Santa was long before I knew who Jesus was.  Much like the Easter Bunny the holiday may have its roots in faith, but it is so much more an American cultural tradition.

Yes, there is a war on Christmas, but in this case that battle had already come and gone.  The trees were decorated with simple ribbons and bows.  No Angels, no stars, no crosses.  These trees were intended to connect to the festive season, not to any faith specifically.  And as they were the product of a government, this is as it should be.

But in this case, the Rabbi was trying to include a similarly secularized Menorah, not a traditional oil filled one, which may have been legal:

The U.S. Supreme Court had determined that menorahs, like Christmas trees, can be secular symbols if they are not part of a religious-themed display. Bogomilsky’s menorah — like those in other public places — is lit with bulbs, rather than oil, which requires a blessing before lighting.

Craig Watson, the port’s chief lawyer, said Bogomilsky’s menorah likely fits the Supreme Court’s definition of secular. But the Port did not want to set the precedent of allowing an outside group to erect a holiday display at the airport, he said, and staff was too busy with holiday traffic to deal with the complexities of doing it themselves.

The POS was being cautious:

"Everyone should have their spirit of the holiday. For many people the trees are the spirit of the holidays, and adding a menorah adds light to the season," said Bogomilsky, who works at Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish education foundation headquartered in the University District.

Instead, the Port dragged its feet for weeks and hired an outside attorney to research religious-freedom case law, said Harvey Grad, Bogomilsky’s attorney.

With groups like the ACLU jumping in peoples faces constantly, I cannot say I blame them for trying to be careful.

What didn’t help was the Rabbi tried to get a bit pushy.

Michael Medved notes:

Of course, in the current climate of hyper-sensitivity regarding public expressions of religious commitment, Rabbi Bogomilsky and Harvey Grad should have avoided the chilling, unnecessary phrase “law suit” at all costs — even if the Port of Seattle refused to give them a timely answer on their menorah request. As a result of the threatened litigation, the whole world is witnessing a horrible situation in which the religious enthusiasm (however well intended) of one individual has led to the removal of decorations enjoyed by literally hundreds of thousands.

And so:

With Hanukkah set to begin this coming Friday at sundown, the issue came to a head late last week. Grad threatened to file a federal civil-rights lawsuit and set a deadline of Friday for the Port to make a decision. That left insufficient time to consider the issue, Watson said.

"It just wasn’t going to get done before the threatened lawsuit was filed. They said they were on their way to the courthouse," said Watson. "We’re not in the business of offending anyone, and we’re not eager to get into a federal lawsuit with anyone."

Port commissioners were briefed on the issue Thursday and, because litigation was threatened, went into a closed-door session. Although the airport has not received a similar complaint from any other group, commissioners said Saturday they felt obliged to open the door to other religions.

After a long debate, the board of commissioners supported the airport management’s decision to take down the trees and punt the issue into next year.

"We didn’t have other cultures represented, and rather than scramble around and find representations of other cultures at this late date, we decided to take them down and consider it later," said Patricia Davis, head of the Port commission

"I felt we’d also have to put up Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish symbols. Where does it stop?" said Commissioner John Creighton.

Here is where it gets fun:

He said he’d hoped the trees would come down "quietly." Instead, airline employees saw the trees being dismantled early Saturday and protested. By 2 a.m. TV crews were at the airport, and Creighton said he’s received several irate e-mails.

Commissioner Bob Edwards said he considered the removal of the trees an "overreaction." In an e-mail to other commissioners Saturday, Edwards suggested the Port replace the tree with "a nine-foot-tall statue of the Grinch to welcome our international travelers." He signed his e-mail, "Happy Holidays."

The airline employees put trees on some of their counters, small protest trees.  I loved it.  The news splashed across the country like a tidal wave.

The most interesting reaction though was from Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

Jews Strive to Restore Christmas Trees

Well here we go again. It is so utterly predictable.  Like clockwork.  It’s December and time for another skirmish in the annual battle against Christmas.  What compels me to comment is that this time it’s not the usual secular fanatic who’s responsible for doing things that evict Christianity from the culture. No, on this sad and alarming occasion it’s a deeply religious, well-intentioned rabbi who has unwittingly stumbled into a situation that will place his denomination (and mine)—Orthodox Judaism—in a terrible, negative light.

I am asking every reader of this column to sign a petition on the Toward Tradition website beseeching Sea-Tac management to restore the Christmas trees. 

I am asking every reader of this column to forward it to others who might be willing to sign this petition.

I am asking Jews in the Puget Sound region to join national radio host, Michael Medved, and me in offering our volunteer labor to Sea-Tac.  We hope they will allow us to provide the labor necessary for replacing the trees so that airport staff need not be deflected from their important duties. 

Why am I, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, so concerned about a few Christmas trees?  Not for a moment do I believe that American Christians will react to this insult with a flurry of anti-Semitic activity.  But I do feel certain that perhaps in some small way, expelling Christmas symbolism from the airport makes it just a little harder to protect America’s Christian nature.

I heard him on several shows and he was very sincere.  I thought he had the right idea too.

The blame here, I think is shared, and not just with the POS and the Rabbi.  I blame out culturally aware, sensitive, overly paranoid, litigation crazy and politically correct society, led by a lot of thin skinned people, some opportunistic lawyers, some activist judges trying to write their case law into history and some whiny annoying progressive liberals who just do not know when to shut the hell up.

Our culture has become so panty waisted and sensitive that things that are harmless become the cause du jour for protests and lawsuits.

The Mt Soledad Cross in San Diego is a perfect example of a passive object that was such a burden to some overly sensitive atheist that we have battled the case for years and at huge costs.  And all along he could have just gotten over it, and maybe looked the other way and shown some respect to other peoples faith, and maybe some of our Veterans.

So while I think the POS and the Rabbi and his Lawyer deserve some scorn, I have more scorn for a society that determines to show its tolerance by being intolerant.

All has ended somewhat well though.

Text of the Port of Seattle news release

Port of Seattle

Release: Immediate

Date: December 11, 2006

TREES GOING BACK UP AT SEA-TAC AIRPORT

Port of Seattle staff will be reinstalling holiday trees later today at Sea-Tac Airport, after having removed them late last week under threat of a federal lawsuit to be filed by the Central Organization for Jewish Education Lubavitch. Port officials received word from Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky late this afternoon that his organization will not file a lawsuit at this time over the placement of a menorah at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Given that, the holiday trees will be replaced as quickly as possible.

"This has been an unfortunate situation for all of us in Seattle," said Port of Seattle Commission President Pat Davis. "The rabbi never asked us to remove the trees; it was the Port’s decision based on what we knew at the time. We very much appreciate the rabbi’s willingness to work with us as we move forward."

A key element in moving forward will be to work with the rabbi and other members of the community to develop a plan for next year’s holiday decorations at the airport.

"There’s been such an outcry from the public – from people of all faiths – who believe that the trees should be reinstalled," Davis said, "I’m very thankful that we can return the trees and get back to running our airport during this very busy holiday season."

As I said, this was not a battle in the war on Christmas…but it was a victory in that war nonetheless.

You see, the people of all faiths got fed up with shameful and weak political correctness, and took a stand.  Even the Rabbi who started this realized it to be a farce of epic proportion, and offered his assurances.

Christmas and the holiday season in general just scored a big victory as a sense of unity and has actually come of this.

All over a couple trees.

Maybe Peace on Earth and Good Will to All really is possible.

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