Ganulin v. U.S. Ruling Means Christmas Is Also a Secular Holiday

From the ruling of U.S. District Judge Susan J. Dlott on the case of Ganulin v. U.S., which ruled that the federal Christmas holiday did not construe an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion, Dec. 6, 1999:

The court will address
Plaintiff's seasonal confusion
Erroneously believing Christmas
Merely a religious intrusion.

Whatever the reason
Constitutional or other
Christmas is not
An act of Big Brother!

An extra day off
Is hardly high treason
It may be spent as you wish
Regardless of reason.

After the ruling, Kevin Hasson of the Becket Fund (whose mission is to protect the free expression of all faiths) said:

"You can't weed religion out of the culture without uprooting the whole culture in the process.”

However, it might have been more accurate for him to have stated "you can't weed tradition out of the culture..." Christmas has always been more a holiday of customs than religious observations.

On the issue of the Constitutionality of "Christmas" as an official federal holiday, Austin Cline wrote:

“If Christmas is declared a secular holiday, then fundamentalists lose again because our courts will grant recognition to the fact that American society has moved beyond our history of Protestant Christian domination to a more multicultural and multireligious society where holidays which are celebrated on a national level are secular in nature.”

As far as I can tell from the Ganulin ruling, that has already happened.