This story of jovial civil disobedience has been in the front page of the Lakeland paper for a week. The story started when Baptists put a manger on the Polk County building lawn in the middle of the night after being turned down by a 2-2 vote. Then, a Festivus display joined it. The county commission is taking its own sweet time in getting the signs down, essentially allowing the displays to stay up through Christmas.
There isn't a whole lot of harm in allowing it to stay, except that the spirit of Roy Moore is all over this, where you're allowed to tell authority to shove it if you're following a Higher Authority. I'm not sure if I can quantify it, but there seems to be a lot of anti-anti-Christmas rhetoric flying through the media and the blogosphere this year, of getting more hot and bothered over the secular Scrooges. Given that attitude, such disobedience might well become more common, with conservative-leaning localities looking the other way.
By the way, Polk County's not one of those very Jewish areas on the Atlantic coast; it's more redneck than cosmopolitan. It just seemed to be a good title for a exasperating creche issue.
Manger scenes and Festivus signs - multiculturalism rocks!
Posted by: Alan K. Henderson | December 27, 2004 at 12:17 AM