CINCINNATI -- A Cincinnati lawyer's plot came to naught when his hopes to dash Christmas came before Judge Susan Dlott.
In fact, Dlott, a federal judge, used a nine-stanza poem -- influenced by the Dr. Seuss favorite "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" -- to demolish and dismiss Richard Ganulin's arguments that the establishment of Christ's birthday as a national holiday violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment mandate that government and religion remain separated.Christmas, the judge said in her more formally written opinion accompanying the poem, has become a secularized public holiday, and the U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized that inescapable fact.
"When the government decides to recognize Christmas day as a public holiday, it does no more than accommodate the calendar of public activities to the plain fact that many Americans will expect on that day to spend time visiting with their families, attending religious services and perhaps enjoying some respite from pre-holiday activities," the judge said, quoting from previous federal court decisions.
"Ganulin and his family have the freedom to celebrate, or not celebrate, the religious and the secular aspects of the holiday as they see fit. The court simply does not believe that declaring Christmas to be a legal public holiday impermissibly imposes Christian beliefs on non-adherents in a way that violates the right to freedom of association," the judge said.
In her more poetic reply, Dlott wrote:
The court will address
Plaintiff's seasonal confusion
Erroneously believing Christmas
MERELY a religious intrusion.
Whatever the reason
Constitutional or other
Christmas IS NOT
An act of Big Brother!
Christmas is about joy
And giving and sharing
It is about the child within us
It is mostly about caring!
One is never jailed
For not having a tree
For not going to church
For not spreading glee!
The court will uphold
Seemingly contradictory causes
Decreeing "The establishment" AND "Santa"
Both worthwhile "CLAUS(es)!"
We are all better for Santa
The Easter Bunny too
And maybe the Great Pumpkin
To name just a few!
An extra day off
Is hardly high treason
It may be spent as you wish
Regardless of reason.
The court having read
The lessons of "Lynch"*
Refuses to play
The role of the Grinch!
There is room in this country
And in all our hearts too
For different convictions
And a day off, too!
("Lynch," by the way, refers to a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision.)