SEATTLE - In Seattle, Christmas has already come, and gone, and come back again.
One day the seasonal trees that adorn the international terminal at Seattle-Tacoma airport were there, all twinkling and brightly decorated. The next day they were gone - victims of a bureaucratic tussle involving a
litigious rabbi and a whole cast of politically correct officials terrified of either offending or indulging anyone's religious sensibilities.
In the United States, this sort of nonsense is becoming an annual phenomenon that the cable news pundits like to call "the War on Christmas".
The furore in Seattle began when a Jewish building consultant wondered if it wouldn't be a good idea to erect a giant menorah next to the traditional airport Christmas trees to acknowledge the Jewish holiday, Hanukkah.
When that idea was rejected, a local Hasidic rabbi called Elazar Bogomilsky became enraged and threatened to sue the airport if he was not personally allowed to erect and light a 2.5m menorah.
At that point, the airport authorities themselves went a little nuts.
On Monday they wheeled away the nine Christmas trees - or "holiday trees", as they call them to avoid any religion-specific overtones.
Airport spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt breezily explained that her colleagues didn't "have time to play cultural anthropologist" and would prefer to have no seasonal decorations at all than risk having to indulge the whims of every last religious and cultural group.
That decision provoked a furious backlash, and instant wall-to-wall coverage on national television.
"Sheer lunacy," was what one liberal rabbi called it.
Letters and emails sent to the airport ran 99-1 against the decision. Airport officials promptly went to ground.
Then Rabbi Bogomilsky, after a day of being hounded by reporters, meekly withdrew his threat to sue.
By Tuesday, the trees were back, as if nothing had happened.
Airport officials, frantically wiping egg off their collective faces, thanked Rabbi Bogomilsky for seeing the light and promised to rethink their seasonal decorations for next year.
- INDEPENDENT
