Tradition

A popular but controversial television news commentator entered into a debate, partly confrontation with the Governor of Rhode Island. It was related to a long practiced tradition of having a State Christmas Tree at the Capitol for 2012.  The Governor, like Pilate, took action protested by the people.  He announced the tree’s identity should be changed from Christmas Tree to Holiday Tree.  The word Christmas was not to be used as identity.  There was no mention about the decorations for the tree, but the order implied that the decorations should not include anything of the Nativity.  Challenged by the commentator, the Governor simply said: The nation has become a pluralistic nation so we adjust our approach to show that rather than to carry a tradition which may be taken as favoring one belief over another.  The commentator, (although somewhat abrasive in his approach in interviewing persons not in agreement with him on any subject, so losing some favorable responses from listeners), rightly defended the tradition of the Christmas Tree as a fact of history, important to the understanding of history’s account.  The point is well taken.

The two men were not in the same debate context.  The commentator was in the area of tradition/history, something that attaches the present to the past, so to do something that follows the flow of life from those who have lived to those who live and will live.  It is a means of relationship that gives present experience from an inheritance of past human experience.  That includes anything relating to the forefathers (families) that gave meaning, relationship and comfort to their lives.  Traditions are usually shared respectfully, even among families that may be atheists.  A tradition may have some healing in it.  Stories have been built on the belief.  It is a shared experience that offers comfort, even solidarity, to a person, a family, a nation. 

A family tradition has respect in it, and relates the generations when observed.  The commentator meant to review the history of the Christmas Tree, used in many different traditional practices that may mean more to secular contexts than any religious orientation.  Secularized religion may become an interpretation factor.

The Governor was in a different debate.  He was in the debate that proposes references to a particular religion should be removed from a democratic society.  For decades there has been some tension, rather mild but tension nonetheless, that instead of Merry Christmas the greeting ought to be Happy Holidays.  In various ways the Christian accent for the Season has been diluted, with the ultimate purpose to adapt it from any background consideration.  Some of the effort may be to make the non-Christian more comfortable, but, for some, the design for change is to get the observation of anything Christian out of public attention or competition.  The move of the general public, in a pluralistic society, is toward a social, secularized and neutral humanism.  This comprises the context in which the Governor made decision to cancel Christian identity for the Holiday Tree.  He does not offer an original substitute.  Accent may be denial of history.

Like so many decisions made by good people, there is affirmative and negative.  If the future of the Christmas Tree is now to be adopted as a Holiday Tree there may be loss, and there may be gain.  The very story of the advent of Christ has contributed to so much good in too many ways to recite here even for the secular world.  The attitudes of Christmas with all the attachments offer a general spirit which one might wish could be kept for the whole year through.  Even crime and illness are reduced at Christmas.  Little of good will likely hold permanently without the context of the Advent concept – even for secularists leaning on a perception of virtue.  Our hope is that this gesture will contribute benefit to mechanical humanism plodding through life limited to nature’s facts.  Good even in secular life relates to Christian ideals.  Humanists may leave God out of it, noting the impact of a special person to history.  They lose nothing.  The Easter Egg seems not to trouble secular society to diminish meaning.  The Christmas Tree becomes a human tradition from Luther.  Secularists added baggage like materialism.  The tree has no specificity to biblical Christian faith lived by millions of persons.  The secularist may attach human traditions to Christian.  To drop Christmas from our calendar because of its source, we must also drop Thanksgiving and Easter.  What a loss!  Note what has been done with All Saints Day by secular society – Halloween.