This is a defense of Christmas displays by a Jewish woman, and more important, a clear explanation of the legal battle behind the secularization of Christmas and Hanukah in America (spoiler alert: There is a link to China). It’s important for intercessors to know about and understand the strategic efforts of the ACLU and how this has changed the culture.

From Outspoken With Dr. Naomi Wolf.  … Then — in 1989, an important lawsuit deconstructed Christmas — and Hanukah, for that matter — in America. In the lawsuit “County of Allegheny vs ACLU,” according to that organization’s website Oyez.com:

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“Two public-sponsored holiday displays in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, were challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union. The first display involved a Christian nativity scene inside the Allegheny County Courthouse. The second display was a large Chanukah menorah, erected each year by the Chabad Jewish organization, outside the City-County building. The ACLU claimed the displays constituted state endorsement of religion. This case was decided together with Chabad v. ACLU and City of Pittsburgh v. ACLU of Greater Pittsburgh.”

I was surprised to read this, because in the yawning, ever-hungry abyss, where national memories that don’t fit “the narrative” go to die, the fact that the ACLU took aim in this famous case against the display of a public Menorah — as well as against a public Christian creche, which in contrast is widely known — has been utterly lost to history. Those who want to share their Nativity scenes openly in public with their neighbors, are depicted in “the narrative” as thug-like Christian white supremacists. It’s been entirely erased from American history that the people of Allegheny got in trouble with the ACLU for inviting their Jewish neighbors to share with the larger community the joy, pride and symbolism of their minority-religion Hanukkiah.

Indeed, this case, that changed America, is an odd one. It’s as weirdly decided as was Roe v. Wade.

According to the ACLU, the central question of the case was whether or not the two displays — remember: one Christian, one Jewish — violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This clause forbids the State from establishing a government-endorsed religion. The Court said that one symbol did, and one did not:

“In a 5-to-4 decision, the Court held that the creche inside the courthouse unmistakably endorsed Christianity in violation of the Establishment Clause.By prominently displaying the words “Glory to God for the birth of Jesus Christ,” the county sent a clear message that it supported and promoted Christian orthodoxy. The Court also held, however, that not all religious celebrations on government property violated the Establishment Clause. Six of the justices concluded that the display involving the menorah was constitutionally legitimate given its “particular physical setting”, reports the ACLU.

As a Jew, I find the reasoning in Allegheny vs ACLU to be odd. How is a Menorah outside the courthouse not establishing a religion, but a creche inside the courthouse, is doing so? I can see that a creche inside a courthouse would violate the Establishment clause; but the reasoning in this case was so heavy-handed and literal — why not move BOTH the creche and the Menorah outside the courthouse, and invite other religious displays? Or move them to a park or to outside the library? — that it crushed Christmas as a public occasion of collective joy, as well as Hanukkah, for the next 34 years.

Let’s look more closely at the Establishment Clause. What is it? According to the Legal Information Institute, a site funded by Cornell University:

“The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law ‘respecting an establishment of religion.’ This clause not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion, but also prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another. It also prohibits the government from unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion.”

But — is that interpretation actually correct? Or is it an example of the migration of definitions that are proliferating everywhere these days, especially in relation to our history, our Constitution, and other key concepts of our national life?

Hm. Is China at war with our religious freedom — our freedom to worship — just as it is with our statues, our holidays, our patriotic symbols and our core iconography?

In one click, we see that in 2019 Cornell University was investigated for accepting millions of dollars in gifts from China (and Qatar), and unlawfully not disclosing them to Federal officials. In addition to $65 million from Qatar — undisclosed to government agencies concerned about national security issues – – China made huge investments in the university, that also bypassed national security checks. “Cornell has also received $12.5 million worth of contracts and gifts based in China. Over $5 million of that money was from contracts with Huawei, a technology company listed by the federal government as one that is denied sensitive technology because it is a danger to national security. The $5.3 million payment, spread over two research contracts […], was the largest payout to an American university in the last six years, the Cornell Sun reported.” China’s influence only grew in the next four years, and was deeply institutionalized. In December 2022, the Cornell Faculty Senate called for the “disentanglement” of Cornell University from its Chinese partners, from whom it wads generating millions in revenue; the school had launched a joint offerings in its famous hospitality program, and had launched a “global hub” with China as a partner.

