Monday, February 22, 1999
Memo details objections to Christmas holiday
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Tristate partisans in proliferating church-state battles could benefit from the encyclopedic memo filed by Richard Ganulin in his suit to end Christmas as a national legal public holiday.
Irrespective of a reader's be liefs, Mr. Ganulin, a lawyer and Hyde Park resident, provides a crash course on issues and legal precedents.
His 1998 suit asks U.S. District Judge Susan J. Dlott to declare the holiday unconstitutional.
Defendants are the United States and Jeffery Niemer, Anne Dolan and Pattie Hem sath, three federal employees who intervened to protect their holiday.
Finally, the Christian.
Coalition entered the case as a friend of the court.
They want Judge Dlott to dismiss the suit. With Mr. Ganulin's memo, all of the motions and responses have been filed and it's now up to her.
Whether Tristate brouhahas involve Christmas, Good Friday closings, or Ten Commandments in public schools, the opening phrases of the 1st Amendment define the fight:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. ...
Mr. Ganulin said Congress violated the Establishment Clause — ground zero for church-state separation — by elevating one faith's holy day to national holiday.
“No other sect in the United States is so favored by the government,” he wrote, and that improperly advances and endorses Christianity at least two ways:
• It creates “a major symbolic link between the government and Christianity.”
• It creates “an inducement and a facilitation of Christian worship and association ... by virtue of a paid holiday provided to all federal employees.”
Even Santa Claus is a religious symbol, Mr. Ganulin said, because Santa is derived from St. Nicholas and visits only Christian homes on Christmas Eve.
The holiday also undermines equal protection and freedom of association, he said. "Christians have equal rights, not special rights.”
In his 59-page response filed last week, Mr. Ganulin cites the defendants' and coalition's sometimes contradictory arguments, saying Christmas cannot be the government's largely cultural/secular event and the deeply religious celebration of the federal employees and coalition.
The federal employees “characterize Christmas ... more honestly than the government,” he said, but they mistakenly conclude their holy day observances can be accommodated with a national holiday without violating the Establishment Clause.
Granted, government can get involved with religion, but only when it advances a “legitimate government interest” or a “compelling state interest” and does not unduly entangle church and state.
Here, there is no government interest, Mr. Ganulin said, and the holiday advances Christian culture as well as Christian religion at the expense of “non-Christians' right to equal protection of the laws and freedom of association.”
If anything, he said, there is compelling state interest in preventing this kind of implicit discrimination and imposed association.
Mr. Ganulin said the holiday “makes it more difficult for non-Christians to live in the United States in a way consistent with their beliefs and associations, makes it more difficult for them to instruct their children about their beliefs and associations, and makes it less likely the children will understand and respect those beliefs and associations.”
The message to non-Christians is that “they are outsiders, not full members of the political community. The accompanying message is received by Christian adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.”
Even though the Constitution calls for government neutrality among religions and between religion and irreligion, Mr. Ganulin continued, “The establishment of Christmas as a national legal public holiday by the government enhances the status of Christians in our society and diminishes the status of non-Christians.”
That, he said, “is a form of government-imposed assimilation.”
Ending Christmas as a paid day off would not impose any burdens on Christians not already borne by non-Christians whose holy days are not national legal public holidays, Mr. Ganulin said.
In that sense, Mr. Ganulin was bothered by the lack of concern among the government, federal employees and coalition “about the many millions of non-Christians ... who have to work on their holy days and have to miss religious services and cannot celebrate the holy days with their families.”
Similarly, they “express no concern whatsoever for those many millions of non-Christians ... who do not celebrate any religious holy days and who are intellectually and emotionally encumbered by the government establishment of a religious holy day as a national legal public holiday.”
Giving non-Christians the same day off does not change anything, Mr. Ganulin said, because Christmas and the arrival of Santa Claus “cannot be every American's celebration.”
Religion has a place in the “fabric of society,” he said, and there is a “ceremonial deism” exception to the Establishment Clause.
That why legislatures can pay chaplains to open their sessions with non-sectarian prayers to God, he said, but Christmas is a sectarian holy day and does not warrant an exception.
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