From Fox-
I can see the headlines now: "Gate-crashers Enter White House; Jesus Kept Out!" Except it almost happened. Really.
I was reading the New York Times Sunday Styles section yesterday (yep, I'm straight) when I came across an article about embattled White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers -- she's the one who broke with previous White House tradition by inviting herself to the state dinner when she should have been at the door keeping out the loopy riff-raff.
But in the twelfth paragraph of the article there was a real bombshell: It said that earlier this year at a luncheon with other previous White House social secretaries, Ms. Rogers claimed that this year the White House would have a "non-religious" Christmas celebration. (For those of you confused by that, it's just like a "non-religious" Yom Kippur celebration, or a "non-Irish" St. Patrick's Day celebration, or an "international" July 4th celebration.)
The Times article continued:
"The lunch conversation inevitably turned to whether the White House would display its crèche, customarily placed in a prominent spot in the East Room. Ms. Rogers, this participant said, replied that the Obamas did not intend to put the manger scene on display — a remark that drew an audible gasp from the tight-knit social secretary sisterhood. (A White House official confirmed that there had been internal discussions about making Christmas more inclusive and whether to display the crèche.)"
In the next sentence we learn that this radical idea was eventually scotched. (Perhaps the "audible gasp" from the bipartisan audience tipped them off.) But the fact that it was going to happen reveals a level of political tone-deafness in the current administration that is staggering. To most average Americans -- who did not grow up in an Ivy-League, inside-the-Beltway hothouse governed by the rules of the French Revolution -- the idea of keeping Jesus out of "the people's house" at Christmas evokes disturbing images of the Holy Family being turned away from the Inn, or worse yet, images of Herod. But to a super-secular White House afraid to offend anyone -- except for average Americans -- it probably just seemed like another fab "progressive" innovation.
More here-
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/12/07/eric-metaxas-white-house-creche-jesus-christmas/
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