In an effort to appear inclusive and tolerant, Governor Chafee decided to rename the Christmas tree that graces the Rhode Island State House during the Christmas season as a “holiday tree.”
Of course, in this politically correct move, the governor who suggested he was trying to offer a sign of unity to the state has in fact excluded Christians and Christianity from the season celebrated in honor of the birth of Christ. In what Bishop Tobin has rightly suggested, Governor Chafee is playing the role of the innkeeper who refused to make room for the Holy Family at Christmas. Apparently there is no room at Mr. Chafee’s State House for a Christmas tree!
Governor Chafee’s action is not merely an occasion of foolishness nor is it as some have wrongly suggested an unimportant issue. Removing Christmas from the celebration of the holiday season and grouping it together with the winter solstice and other seasonal celebrations has only two purposes: to devalue and marginalize the sacred nature of the season and to reduce Christian influence on the culture. Despite the many works of mercy performed by the Catholic Church every day of the year, this is a calculated decision to further undermine God’s presence in our society and religion’s voice in the public square.
Most Rhode Islanders who celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ do so at Christmas not during “the winter break” and most Rhode Islanders who put up a tree call it a Christmas tree not a “holiday tree.” In fact, John Leyden, the tree farmer and owner of Big John Leyden’s Christmas Tree Farm, who donated the tree to the state for the tree lighting ceremony and also one for the front of St. Patrick's Church, stated that he does not grow “holiday trees.” The acknowledgement of Christ as the central figure of Christmas and calling the tree that marks Jesus Christ’s birthday a Christmas tree is only logical and correct. For Governor Chafee and others to suggest that this proper acknowledgement of Christmas is somehow offensive and intolerant is not only illogical but also blatantly bigoted.
How sad it is that the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior is viewed as a threat by a small but politically correct minority to the wall of separation of church and state. Even sadder is that people of faith would support this wrong-headed decision by Governor Chafee, for it is they who help him to trivialize the important role religion must play in the public square in order for the voices of the poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the powerless and the oppressed to be heard in the halls of government power. This debate is not simply about the naming of a tree but rather it is a truly a debate about the attempt to remove the voice of people of faith from the State House and for that reason Christmas is indeed “worth protecting.”
The late Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador once noted in a Christmas Eve homily that: “No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God — for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us.” Apparently Governor Chafee and his allies are too self-sufficient and too proud to have need of even God this Christmas. O Come, O Come Emmanuel!
