Oral Tradition and the Game of Telephone: A.N. Sherwin-White’s Famous Quote

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Telephone and the gospelsThe time from the death of Jesus to the writing of the first gospel was about 40 years. An exciting story being passed along orally in a world full of supernatural characters seems bound to be “improved,” deliberately or inadvertently, as it moves from person to person.
While some epistles were written earlier, the details Paul gives about the life of Jesus can be summarized in one very short paragraph (more here). How can we dismiss the possibility that any actual history of Jesus is lost through a decades-long game of telephone?
Christian rebuttal
Apologist William Lane Craig says that 40 years is too short a period for legend to develop. He points to a claim made by A.N. Sherwin-White in Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (1963).

According to Sherwin-White, the writings of Herodotus enable us to determine the rate at which legend accumulates, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states that for the gospels to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be “unbelievable.” More generations would be needed. (Source)

Craig’s conclusion is quoted widely and was popularized in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ (2008), and it sounds like a thorough slap down of the legend claim. However, when we see what Sherwin-White actually said, we find that Craig’s confidence is unwarranted.
(From this point forward, I’ll use “SW” to refer to historian A.N. Sherwin-White.)
SW never said “unbelievable”
Incredibly, the word “unbelievable,” which Craig puts into the mouth of SW, is not used by him in the relevant chapter in this book. If the word comes from another source, Craig doesn’t cite it. Craig also quotes the word in his essay in Jesus Under Fire (1995).
We all make mistakes, but it’s been almost twenty years. Where is Craig’s correction?
What did SW actually say?
From his Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament:

Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, and the tests suggest that even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core of the oral tradition. (RSRL, 190)

SW proposes an interesting experiment. If we can find examples in history where legend has crept into oral history and we have more reliable sources that let us compare that with what actually happened, we can measure how fast legendary material accumulates.
Notice the limitations in what SW is saying.

  • He cites several examples where historians have (hopefully) successfully sifted truth from myth, but Herodotus is the only example used to put a rate on the loss of historic truth. This isn’t a survey of, say, a dozen random historic accounts that each validates a two-generation limit.
  • He isn’t saying that myth doesn’t accumulate, and he’s not proposing a rate at which it does. He’s writing instead about the loss of accurate history (“the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core”).
  • He is careful to use the word “suggest” above. William Lane Craig imagines an immutable law that SW clearly isn’t proposing.

What is SW’s point?
Here is more of what SW is saying.

All this suggests that, however strong the myth-forming tendency, the falsification does not automatically and absolutely prevail. (RSRL, 191)
The point of my argument is not to suggest the literal accuracy of ancient sources, secular or ecclesiastical, but to offset the extreme skepticism with which the New Testament narratives are treated in some quarters. (RSRL, 193)

Craig imagines that myth never overtakes historic truth in two generations. By contrast, SW says that myth doesn’t always overtake historic truth.
Consider Craig’s difficulty. He proposes what may be the most incredible story possible: that a supernatural being created the universe and came to earth as a human and that this was recorded in history. We have a well-populated bin labeled “Mythology” for stories like this. If Craig is to argue that, no, this one is actually history, SW’s statement is useless. “Well, myth might not have overtaken historic truth” does very little to keep Craig’s religion from the Mythology bin.
Limitations in SW’s statement

  • Though SW is confident that history can be sifted out of the myth, he gives no procedure for reliably doing so.
  • It’s been 50 years since his book, which is plenty of time for scholars to weigh in. If they’ve said nothing, that gives us little confidence that SW is onto something useful. But if a consensus response has emerged, that is what we should be considering, not SW’s original proposal.
  • The examples that SW considers—Tiberius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and others—are all important public figures. Jesus was not. Legendary drift is slow when everyone experienced the impact of the figure directly and might correct a story themselves. By contrast, only a handful of people could rein in an errant Jesus story (more here).
  • SW’s examples are all secular leaders. Is Herodotus a relevant example when we’re concerned about the growth of a religious tale? Consider Sathya Sai Baba, an Indian guru who died in 2011 with millions of followers. Supernatural tales grew up around him in his own lifetime. (More on the growth of legends here and here.)

