This is where my gratefulness ends

....there can be surprises like the one that happened in Manhasset on Dec. 2, when the Rev. Nick Zientarski invoked "Jesus Christ, our Lord" in blessing the Christmas tree at a public ceremony....

That is where I draw the line.

Town Supervisor Jon Kaiman, who had presided at the ceremony, was heard muttering angrily during the blessing. After Father Zientarski finished, Mr. Kaiman stood up and addressed the crowd of about 200.

"This is inappropriate," the supervisor said of the invocation. "I just want to make it clear that this is in no way a religious ceremony."

Mr. Kaiman's response was considered rude by an overwhelming majority of several hundred people who e-mailed or phoned his office afterward to complain.

Manhasset is a village in the town of North Hempstead in Nassau County, Long Island.  While Manhasset might be "overwhelmingly" Christian; North Hempstead isn't.  But that's beside the point.  A display is one thing; reciting The Lords Prayer is something else.  That is pointed and exclusionary. I expect better from Long Island where I was raised thinking all religions were equal.

A prominent local citizen, the Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who has made what he calls the "war on Christmas" a regular feature of "The O'Reilly Factor," scolded Mr. Kaiman on the air.

Mr. Kaiman received several hundred emails and phone calls in protest.

"We have a national holiday called Christmas and the central meaning of Christmas is the birth of Jesus."

That person is right.  Maybe Christmas shouldn't be a national holiday.  While I personally enjoy Christmas and the holiday season--properly called holiday as it goes from Thanksgiving to New Years, often I had to work much overtime to make up for the two days I would take off during the year for the Jewish Holidays.  It did annoy me especially when Good Friday was also a recognized holiday.

This past week I wrote about Christmas and being grateful.  On a comment in another blog my post was in, somebody couldn't understand how I could be grateful to the founding fathers as they are no longer alive.  Hello.  I'm grateful for their foresight.  I am grateful to the huge majority of Christians in this country who recognize that legally America is a secular country.

When I read something like the quote above, and when I read about The Lords Prayer being recited in a public place without other religions being represented, my respect for the Founding Fathers, for the Constitution, for The First Amendment deepens.

We have a president who believes that he is above the law as evidenced by his radio address yesterday, which I'm not going to get into.  He consulted with a "Christian" leader before announcing a Supreme Court nominee.  Again I'm grateful to all the wiser heads who prevailed.

Get it through your heads.  This is my country also; as it is every Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, etc., who are citizens. 

Don't like the changing demographics? 

Leave.

Leave it to us who really love and feel grateful for America and the promises it holds.  Again in that thread on another blog, I was told that every person who is a citizen of a free country should just accept it, and not think about it.

I don't wake up every morning and say:

"Thank G-d, I'm an American."

But I'm glad that my ancestors settled here.  My family has done well here.  We have prospered in ways that might have been impossible anywhere else.  My father probably wouldn't have been able to go to college in another country.  That he was able to was considered to be a miracle by his parents.

I'm glad that I live in a country where I can feel free to protest what I see as wrong.  The reason I wrote the post the other day was that I went to several blogs to comment.  They talked about minority groups coming here and protesting traditional values and ways; they ended with The Lord's Prayer.  What could I say?

As a Jew I did feel insulted.  I could easily blend into the fiber of the country and the blog world.  I don't even believe in G-d.  But I respect how much people have gone through the centuries to remain Jewish. I'm proud to be Jewish; I'm proud to be American, and I'm proud that I have been able to navigate through many cultures and religions.

This is from another article on the same subject.

The Christmas"defense" movement is starting to be openly anti-Semitic. The two people Mr. O'Reilly has demonized the most frequently on the issue are Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," and George Soros, the billionaire financier whom O'Reilly has called the "moneyman" behind the anti-Christmas movement. The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation — the same company that owns Fox News — recently put a story on its front page under the headline "Treeson" about a Jewish town supervisor from Long Island who tried to keep Christian prayers out of a government-sponsored tree-lighting ceremony.

Charges that Jews are behind the "War on Christmas" are beginning to be made directly. The president of Liberty Counsel, a conservative religious group, stated on Fox last year that a Florida mayor was conducting a vendetta against a nativity scene at least partly because he "apparently is Jewish." When a Jewish caller to Mr. O'Reilly's radio show objected to Christmas in the schools, and said that he "grew up with a resentment because I felt that people were trying to convert me to Christianity," Mr. O'Reilly responded. "If you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel."

No, Mr. O'Reilly, this is my country. Israel is not the point here. I neither speak the language nor feel at home there.  Again, this is my country. Three generations of my family lived here before me; another generation is growing up now.

The nation is rapidly becoming more religiously diverse. The percentage of the population that describes itself as Christian has declined to 77 percent in 2000, from 86 percent in 1990. The biggest increase has been in people who do not identify themselves with any religion, a group that has more than doubled since 1990.

America is still very much a country of Christians, these numbers show. But nearly a quarter of the country, representing as many as 70 million people, is not Christian. It stands to reason that stores and politicians would try to take into account the inclinations of such a large part of the population.

So Mr. O'Reilly if anybody leaves I suggest that you do. If you had a parent or grandparent born in Ireland you can become a citizen.

See how stupid this debate can become?  I tried suggesting that people enjoy the secular aspects of Chistmas.  John Gibson works with Bill O'Reilly.

Mr. Gibson takes up the cause of Sherrie Versher, the mother of a 10 1/2-year-old public school student in Plano, Texas. For her daughter Stephanie's birthday, Ms. Versher brought 24 brownies to school, to which she wanted to attach pencils that contained the message: "Jesus Loves Me This I Know Because the Bible Tells Me So." When the principal asked her not to distribute the pencils, she walked through the school building saying, "Satan is in the building."

And what were the kids who aren't Christian supposed to feel?  That they are followers of Satan should be the literal translation.  That is unacceptable.  I will always love Christmas displays.

I will always work to make sure that G-d doesn't become an issue in public schools.  I will always feel uncomfortable when I hear The Lords Prayer in a public place and it's not followed by prayers of other faiths.

Yes, damn it, I do feel grateful to the ACLU for making sure that Bill O'Reilly, John Gibson, Dobson, Frist and more are thwarted in their attempts to make people believe that America isn't a legally Christian country.

To all of who you, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Festivus celebrants, who believe that I'm wrong in being grateful to the founding fathers for their foresight, and for the First Amendment; to forget history and to just live in the moment when it comes to this subject is akin to walking around with blinders on. 

Don't ask me for your help later on.  Now is when we must stand together.  Enjoy the Christmas lights; enjoy the menorah.  But realize that what you might think is an absurd stance by Fox News is growing.  If you can live with a growing anti-Semitic movement, don't take the ACLU for granted now.  You just might need them later. 

Enjoy the holidays.  Just remember that not everybody thinks like you do.  And that is what has made America such a great country; the infusion of minds from different cultures coming together to form a polyglot of ideas and communities.