Philadelphia declares war on the Christmas tree
Christopher Tremoglie
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Philadelphia welcomed the Christmas season last week as the city held its annual tree lighting ceremony. The bells were jingling and the halls were decked, but the night was anything but silent as hundreds joyfully gathered to watch the city light up its Christmas tree. The event had nearly everything one would expect of a tree lighting ceremony except one essential thing — calling it a Christmas tree. Instead, Philadelphia city officials resorted to calling it a “holiday tree.”
The city’s website listed the event as the “City of Philadelphia Holiday Tree Lighting Celebration.” The city’s social media pages promoting the event also referred to it as the “holiday tree.” It’s an absurd left-wing political attack on something that shouldn’t be political. It’s indicative of the Left’s war on Christmas. Despite these wayward indoctrination attempts, everyone knows this one simple fact: It is a “Christmas tree,” not a “holiday tree.”
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It’s hard to explain just how ridiculous this is. The entire ceremony celebrated everything Christmas. Christmas lights and decorations were everywhere. A Ukrainian children’s choir and other entertainers performed Christmas carols. The audience wore festive Christmas garb, and even Santa and Mrs. Claus were in attendance. The only thing that was not Christmas was the city’s name of the tree. It refused to identify the ceremony for what it actually was — a Christmas tree lighting.
But Philadelphia’s war on Christmas is nothing new. The city has a history of trying to eradicate the Christmas name from its annual celebrations. Consider the controversy surrounding the name of its beloved “Christmas Village.” This yearly tradition mimics a traditional German Christmas market and is located about 100 yards to the west of the “holiday tree.” While firmly entrenched in the city’s culture now, in 2010, Philadelphia Democrats had a cultlike obsession with wanting to remove the name “Christmas” from the village to make it “more inclusive.”
As a result, the city briefly changed the name from “Christmas Village” to “Holiday Village.” After significant backlash and ridicule on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the city reversed its decision and resumed calling it the “Christmas Village.” But all these attacks on the Christian holiday raise the question: Why do Philadelphia Democrats go to such great lengths to suppress Christmas?
None of the country’s other big cities, even those with Democratic administrations, appear to be so wacky enough to remove the name Christmas from their tree lighting ceremonies because of some misguided effort to promote some weird, disturbing sense of diversity allegedly. Philadelphia has outdone itself.
New York City calls its event a Christmas tree lighting. So does the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. Another Democrat stronghold, Chicago, also appears to call it a Christmas tree lighting.
Additionally, while the city claims it does this to promote diversity, it is inconsistent on this practice regarding other December holiday traditions. For example, Philadelphia has annual celebrations for Hanukkah and Kwanzaa — a made-up holiday started by a radical left-wing professor from, ironically, Philadelphia. Yet the city doesn’t refer to its menorah lighting ceremonies as the “holiday menorah,” nor should it, or preface any of its Kwanzaa celebrations with “holiday.” But when it comes to the Christian holiday, the city refuses to acknowledge it is a Christmas tree. It’s indicative of everything absurd with contemporary left-wing, liberal, Democratic politics.
No matter what Philadelphia Democrats try, it always has been a Christmas tree and always will be a Christmas tree. It’s comical for the city to try to suggest otherwise. Radical Democrats must accept and come to grips with the reality that, despite their best efforts, this is still a primarily Judeo-Christian country where the majority of people celebrate Christmas — and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
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