SW proves too much!
William Lane Craig must walk a fine line since he can’t completely reject mythological development. Myth is his enemy when it comes to the New Testament books written 40 to 70 years after the death of Jesus. He must downplay myth to label these as history. But myth is his friend when it comes to the noncanonical books of the second century—the Gospel of Thomas, the Shepherd of Hermas, and so on. Here he imagines the mists of time separating the authors of those books from the actual history.
And, bizarrely, Craig’s own quote gives support to the skeptics’ concern about legend creeping into the gospels! Apologists don’t read SW’s chapter directly; they prefer Craig’s quote. It’s a much better data point with which to argue that the gospels are accurate—if you can get past that small issue of it being completely inaccurate.
Sticky, not accurate, is what gets passed along. This is true for Craig as it is for the gospel story.

In the beginning, God created man in his own image.
Man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.
— Rousseau

References: These sources provided much valuable material for this post.

Photo credit: Bindaas Madhavi

Faith Shows the Emperor has No Clothes

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Suppose a religion worshipped a god that didn’t exist. How could it endure? Wouldn’t it be immediately exposed as a fraud?
Not if it turned thinking on its head and argued that not reason but faith* is actually the proper way to look at the world, or at least the religious part of it. Fellow believers would encourage this faith-trumps-reason worldview. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and just have faith!
Defending an invisible God and celebrating faith is exactly what Christians would do if their religion were manmade. Faith is always the last resort. If there were convincing evidence, Christians would be celebrating that, not faith.
Augustine said, “Do not understand so you may believe; instead believe so you may understand.” But why? You don’t do that in any other area of life. You don’t pick a belief system first and then select facts to support it; it’s the other way around. You follow the facts where they lead.
Faith is permission to believe without good reason. Believing something because it is reasonable and rational requires no faith at all. If you don’t have enough evidence to cross an intellectual gulf to the belief on the other side, and if only faith will get you there, then don’t cross that gulf.
It’s a bizarre world where faith not only trumps reason but is celebrated since we use reason all the time to get through life. Only by using reason and following the evidence—that is, rejecting beliefs built on faith—did we build the technology-filled world we live in today.
In fact, faith is the worst decision-making and analytical tool possible. You don’t use faith to cross a busy street, or learn French, or treat malaria. It provides no method for distinguishing between true and false propositions. Faith doesn’t provide a reliable answer but simply discourages further questions. It’s even worse than guessing, because with a guess, you’re at least open to revisiting a decision in the face of new evidence. Not so with faith.
No one relies on faith unless their god weren’t just invisible but was actually nonexistent.

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic
is no more to the point than the fact
that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
— George Bernard Shaw

(This is an updated post that originally appeared 10/7/11.)
Photo credit: Wikipedia
*By faith, I mean belief without sufficient evidence. Christians might respond that their definition of faith is identical to that for trust: belief in accord with sufficient evidence. In my experience, however, Christians use each of these definitions for faith, switching them as necessary. If they stuck to just one, that might clear up a lot of problems.

Why is Starbucks Taking the Christ out of Croissants?

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Starbucks CroissantThe popular French croissant is said to have been made in the shape of the crescent moon on the Ottoman flag, symbol of Islam, after the defeat of the Muslims by a combined Christian force at the siege of Vienna in 1683.
Every croissant eaten celebrates the destruction of the Muslim forces. But what do we do with croissants that aren’t crescent shaped? Blasphemy of blasphemies, Starbucks has now introduced a square pastry that they’re calling a “croissant.”
Ah, well—not much of an issue on a day that celebrates something that didn’t happen and ignores the thing that does.
Happy Holidays, Christmas, Yule, Solstice, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, etc.!

