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Early signs of the season show up in Catholic League news release
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Catholic League president Bill Donohue
Signs of "the season" are already in the department stores, the play list at Starbucks, and television commercials. And, just as early, a news release from Catholic League president Bill Donohue dated November 3 claims "the 2009 war on Christmas has begun."
Donohue says the cancellation of a Christmas parade that had been a three-decade tradition in the village of Amelia, Ohio, outside Cincinnati, is one of this year's first casualties in the "war." Village solicitor Laura Abrams objected to the word "Christmas" attached to the parade, the powers that be changed the name to "holiday parade," and when public furor erupted, the event was cancelled.
Another sign Donohue cites is the elimination of a "Christmas" tree on the Capitol lawn in Frankfurt, Kentucky. Instead, a "holiday" tree including celebrations of Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and New Years will be there instead. This, even "though no one has ever heard of a 'Thanksgiving Tree,' 'Hanukkah Tree' or 'New Year’s Tree,'” Donohue offered.
A lawsuit claiming a nativity scene put up in a public median in Warren, Michigan, by a private family in the vicinity since the 1940s was discriminatory was the League president's next example of a Christmas tradition that won't be around this year.
Olympia, Washington, banned religious displays inside municipal buildings for the season but said outdoor displays could continue. But now that exception is also on the line as atheists there are logding protests.
One "casualty of the war" was averted by a threatened lawsuit, Donohue said. The threat, aimed at protesters, insured that students will be allowed to make religious ornaments for the Christmas tree being taken from their part of Arizona for use as the nation's Christmas tree on grounds of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
"Make no mistake about it," Donohue said, "The declared enemy of these cultural fascists is religious speech, and they will stop at nothing to censor it. Stay tuned—we’re only in early November."
