#425 Bahai on Life

It’s Christmastime again and that means one thing—War on Earth. Every year, even when people try to do what’s right, the talk show idiots do their best to blow everything out of reconcilable proportion and pit the adversaries against each other in a scorched earth policy of whatever gets ratings. The flap this time was over a bunch of Christmas trees at SeaTac airport. A Jewish Rabbi suggested to SeaTac that they put up an 8-foot menorah to include Jewish people in the SeaTac holiday expenditures. Expenditures, by the way, that are subsidized by public funding. He kind of threatened to sue if they didn’t. They decided that if they did the menorah they would have to do every other religious icon as well, and having finally been successful in banning the Moonies for homeland security reasons, they decided just to remove the trees. Those pine needles are such a mess anyhow. The press picked the whole thing up and soon there was that whole war-on-earth thing happening. It’s funny because both the Port and the rabbi behaved in a reasonable fashion. In fact, soon after the story broke, the rabbi came forward expressing dismay that the trees were removed. Everybody should be able to share in the giving season he said. The Port once again expressed that it wanted to come up with a thoughtful response to honoring everyone but in the meantime, it was probably best to just remove the trees. Also because they couldn’t afford to buy a bunch of decorations depicting all other religious celebrations. I mean, an 8-foot menorah is hard enough. A giant Buddha and a many-armed statue of Shiva may come a little steep. Not to mention that whole houseful of Shinto gods the Japanese like to honor. And Kwanzaa. I’m always at a quandary with Kwanzaa. The rabbi said he was worried everyone would think Jews were the Grinch. Hah, everyone who’s read Dr Seuss knows grinches are from Uzbekistan. Once again everyone missed the point. The Christmas tree is not a Christian symbol. It’s pure pagan. The Christmas tree predates Christ himself by centuries. Heck the three wise men didn’t even bring pine scent as one of their air freshener gifts to the nativity stable. And myrrh and frankincense aren’t in that little tree you can hang from your rear view mirror. So for years and years Christians have been erecting a pagan tree at Christmas. And calling the pagan old man winter Santa Claus. But he’s still a pagan and the trees are still pagan. Just because you have a Christian wedding in the middle of Stonehenge doesn’t change its historical origin. So here’s my solution: Spiritual unity for all, like the Bahai faith. Bring back the trees. And put little inexpensive decorations on the trees from every religion and sect. Encourage the diverse public to bring in those decorations. Make the tree bring cultures together. And shut up talk show hosts. So we can have peace and quiet.
America, ya gotta love it.