The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round.
For I have seen the shadow on the moon,
and I have more faith in a shadow
than in the Church.
— Ferdinand Magellan

Inspiration credit: Rada and Anu
Photo credit: Starbucks

How Christianity Infantilizes Adults

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ChristmasHave you heard the song “Christmas Shoes” from about ten years ago? Patton Oswalt tore it up in a clever comedy bit (video 7:49, rated R for language), and he makes an excellent point about the illogic of what Christians tell themselves.
The song tells the story of a guy who’s in yet another long line before Christmas, not really in the Christmas spirit. Ahead of him in line is a grubby kid holding a pair of shoes. When it’s the kid’s turn, he tells the clerk his story, that he’s buying his mother shoes to make her feel better. She’s sick, and he wants her to look her best if she meets Jesus that night.
The kid counts out the price in pennies, and it turns out that he doesn’t have enough. So he turns to our hero who feels sorry for the kid and pays for the shoes. The story concludes:

I knew I’d caught a glimpse of heaven’s love
As he thanked me and ran out
I knew that God had sent that little boy
To remind me just what Christmas is all about.

It’s a sweet story, and lots of people filter life’s events through a Christian lens in this way to see God’s benevolent purpose behind things. But let’s analyze this to see how “heaven’s love” worked in this situation.
What the story really says
God sees the cranky guy in line. He gives the kid’s mom some hideous disease, puts the kid in line in front of Mr. Cranky, and makes the kid a little short on cash so that this Christmas miracle could happen. In other words, God needs to make someone die and leave a kid motherless to spread a little Christmas spirit.
Is that the best explanation for the evidence? Is that an explanation that a Christian would want? What kind of insane deity would do that? Perhaps good and bad things just happen, without divine cause, and we can use events in our lives to prod us to consider what’s important. We don’t need God and we don’t need to be a Christian to be delighted by life, find silver linings, and use everyday events to remind us of things to be thankful for.
Reinterpreting events through a Christian lens can be comforting, and it patches holes in the Good Ship Christianity where reason leaks in. But this is simply a rationalization to support a presupposition, not an honest following of the evidence, and when you stop to think of what you’re actually saying, you’ll see that the reality you’ve invented not only makes no sense but is actually repulsive.
When Christians wonder why atheists get agitated, this kind of empty childish thinking is often the cause.
A coin in a wishing well
Consider another story. Suppose a girl sick with cancer throws a coin into a wishing well and asks to get better. The net effect is that the girl is a little happier, like she took a happiness pill.
But this wishing well belief is just an ancient custom. We all know that wishing wells don’t really do anything. Should you break the news to her?
Few of us would. What’s the point? She actually does feel better, and she’ll have plenty of time to deal with reality as an adult. She has guardians in her life who will protect her as necessary, shielding her so that she can hold this false but helpful belief.
But for someone to become an adult, that person must grow up. We leave behind wishing wells, Santa Claus, fairies, and other false beliefs as we become independent. No longer are the necessities of life given to us; as adults, we must fend for ourselves—indeed, we want to fend for ourselves. The parent who sugarcoats reality or keeps the child dependent for too long is doing that child no favors.
Reality is better than delusion, happy though that delusion may be. Hearing the doctor say, “You’ll be just fine” feels a lot better than “You have cancer,” but if I really have cancer, which one allows me to take steps to improve my future?
Religion infantilizes adults and keeps them dependent. That’s a good thing for the 100-billion-dollar-a-year U.S. religion industry, but what is best for the individual—a pat on the head or reality?

When I was a child,
I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child;
but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
— 1 Corinthians 13:11

(This is a modified version of a post originally published 1/13/12.)

Review of Sarah Palin’s “Good Tidings and Great Joy”: the Ugly

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Sarah Palin’s Christmas bookLet’s conclude our look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in Sarah Palin’s book about the War on Christmas, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas (read part 1 here).
In a book by a Tea Party figurehead, you’ve got to expect a nod to conservative values, and Palin nods like a bobblehead. We hear about Nancy Pelosi’s outrageous budget and the “Lamestream media,” how guns are great, how abortion and the ACLU are terrible, that “under God” must stay in the Pledge, how the secular Left has little but a failed welfare state as its legacy, that Obamacare sucks, and isn’t it great that Chick-fil-A said what had to be said about same-sex marriage?
The heartbreak of “Happy Holidays”
Palin is primarily outraged at two things, that non-Christians protest government promotion of Christian holidays (discussed in part 2 here) and stores saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”
After a long discussion of the anguish this causes Christians, she declares victory by quoting a Wal-Mart spokesperson:

[In 2006,] we’re not afraid to say, “Merry Christmas.” (79)

Whew! That takes care of one the items on my Top Ten list (and I’m delighted to see that this problem has been resolved for years). If we could get World Peace figured out, that would be the icing on the cake.
The naughty list
I’ll conclude this over-long review with a partial list of errors in Palin’s book. There are too many to discuss in detail, but they are too important to let pass without a quick response. These mindless talking points can rally the troops but only if those troops have no interest in thinking through the issues.

