Signs of Season Include Legal Spats Over Church-State Issues

To Staver, it's "absurd" to call a Christmas tree a "holiday" tree, to encourage public officials not to say "Merry Christmas," or to in any way downplay the inherently religious story at the root of Christmas, which is a federal holiday.

But to groups concerned about church-state mingling, the issue isn't whether government acknowledges the holidays, but how. The government can't appear to be endorsing one faith over another, said Ayesha Khan, legal director at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

Supreme Court rulings have said "you can erect a display that sends an overall secular message about the joyous holiday celebration. But you can't erect a display that sends a message that, 'Hey, we love Christ's birth.' It shouldn't be a religious message," Khan said.

Conservative legal groups often disagree with groups such as Americans United about what constitutes "overall" -- whether the religious part of the display dominates. They also view displays that are privately donated but on public property as "private speech," held to a different standard than government speech.

Americans United got about 50 calls this year, double what it typically gets, Khan said. She has sent out about three times as many letters as usual this year to communities that put up a Nativity scene and nothing else. Callers also ask about the legality of gospel performances in schools and school choirs performing at local churches.

"We always get [holiday] complaints from people who object to things we see as permissible, and we don't do anything about those," Khan said. "But some percentage of calls are legitimate, and this year we're getting more legitimate ones than in the past."

Khan believes the Bush administration and conservative advocacy groups are encouraging municipalities to cross the church-state separation line. "Then the holiday becomes a political football to advance a political agenda," she said. "There are forces out there fomenting a divisive perspective on these issues versus an inclusive one, a calming inclusive approach to the issue of diversity."

Thomas Hutton, a senior staff attorney for the National School Boards Association, said his office always gets more calls around the holidays. The group devoted an entire newsletter to holiday-related legal issues three years ago, he said.

This year, however, things seem quieter, possibly because so much attention has been given to the issue that school officials are getting more educated about what is legal and what isn't, Hutton said.

But the disputes remain, and remain bitter. In Exmore, Gilsdorf noted that the town is predominantly Southern Baptist and Methodist and said the only people who complained about the Nativity scene were from Richmond, Norfolk and Washington -- "particularly in Washington," he said.

Khan, whose group requested the town change or take down its display, said the person who brought the issue to Americans United is from Exmore but wants to remain anonymous. "This whole area of law, people are very frightened to come forward," Khan said.

All sides agree the issue will vanish -- literally, if nothing else -- in a matter of days.

"We're stalling until Christmas," Gilsdorf said. "You think we're stupid?"