Jay, re the Orange County Christmas tree, here’s another one for the bulging files:

Two  Cambridge academics  have voiced their dismay at the news that all references to Christmas  have been dropped from the switching-on ceremony for Dundee’s festive  lights. Instead of the traditional Christmas Lights switch-on, The  Times newspaper reported that residents will be attending the ‘Dundee  Winter Light Night’. Council officials have also decided that rather  than a retelling of the Nativity story there will be a disco, a contemporary circus, a continental market and a seven foot fairy on stilts.

That’s another reason to resist this stuff – not merely because it’s an act of cultural vandalism but because what replaces the demolished tradition is so feeble and insipid. (“Contemporary circus” is, of course, PC-speak for “monumental yawneroo with interpretative dance acts but no dangerous animals” – so don’t go along expecting to see Dundee Council officials sticking their heads in the lion’s mouth.)

Interestingly, the two objectors in this story are Jewish and Muslim. They see this trend not as benignly multicultural but, ultimately, as an assault on all faith. What it advances is a kind of bland statist conformity. You see it especially in those grade schools where not only “Silent Night” but even “Rudolph” and “Frosty” get junked and the kids stand like zombies singing dirge-like sub-Disney power-ballads of a vaguely Gaia-worshipping bent about coming together to hold hands and behold the power of the dream of the circle. Creepy.