  • Declaration of Independence. “Our Declaration of Independence states that we are endowed by our ‘Creator’ with our rights.” In the first place, the Declaration makes clear that “Governments [derive] their just powers from the consent of the governed,” not God, and in the second, the Declaration doesn’t govern the country, the very secular Constitution does. More here.
  • 9/11 Cross. American Atheists protested putting this piece of cross-shaped rubble (that wasn’t actually found in the Twin Towers site) in a publicly supported museum and notes that God “couldn’t be bothered to stop the terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name.” Palin is offended, just like those thin-skinned atheists. (I discuss this issue more here.)
  • Here’s why no one likes you. “There’s a reason why voters don’t necessarily like voting for an atheist. Voters don’t want to give power to someone who doesn’t believe he or she will someday have to answer to the Ultimate Authority.” And should that apply in a country governed by a secular constitution that rejects any religious test for public office (see Article 6)?
  • Hey, gang! Find the error in this sentence! “Our Judeo-Christian heritage is the source of the very freedoms [the atheists] so angrily use to denounce Christ and to rid His very mention from the public square.” Wrong again. The freedoms we see as fundamental—democracy, trial by jury, no slavery, freedom of religion, and so on—are the last things the Bible would have encouraged. More here.
  • Objective moral truth? “Without God as an objective standard, who’s to say what’s wrong and what’s right?” Nope. God doesn’t ground laws made in this country. Laws are made through secular means—think back to high school Civics class. More here.
  • Charity. “Studies show Christians are America’s most generous givers.” Not really. Remove giving to churches (which are no more charities than country clubs) and you see a different story. More here.
  • Gee, how does evolution work again? “I bet Charles Darwin never understood this. If the world could be described as truly ‘survival of the fittest,’ why would people collectively be stricken with a spirit of generosity in December? … It doesn’t make sense.” Do you even understand what “survival of the fittest” means? Read a little more broadly, and you’ll discover that nice qualities like cooperation and trust can make a population fitter. More here.
  • What would baby Jesus think? In any book on the War on Christmas, abortion is always relevant. “A culture that reveres our Creator and respects the sanctity of innocent life does not condone killing its own children.” Since “our Creator” ends half of all pregnancies, I don’t see why baby Jesus should cry about abortion. More here.
  • Morality. “No matter how much the liberals protest, there’s a relationship between Christianity and a healthy civilization.” Yeah—a negative relationship. Researcher Gregory Paul compares European countries and the U.S. and concludes, “Of the 25 socioeconomic and environmental indicators, the most theistic and procreationist western nation, the U.S., scores the worst in 14 and by a very large margin in 8, very poorly in 2, average in 4, well or very in 4, and the best in 1.” More here.
  • Morality is deteriorating. Social change can be stressful, but we must ignore the headlines of the moment to look at the big picture. In fact, U.S. violent crime has plunged more than 70% in the last twenty years. Red states have higher crime rates than blue states. In the year since the school shootings at Sandy Hook, Republican legislatures have helped make the majority of new gun laws loosen gun restrictions. This isn’t quite the picture of morality Palin’s book suggests. She seems to imagine the America of her childhood as a 60s sitcom world, where the problems were small and everyone got along. But when she was born, the Civil Rights Act that outlawed much discrimination by race, gender, religion, and national origin hadn’t been signed. Laws prohibited mixed-race marriage in 17 states. Laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation were decades away. Social change isn’t easy, but some has been good. Think more deeply before concluding that things are going downhill. More here.
  • How’s that atheism workin’ out for you, Comrade? “Soviet Communism is organically linked to atheism.” That’s true, but that’s because Communism saw the church as competition, not because atheism created Communism. “Atheism’s track record makes the Spanish Inquisition seem like Disneyland by comparison.” Oh? Show me just one person killed in the name atheism. Let’s be clear on cause and effect: Stalin was an atheist because he was a dictator, not vice versa. More here.
  • Christianity’s fight against slavery. Palin quotes Thomas Sowell, who says that business, religion, and Western imperialism “together destroyed slavery around the world.” It’d be nice if that were true. Slavery was made illegal but it wasn’t eliminated, and there are an estimated 27 million slaves today. That’s almost forty times the number of Alaska residents. In absolute numbers, slavery is bigger today than it’s ever been. Yes, Christians were important in the war against slavery, but they were on the other side as well. That’s because pretty much everyone in the West was a Christian, and the Bible gives powerful support for slavery. More here.

