The Christmas Wars remind me of a phenomenon that I see repeatedly during volunteer efforts. If I'm in a meeting and a person doesn't like a particular idea, one of the favorite tacts is to raise the specter of liability. "I don't think we want to take on the liability of doing X," "I think we could be liable for damages if something goes wrong with Y."
For whatever reason, people often don't want to address an issue "dead on," so they hide behind worldly-sounding concerns of liability. Whenever I'm in these meetings and the liability alarm is sounded without sufficient reason, I just say, "If you want to be sure to avoid liability, stay home and fold this organization." By making a stark statement, I try to drive home a greater point.
In these Christmas Wars, the attorneys for Christmas are doing a similar thing. Schools frequently hide behind shadowy notions of the First Amendment when persecuting Christmas. Some of the administrators are no doubt sincere: they really don't know when the line of "religious endorsement" is crossed in First Amendment jurisprudence, so they err on the side of being safe--and it's safe to exclude Christ (ironic, but true). For these administrators (which I'm pretty sure are the majority), the Christmas attorneys are doing a valuable service by getting the real jurisprudence in the public spotlight. It helps kill the liability bogeyman that secularists in the classroom and on the school board raise.
Other administrators are simply insincere. They don't like Christmas or Christians, at least in the public sphere, so they persecute them, then try to hide behind the First Amendment. These are the ones that Christmas attorneys are really going after, and, in the process, educating the rest of America. They're to be lauded.
