PRESS EDITORIAL: Christmas tree follies can’t diminish Christmas

Bipartisanship has finally come to Madison, and it’s not pretty.

The warring partisans—the Republican Legislature and the Democratic executive branch—haven’t made peace, but they have managed to achieve an equilibrium rarely seen in the state capital: They look equally foolish.

This embarrassing parity was reached on, of all unlikely issues, a Christmas tree, in the course of a silly snit that has made the state the subject of unflattering national attention.

Gov. Tony Evers initiated the spectacle by announcing that the Christmas tree that will be displayed in the state Capitol will not be a Christmas tree. It will be a holiday tree, he declared.

The governor’s proclamation was an early Christmas gift to his critics in the Legislature, who  quickly unwrapped it and found an irresistible opportunity to pontificate and bloviate on the nature of Christmas and Christmas trees while strapping on their toy-soldier armor to defend Wisconsin in the fake war on Christmas. Senate Republican leader Scott Fitzgerald fired his blunderbuss with a charge that Evers had sullied Christmas with “PC garbage.”

The Christmas trees put up in the Capitol every year since 1916 have been referred to as holiday trees during a few Christmases past, but not in recent years. Evers said he revived the generic term because this “is a holiday for a whole bunch of people in the state of Wisconsin, even those that aren’t part of Christian faith.”

What the governor said is true, not to mention obvious, but the notion that an object called a Christmas tree deprives anyone belonging to any faith of inclusion in the enjoyment of the holiday is as wobbly as the canard that Christmas is under attack by anti-Christians in an imagined war on Christmas.

Christmas has been a federal holiday in the United States for 149 years. Christmas trees are to Christmas what fireworks are to the Fourth of July—popular symbols of a holiday. And nothing more.

Christmas trees are not Christian symbols. They date to early Egyptian history, later were decorated by Druids, honored by Vikings and condemned by the puritans of America as too frivolous and enjoyable to be tolerated. In 21st century America, they are no more of a threat to exclude non-Christians from the pleasures of Christmas than Santa Claus or Billy the Brownie.

“It’s more of an inclusion thing,” the governor said of his holiday tree designation.

If so, it’s an unnecessary thing. Almost everyone is already included. An annual survey by the Pew Research Center consistently finds that 90% of Americans celebrate Christmas, a number that hasn’t changed in years. It’s safe to assume that it’s a voluntary decision for the 10% who choose not to celebrate.     

The same statistics underscore the phoniness of the war on Christmas. Fighters of this trumped-up conflict may see evil in the use of the greeting “Happy Holidays” in lieu of “Merry Christmas” and in the disallowing by courts of creches and other religious displays on government property, but Christmas is doing just fine.

It doesn’t need help from self-righteous defenders or do-gooders waving inclusion banners.

 The charm of Christmas is that it can be pretty much anything people want it to be. For Christians, it is the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ and a day of religious observance as well as partaking in the secular joys of the holiday. For others, it is enough that it is a day when families and friends gather for gifts, good wishes and good food. For many in this society, it is also a state of mind that for a few days each year unites Americans in the spirit of kindness, generosity, empathy and respect for other members of the human community.

 But let’s be honest, Christmas is also a phenomenon that is exploited shamelessly for two or more months of the year by the mercantile sector of the economy for maximum commercial gain. There’s nothing terrible about that—it’s as much a part of Christmas as, well, a Christmas tree.

And that, of course, is exactly what the evergreen to be displayed in the Capitol rotunda after Thanksgiving will be.

Christmas is resilient and enduring, and not much is going to diminish it, not even politicians foolishly bickering over it.