Palin’s book is much ado about nothing. She’s determined to feel offended and see injuries to Christianity everywhere she looks. Unfortunately, she misses an opportunity to use her credibility within the conservative community to point out that Christian-only displays on state-supported property are both unfair and illegal.
Palin has embraced what I’m still having a hard time with: “Can’t we all just get along?” doesn’t sell.

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded.
And, the atoms in your left hand probably came
from a different star than your right hand.
It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics:
You are all stardust.
So, forget Jesus.
The stars died so that you could be here today.
— Lawrence M. Krauss

Photo credit: Photo Dean

Review of Sarah Palin’s “Good Tidings and Great Joy”: the Bad

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Sarah Palin’s Christmas bookWe’re critiquing Sarah Palin’s book about the War on Christmas, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas. I’m pulling out the good, the bad, and the ugly in the book. With this post, it’s the Bad.
Palin is determined to play one of the many besieged but brave Christians living out their simple and honest faith, as is their God-given right. She imagines angry atheists lurking behind every lamp pole muttering Scrooge’s words like a mantra, “If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!”
Let’s see if those fears of persecution hold up.
Separation of church and state
Palin enumerates many recent cases where she feels that Christians’ rights in America have been stepped on. Santa Monica is one such case. For decades, the city allowed an elaborate nativity scene on public land, but protests forced the city to assign slots to groups from any religion by lottery. In 2011, atheist organizations won 18 of 21 which, of course, brought the Christians out to protest. Forced to change the rules yet again, the city didn’t allow any displays in 2012.
The city went from one religion showcased, to all religions, to none. This is typical of the evolution in other cases. (If allowing all comers bothers Christians, I don’t know why that is hard to anticipate up front. And why seeing example after example of this progression doesn’t make Christians realize that religious displays on public land just don’t make sense.)
Though atheists are imagined as the Grinch, this isn’t to say that Christians in Santa Monica were muzzled or that churches or front yards couldn’t display Christmas messages, as always. It’s just that citizens’ tax money and the prestige of the government weren’t given to promote Christianity.
We’re seeing more examples in 2013. There’s a “Keep the Saturn in Saturnalia” billboard responding to a “Keep Christ in Christmas” sign in a town in New Jersey, and a Satanist monument is planned to go up next to a Ten Commandments display on public land in Oklahoma City. Here’s an idea: just cut to the chase and avoid all religious displays on public land.
Palin wonders why everyone is mean to Christians with a quote from the president of Fox News:

What the hell is so offensive about putting up a plastic Jewish family on my lawn at Chistmastime? (32)

It’s not. That’s not what we’re talking about. No one cares about Christian or Satanist or Pastafarian displays on private land; it’s religion promoted on public land that’s the issue.
What Would the Constitution Do?
Much is made about “angry atheists” and their darn lawyers. Palin says,

Thanks to a highly technical quirk in constitutional law very few people know about and even fewer understand, [atheists] are very, very influential. An angry atheist with a lawyer is one of the most powerful persons in America. (22)

This odd “quirk” is simply that you needn’t be personally injured to bring a lawsuit against a government—being forced to pray, for example. A violation of First Amendment rights is enough.
She lampoons this with,

This means people can silence their fellow citizens for no other reason than the fact that they were offended. (25)

No, the Constitution was offended. Since the Constitution gives us our rights in this country, that sounds like a big deal. I’m surprised that Palin doesn’t agree.
Her view on this battle is:

the [atheist] Scrooges flex their illegitimately gained legal muscles (39)

with no explanation for what is illegitimate. Her complaint is not that atheists are breaking any law but that they have lawsuits as options to get church/state errors redressed.
Sarah Palin v. Constitution
Sarah Palin was the ninth governor of Alaska and took this oath of office:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Alaska, and that I will faithfully discharge my duties as governor to the best of my ability.