This is just one Ivy League university, but the money flow to just this university shows that actual Marxists may have a powerful hand in the twisting of legal definitions related to our Constitution, that that university is producing for the world.

So, ignoring the diffused, tendentious, anti-religious expression definition in the (Marxist-funded)-Cornell University-funded website, let us go to the primary text. What is the text of the Establishment Clause, while we can still access it?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

But — is displaying a creche outside a public building, along with other religious symbols and images as the community chooses, the same as Congress “mak[ing a] law respecting an establishment of religion? Does it prevent people from freely exercising their religions? Or is it actually an example of people freely exercising their religion, which is what the actual wording of the Establishment Clause, seeks to protect?

I would say that the people of Allegheny actually had it mostly right, per the Constitution, and should have moved the local Nativity scene outdoors proudly to join the local Menorah, rather than having had to spend taxpayer dollars defending themselves from the ravening ACLU, and the too-broad sweep of the ruling of the Court.

Paradoxically, the people of Allegheny’s openness to Americans’ multiple, free, open expressions of worship, is exactly what the Establishment Clause is meant to protect. Our Constitution does not say anywhere, and certainly not in the Establishment Clause, that we must hide symbols of our various religious expressions. It says the opposite.

Though different courts would decide in different ways on how or if religion should feature in public life, the chill this decision cast on any sharing of Christmas as a joyful religious occasion, or Hanukkah for that matter, was absolute.

Who wants to cross the line and get sued by the ACLU? Or by a neighbor?

I remember the media coverage of this case. Newsweeklies reported it as if: thank God, the ACLU had saved America from being ravished by screaming Bible-thumpers. There was little questioning of what this decision would do to us, or even if it was a correct interpretation by the court.

So overnight, it seemed to me, people reacted, understandably enough, by scrubbing the religious expressions of the holidays. …

In the 2000s, a new wave of cultural change is targeting what little is left of the warm memory of the season, and erasing entirely the story of that baby’s birth, from Western culture. The Daily Mail reported in 2020 that half of Britain’s schools had cancelled Nativity plays — surely the breaking of the chain of memory among generations of British schoolchildren. This breaking of the chain between generations of children, was one goal of the “lockdowns”, a point I made generally in my book The Bodies of Others. The Daily Mail reports now that Nativity plays in schools are being “repackaged” to refer to pop TV shows, such as The Great British Bake-Off, and to celebrities, instead of following the traditional Nativity scripts handed down for decades.

Alarmingly, when I searched “Daily Mail” and “Nativity Plays No More”, I saw that stories about schools banning Nativity plays, or barring parents from attending their own children’s Nativity plays, go back to 2012, with a drumbeat of escalation in recent years. This is the drip, drip, drip of water intentional set slowly to boil — of deliberate cultural change.

Of course, you know where this is going, because Marxists do not like families, just as they don’t like religion. Schools in England now banned parents from attending their own children’s Nativity plays. Due to? Colds, flus and COVID. The State has finally taken your child, and your Christmas, away. …

This illogical, childish notion — that asserting a cultural or religious identity somehow by definition offends or diminishes or erases anyone else’s — has to be consigned to the garbage heap of history’s most pernicious ideas.

This premise will leave our culture a parking lot with a quarantine camp attached, as I have said before. And that is exactly its intention.

This premise is China’s and the WEF’s way of making us all ashamed of ourselves, so that we never have transcendence again — and so our kids have no idea what Western — or American — values, really are.

The WEF and China know what they are doing. …

Eventually the Western religious celebrations of this season — that energy that redeems and saves us from the deepest, scariest winter — will be the faintest and most marginalized of memories, for the generations to come.

But no one will notice what is really happening, or understand — or care.

So let us fight these plans too that the demons of our era, have for us. ACLU vs Allegheny was decided wrongly.

We need to honor and remember the terms of our Constitution, and strengthen ourselves in our current life-and-death fight against the “globalist neo-Marxists”, by refusing to let our free expression of religion, be silenced. …

Whoever you are, however you worship, please honor our Founders by expressing your religion freely out in the open without fear in exactly the way you choose.

Friend — American — whoever you are,

Merry Christmas.

Dr. Naomi Wolf appeared on an IFA webcast recently:

(Excerpt from Outspoken with Dr. Naomi Wolf. Photo credit: pixelshot for CanvaPro)