WTF? This is coming from my hometown... and totally baffles me.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003470331_trees10m.html
A brief intro...
Quote:
Airport puts away holiday trees rather than risk being "exclusive"
By Jonathan Martin
Seattle Times staff reporter
As odd as it might seem, Sea-Tac Airport officials were hoping to avoid controversy when they had maintenance crews working Friday's graveyard shift dismantle nine holiday trees festooned with red ribbons and bows.
The airport managers ordered the plastic trees removed and boxed up after a rabbi asked to have an 8-foot-tall menorah displayed next to the largest tree in the international arrival hall.
Port of Seattle staff felt adding the menorah would have required adding symbols for other religions and cultures in the Northwest, said Terri-Ann Betancourt, the airport's spokeswoman. The holidays are the busiest season at the airport, she said, and staff didn't have time to play cultural anthropologists.
"We decided to take the trees down because we didn't want to be exclusive," she said. "We're trying to be thoughtful and respectful, and will review policies after the first of the year."
--snip--
"We didn't have other cultures represented, and rather than scramble around and find representations of other cultures at this late date, we decided to take them down and consider it later," said Patricia Davis, head of the Port commission
"I felt we'd also have to put up Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish symbols. Where does it stop?" said Commissioner John Creighton....
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Man, I don't get it. AT ALL. I mean, I don't know what I would have done, either. But this does not seem like the right answer.
Hell, people "celebrate" "Christmas" in Thailand, where pretty much everyone is a devout Buddhist... I don't see people demanding statues of Buddha be placed equally alongside Christmas trees. They're DECORATIONS, not religious symbols.
Maybe it's my bias (please correct me if it is), but a tree is not religious... if anything, it's Pagan, by every right. There is not an ounce of Christianity in those trees.
How do you all feel about this?
I'm going to start calling the damn thing a Saturnalia tree just to see who freaks out. It's the truth, anyway.
