Comment by John Kelly on December 3, 2011 at 9:12pm

My thoughts about Christmas trees are that at present, their only use is for Christmas.  Though there are many of us who are no longer Christians, but we celebrate Christmas.  I think it is okay to recognize the Christian contribution to the present holiday. 

At the same time, I think it is just fine to recognize hitchens point that the Christmas tree is not religion specific, and has been part of winter festival culture as ideology has shifted, so it is totally fine to go swipe it for the creation of a new secular holiday if that is what one choses to do.

I don't believe the establishment clause is being properly interpreted, because the actual clause only addresses what laws can or cannot be made, and it was never written to address the breadth of what it is applied to after particular supreme court rulings since the 20th century.

It makes the constitution sloppy to apply meanings for things it wasn't intended to address by the original author rather than making new amendments that clearly are meant to address the specific problems they are written for and nothing else.  This amendment is only meant to say what laws can and cannot be made.  The practical application of this law only placed restrictions on the legislative branch.  Congress themselves when drafting the constitution held prayers for guidance, at the institution of that by Benjamin Franklin.   This can be found in the us historical records of the minutes of the day this was proposed by Ben Franklin and the controversy that ensued as a result. They intended a semi deist semi theistic nation.  However, they omitted a creator out of the constitution because they wanted to tone down the role of the supernatural in government.  They did not want to entirely omit it, but at that time, the omission brought it to the perfect level.  It has been stretched since them, and at this time a new amendment needs to be drafted establishing this country as no longer deist-theist, but rather purely secular.  But seeing as congress continued to practice praying for guidance even after they used that method to help them draft the constitution, up to this current day, the idea that the nation is secular is just a strange error in thought.  It is secular in that it has no dominant religion guiding things, but not in that it has no connection to religion of any kind.

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