One must then assume that she has read and is thoroughly familiar with the U.S. Constitution, though that assumption is tested throughout this book.
The First Amendment says in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Citizens can exercise religion freely, and government can’t make laws that interfere with that. Government doesn’t have a right to proselytize religion but citizens do. So how is it legal for a government to celebrate a Christian holiday (and only that holiday) on public land?
As mayor, Palin defended a nativity scene on city property:

I was determined [the town of] Wasilla would not contribute to our [moral] decline but would instead acknowledge the Source of all good things in our life and our nation. (51)

This partisan stance sounds odd coming from a defender of the Constitution.
The Constitution calls the shots
When Christian soldiers feel put upon by the travails of living in a country governed by a secular constitution, Palin encourages them to remember,

Through it all, the God who created the heavens and the earth is sovereign. (57)

But, of course, she can believe that and write it and proclaim it to passersby in the public square because of and only because of the Constitution. The Constitution calls the shots in the United States, not the Bible.
What’s good for the goose …
About a Harvard plan to provide women-only gym time for Muslim women, Palin says,

We all appreciate religious liberty, but it should be liberty for all, not favoritism for some. (182)

She complains at length about thin-skinned atheists, but things apparently change when the shoe’s on the other foot. Is this an outrageously obvious double standard (special favors for Christians are okay, but not for Muslims) or am I missing something? That this doublethink would work with her audience says a lot about what she thinks of them.
Palin quotes a mayor fighting for the right to publicly support only Christmas:

I believe the Constitution deals with freedom of religion, and not freedom against religion or freedom to repress religion. (52)

Is this just a meaningless slogan or does Palin actually mean this? Prove it, Governor. Publicly state that the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion demands that public land be used for displays from all religions or none.
I propose an experiment. Every local U.S. city government that provided a public forum only for a Christian holiday in 2013 must avoid any such displays next year and must instead celebrate the Muslim Eid feast at the end of Ramadan on city property. Give it a try to see how that feels.
You think atheists overreact to a cross on public property? Great—show us your open mindedness by replacing it with a Muslim crescent moon and star. Then we’ll see who’s thin-skinned.
Hell in a handbasket: this is just the beginning, people!
In case Palin’s concerns seem to be overblown, with church/state separation the common-sense solution to allow everyone to get along, she fans the fires of paranoia:

Boiled down to its essence, the “war on Christmas” is the tip of the spear in a larger battle to secularize our culture and make true religious freedom a thing of America’s past. (10)

What is “true religious freedom”? If it’s your “right” to impose Christianity on the rest of us, you betcha I want that gone. But if it’s the ability for you and other Christians to believe and worship as you want and to speak your mind in the state-supported public square, unfettered by government, I want that as much as you do.

[The few malcontents with lawyers eager to wreak havoc] are a part of a larger, orchestrated attempt to strip our heritage from America. (52)

(Dang! Who leaked the Atheist Overthrow Manifesto?)
Uh, no. The “larger, orchestrated attempt” is to return respect to the Constitution. Show me an atheist who wants to deny Christians the right to worship in a way that hurts no one, and I’ll publicly state that I’m on your side. If the Jesus story is a good tiding that brings you great joy, that’s fine. Just don’t celebrate your story (and only your story) in front of my city hall.
The Anti-Defamation League’s guidelines help resolve the “December Dilemma”:

Ask yourself: does the display, in its setting, give the appearance of a government endorsement of a religious message? If yes, the display is impermissible.

Pretty simple advice. But there’s no book if you say that conspiracy fears are unfounded and that there’s an easy way for us all to get along. Conflict sells, not peace.
Conclusion: the Ugly.

Another happy soldier in the War on Christmas.
— Tom Flynn’s bumper sticker