HOLIDAY BLUES

'Christmas' erased from tree-lighting flyer

American Legion: 'Political correctness has just gone too far'

author-image Cheryl Chumley About | Email | Archive
Cheryl K. Chumley is a journalist, columnist, public speaker and author of "The Devil in DC." and "Police State USA: How Orwell's Nightmare is Becoming our Reality." She is also a journalism fellow with The Phillips Foundation in Washington, D.C., where she spent a year researching and writing about private property rights.
rss feed Subscribe to feed
Print Print
The flyer, before and after school officials ordered the word "Christmas" scrubbed. (Credit: My Fox Boston)

The flyer, before and after school officials ordered the word “Christmas” scrubbed. (Credit: My Fox Boston)

Question: When is a Christmas tree not a Christmas tree?

Answer: When bureaucratic school officials deem the word “Christmas” offensive, and order it scrubbed from publication.

That’s what happened to John Fletcher, the commander of the American Legion in Marlborough, New Hampshire, when he tried to distribute a flyer to students advertising the “Annual Christmas Tree Lighting” event his organization sponsors.

Get the hottest, most important news stories on the Internet – delivered FREE to your inbox as soon as they break! Take just 30 seconds and sign up for WND’s Email News Alerts!

He said he was told by local school Superintendent Robert Malay to “revise” the flyer and take out the word “Christmas,” My Fox Boston reported.

“I was very upset, I really was,” Fletcher said. “If it’s not a school sponsored activity, I don’t understand why Christmas had to come out of ‘Christmas Tree.’ … He wanted me to change it to say ‘holiday tree lighting’ instead.’ It’s not a holiday tree, it’s a Christmas tree. If you want a holiday tree, then do it for Valentine’s Day, or Columbus Day, or whatever you want.”

“The Death of Free Speech: How Our Broken National Dialogue Has Killed the Truth and Divided America” examines how the news media has created arbitrary, biased and illogical rules for determining what can and cannot be said in the public arena.

Fletcher, who served four years in the Air Force, said he and his wife play Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus at the tree-lighting ceremony. And ultimately, he used WhiteOut to take off the word “Christmas” from the flyer, but refused to reword the phrase so that it stated “holiday tree.”

He expressed outrage, however, and said the event had been held for years without issues.

See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”

“In this case, this political correctness has just gone too far,” Fletcher said, My Fox Boston reported. “It’s just getting out of hand. … I respect everybody’s rights, but don’t take our rights away from us.”

Print Print
Note: Read our discussion guidelines before commenting.