White House also someone's home

Q: Should the White House, whose residents serve all Americans, display a crèche or a menorah or any strictly religious symbols during the holidays?

I am, by intuition and inclination, a smells and bells kind of person. I like rituals and appreciate the beauty/utility of both those I do and also those I don't. So I welcome the tree, the crèche and any other traditional Christmas practices at the White House. I would expect that Kwanza too will be acknowledged and know that Hanukkah certainly will be as well. And as my kids would say, it's all good. But it's not simply a matter of personal preference. It's a matter of preference for genuine freedom of expression.

First of all, the White House is also a home. The expectation that the Obamas should bracket who they are in order to please other people is inappropriate and unfair. Secondly, such bracketing actually cuts against the freedom of faith which lays at the center of the entire debate about the propriety of such holiday symbols.

If anything, we need more symbols, not fewer. Real freedom of expression is not assured by creating empty or neutral spaces, but by creating an ethic which allows us to fill up our public spaces without disregard or disrespect for the symbols of others.

We need to end the struggle between those who want only their own symbols to dominate, and those who want none at all, by saying 'a pox on both of your arrogant triumphalisms'. The issue is not which symbols should be allowed and which not, but how to bring whatever symbols one cherishes in a way that respects the fact that they are not the only ones worthy of celebration.

We need to get past a model that assures civility and equality by asking everybody to check what matters most at the door. Instead, we need to invite people to bring it all through the door, but insist that they do so in ways which we leave room for others to do the same, and actually make sure that others have the opportunity to do so.

We need to move from laws which protect against the abuses of faith to a culture built on a genuine ethic of diversity, one which celebrates the dignity of all of the faiths followed by our citizens, including those who follow no faith at all. A culture built on that ethic could never be threatened by either the presence or the absence of any religious symbol, be it a crèche, a menorah or a druid rock circle, though I don't think that one is in the President's plans.

By Brad Hirschfield  |  December 7, 2009; 9:01 PM ET Save & Share:                 
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