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Date Posted: 16:14:37 11/01/05 Tue
Author: Chuck in ND
Subject: Here's one more

from dh. This is a local issue, so you might not be too interested. But the gradual banning of a public Christmas and all things Christian is creeping in everywhere. This is just one little attempt to fight the battle. (Bonanzaville is our local historical museum, a collection of historic buildings from around the area, filled with artifacts. Three times a year--one of them being Christmas--there are reinactments in the buildings and streets of our little historical village.)

P.S. If you're interested I can paste here the email exchange between dh and the Ex. Dir of the museum. This guy's email to dh was stunningly nasty.

*****************************
http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=107102§ion=Opinion

Christmas traditions lost again
Ross Nelson, The Forum
Published Sunday, October 30, 2005

Take your hats off and mourn the passing of yet another tradition. Bonanzaville’s revived “Christmas on the Prairie” is no more. It ran for years way back when, and was replaced in the 1990s with a generic Holiday on the Plains or some such. The replacement didn’t thrive; apparently people wanted a Christmas celebration rather than a politically correct cultural diversity show. The then-director of Bonanzaville even thought it incorrect for the historical organization to express the word “Christmas.”

With a little prompting Christmas was put back into Christmas on the Prairie three years ago, with apparent great results. It was this area’s only public celebration of Christmas as Christmas, not some bland activity supposedly named to be as inoffensive as possible, such as Fargo’s Merry Prairie parade.

My wife and I found out this past week, to our chagrin, that Christmas on the Prairie has been changed to Holidays on the Prairie. Now, our family had volunteered to help all three years Christmas on the Prairie ran. I spoke with the president of the Bonanzaville Board of Directors Kim Baird, who was unfailingly courteous and helpful, to find out what was going on and register our disagreement. She told us the board had signed off on a proposal Executive Director Tim Hoheisel submitted, which was essentially that Christmas alone wasn’t inclusive enough for all the holiday traditions out there.

In an e-mail exchange with Hoheisel I repeated in the same terms our concerns and disagreement. His reply, we might say, had Dale Carnegie spinning in his grave. In his words I was hostile, close-minded, sarcastic and completely ignorant. Though no expert on North Dakota history, I have read about the state, and region, in books by Robinson, Wills, Drache, Isern, and a smattering of lesser works. We can only imagine the scorn Hoheisel must feel for the typical tourist who hasn’t even read this much.

I was told that Christmas is ethnocentric and that “Holidays” therefore is more apt. However, only the politically correct, steeped in relativism, could look at North Dakota’s mainstream Northern Europe/Russian culture and Christianity and somehow equate them to traditions that have little or no local foothold now or in the past. Hanukkah, druidism, Kwanzaa, et al. are not on a historical par with Christmas here, and local history is supposed to be what Bonanazville is about.

That’s a major problem with relativists: They look at an elephant and a mouse, discover both are mammals, and thus judge them to be perfectly equal. Chinese railroad workers passing through North Dakota, while worthy of historical note, have a trivial presence compared to the pioneer impact and traditions. It’s absurd to consider Christmas just one of many equal courses of state traditions or events.

Naturally, though Hoheisel doesn’t know me from Adam, he still remarks that I’m currently discriminating against everyone on his list of underrepresented ethnic groups. For those out there who still have operational minds, get used to it: being called a bigot by the politically correct is standard procedure for those they disagree with.

The saga of Hoheisel and Bonanzaville is a common one, I suppose. An over-credentialed and underthinking person – bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and brimming with new ideas – wows the home folks. It’s easy to do if you’re a little wobbly on your own foundations and find yourself cowed by degreed “intellectuals.” The next thing you know, what was working and satisfying local people isn’t good enough.

I doubt we’ll ever see a public gathering in the name of Christmas again around here. So to former executive director Steve Stark and Bonanzaville of the past three years, thanks for the memories.

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