Durham NH's Human Rights Commission Calls for End to Town's Christmas Tree Lighting Tradition - Granite Grok

Durham NH’s Human Rights Commission Calls for End to Town’s Christmas Tree Lighting Tradition

christmas tree

It has long been my contention that the Left’s template for America is the modern American College Campus. It spreads to the college town and then the county, state, and nation. Durham, New Hampshire, the home of UNH, continues to prove me right. The towns Human Rights Commission (ack!) has recommended an end to the Towns Christmas Tree lighting ceremony.

“Durham’s Human Rights Commission has recommended ceasing the longtime tradition, with members saying it is associated with the Christian faith and Christmas celebrations, which may be exclusionary to some people who follow different faiths or are atheist.”

Related: Where Colleges Ignore Free Speech Violations and the Legal System Helps

If the state were to presume to vanquish all ‘religious’ expressions from public “space” to appease atheists would that not (at least in spirit) be a violation of the First Amendment? An act of force in favor of a preferred worldview.

If you choose not to decide, You still have made a choice.

To borrow from the band Rush, in the song Freewill, not choosing is a choice. Atheism is a choice represented by the absence of all others. The absence of expressions by an act of will is an expression. Not that anyone could or would take that case to court. Because they’d lose. But Atheism isn’t precisely the issue.

The “troubles began” when a local Rabbi asked to erect a menorah on the same site. 

Rabbi Berel Slavaticki at the UNH & Seacoast Chabad Jewish Center asked to place a 9-foot menorah in the same public park on Main Street where the tree is lit.

Slavaticki was asked to complete an application for a permit, which was denied by Town Administrator Todd Selig because of concerns about vandalism and public safety. 

Don’t worry. It’s not the Jews. It’s Durham. The town that made the leap from Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. Six degrees of separation from reality I’ve explored more than once already. I’m confident they have been waiting for the opportunity to pull the plug on the Christmas Tree lighting tradition. 

They poisoned the waterhole!

The campus culture poisons the local political well. It starts simply and spreads. They invent hate speech, pretend it is a legal term, then demand that they define and police what it is. They create victims classes. Train them to be aggrieved. And use their “suffering” to suppress expressions they oppose.

Things that, conveniently, advance a one-sided partisan political agenda.

And just as the lie of indigenous people’s day will grow and consume the state, so will the rest of the program if normal folks don’t step up and stop it.

The UNH Bias-free language guide is not gone. It lives in the minds of an entire grievance-based curriculum that exists to program future generations to embrace progressive politics without question.

Keep the Tradition Alive in Public view

I don’t think the Lighting ceremony will be saved. Even though the lighting of a tree is actually an ancient pagan tradition adopted by Christians. An expression not unlike the ancient harvest festival we call Thanksgiving, that is also under attack. This is Durham. The campus culture owns the politics and the politicians serve its will.

The public doesn’t have to accept it. And they can certainly do whatever they please on private property. For now.

If it’s a privilege you’d like to keep, the thing you ought to be removed from “the public square” is the Human rights Commission. It’s not there to protect rights. It exists to advance the Left’s social and cultural agenda.

H/T Union Leader

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