Man Sues to Eliminate Christmas

C I N C I N N A T I, Dec. 7 -- A federal appeals court is consideringarguments that Christmas should no longer be observed as a nationallegal holiday.

During today’s hearing, a federal appeals judge asked Christmas opponent Richard Ganulinshow how nonbelievers are harmed by the holiday.

Philosophical or religious objections aren’t enough to support alawsuit to scrap the holiday observance, Judge Boyce Martin Jr.said.

“You don’t have to celebrate Christmas. You can ignore it,”Martin told Ganulin during a hearing in the 6th U.S.Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Sometimes, we must accept those tenets of others that we don’tnecessarily agree with, in order to live in peace,” he said.

A Matter of ExclusionGanulin, an assistant city solicitor for Cincinnati who is representing himself in his case, argued that the Christmas holiday amounts to agovernment approval for a day of Christian religious originsmarking the birth of Jesus Christ, competing with lessons he wouldteach his child.

“As a matter of law, it cuts me out, it excludes me, I’m anoutsider, I’m an observer,” he said, after describing his Hebrewupbringing. “It’s a sectarian celebration.”

Ganulin sued the federal government in 1998, arguing thatCongress violated the separation of church and state by embracingthe Christian holiday more than a century ago.

Martin, one of three judges hearing the case, said he stillwasn’t convinced that the holiday harms Ganulin. There is norequirement that Americans accept the views of their countrymen,the judge said.

Constitutional Right to Christmas

Lowell Sturgill Jr., a Justice Department lawyer representingthe government, urged the appeals court to uphold a federal judge’sdecision last December that threw out Ganulin’s lawsuit. Ganulinlacks standing to challenge the holiday and failed to show how itharms him, Sturgill said.

Roman Storzer, lawyer for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty,backed the government’s arguments that the Christmas holiday isconstitutionally permitted. The private organization representedthree federal employees who intervened in the case.