Although it's been said many times, many ways

Some of you have probably heard of the contested decision in Maplewood, New Jersey to ban Christmas carols, even in instrumental versions, from school programs. As I'm sure you all know, I'm very much in favor of separation of church and state, but that kind of thing is ridiculous. I think an important issue that the school district seemed to be missing is that singing a song doesn't mean you have to AGREE with it. Sure, if someone is actually offended, that's a different matter, but I don't think that was the case. Christmas songs that mention Jesus being born aren't generally "WORSHIP CHRIST OR DIE!" types of things. There are apparently some other instances of religious and secular people and institutions fighting over how the holidays should be acknowledged in public places, some of them being mentioned here. Of course, the Religious Right has taken things like this as proof that Christmas and Christianity are both under attack, because, well, the Religious Right pretty much always thinks they're under attack. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that there are more occasions of right-wingers insisting you can't say "Merry Christmas" than there are of bans like the Maplewood one. But when people complain that it's not "politically correct" to say "Merry Christmas" because "Christ" is in it, why do they offer "Happy Holidays" as a PC alternative? Doesn't "holiday" come from "holy day"? And do the people who want to "put Christ back in Christmas" also, for the sake of consistency, want to put the goddess Eostre back in Easter? Isn't the "reason for the season" really the Earth tilting on its axis?

While I'm all for diversity in acknowledgement of the winter holidays, I still think the recent version of "Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire" that I heard on the radio was a bit on the ridiculous side. Towards the end, the singer (I don't know who it was) followed "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Hanukkah" and "Happy Kwanzaa." Isn't that rather patronizing? I mean, the song's official title is "The Christmas Song," right? And it has a verse about Santa, who, as far as I know, isn't part of most Hanukkah and Kwanzaa celebrations. If you really wanted to acknowledge these other holidays, why not sing separate songs about them, instead of trying to work them into a secular Christmas song? Besides, why mention Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, and not, say, Yule or Tet?

While Maplewood probably went too far in separating church and state, I can think of some people who should probably go farther in doing so. I'm thinking of those people with "God bless America" bumper stickers. Why would an all-powerful being be concerned with an earthly government? Granted, many religions, including Judaism, were largely founded on God favoring a particular nation. Christianity was born in the pagan Roman Empire, though. It wasn't until Emperor Constantine came along that Christianity became a state religion, and it's never been one here in the United States. I guess jingoistic fundamentalists like to think that God is also an American jingoist, but isn't God showing special favor to the States kind of against the basic idea of Christianity?

On a completely unrelated note, I often find myself wishing that there were a way to search the Web without getting results for pages selling stuff. Or is there a way to do this, and I just don't know about it? I realize the commercial value of the Internet, but I would rather not have to trudge through a bunch of commercial sites when looking for real information.