Chez Chesler

Chanukah began four hours ago; Christmas is over in four hours. Suppose you were a football fan. Football is the only sport you watch. The highlight of your year is the Superbowl, for which you throw a major in-home tailgate party. You're surrounded by baseball fans. They know nothing about football, except that it's played on a soccer field, and had its origins in rugby from the 1920s, and was known as a dangerous sport. Every year at your school or office, they hold a major party for the opening of spring training, and they close so that people can attend Opening Day. And the biggest event of the year is the World Series. They hold a pageant for the World Series, before giving everyone the week off so they can watch it on TV. You point out that you don't really care about the World Series. So they say they'll accomodate everybody, and rename the World Series break the October World Series/Week 8/Halloween Vacation. Are you satisfied? Would you be more satisfied or less if you consider that you're allowed to watch football at home, unlike a generation ago when everybody was forced to watch American League baseball at school and when people were killed for being football fans? Would it be a legal nitpick if you pointed out that your tax dollars were being taken to fund this school with the World Series/Week 8/Halloween vacation, and that the law governing this school was explicit that schools couldn't favor one sport over another? Would you feel better if the month leading up to World Series/Week 8/Halloween vacation the students all studied "Casey at the Bat", "The Natural", "Bull Durham", and "Field of Dreams" under the curriculum item "Sports in Literature" until you pointed out that it's a little unbalanced, so they add "Horse Feathers" and maybe dress in 1920s leather helmets and maybe read "Paper Lion" as well as "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"?

Judge rules against couple accused of harming children - Boston.com See http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2005/12/24/judge_rules_against_couple_accused_of_harming_children/ or pay-for-archive at the Concord Monitor, http://www.cmonitor.com and search for Warner Ruff. WARNER, N.H. --A husband and wife accused of endangering their children by living in a filthy home have lost their attempt to keep some evidence out of their criminal trial. Bryon and Wendy Ruff were charged with five counts each of child endangerment in August, two weeks after the town's health inspector condemned their home. They argued that photographs and other evidence gathered during the inspection shouldn't be used against them because the police officers who accompanied the health inspector did not have a criminal search warrant. But a Henniker District Court judge has ruled that the search was proper and that the evidence can be used in the trial, which is scheduled for next week. Why doesn't the exclusionary rule apply?

Here's what I wrote on the Co-op City Forum, at http://p203.ezboard.com/fcoopcitycommunityforumsfrm1.showMessage?topicID=398.topic: Even though I don't celebrate Christmas, I'm no more offended, and no more avoid, a store that sells Christmas trees than I am offended by a store that sells hockey equipment, even though I have no interest in hockey. I just walk past, and if someone wishes me a Merry Christmas, or asks me "How about them Bruins?" I take it as it's offered. On the other hand, quite prominently in the Constitution is a ban on the government establishing a religion -- having a state religion -- and an official government Christmas Tree, by whatever name[*], is closer to that than I'd have it. (My city also has an official creche on the Common this time of year -- way over the line in my opinion, but in the scheme of things this small first step is not at the beginning of a slippery slope, and I've got other fish to fry.) [*]Emphasize that: Abraham Lincoln supposedly asked "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?" and the answer is "Four: calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one." If you put up a Christmas tree -- a tradition, though originating in pagan northern Europe, thoroughly part of Christmas -- at least have the honesty to call it a Christmas tree. Calling it something else, doesn't make it anything other than a Christmas tree. And nobody objects to the fact that Christians celebrate Christmas -- the objection is to the notion that non-Christians ought to be celebrating it too.

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And on the Volokh Conspiracy, in a thread that started about Hostility to Atheists, I wrote: Dave Barry has said that "Seasons Greetings" (which is a traditional expression, not a watered-down-in-an-attempt-to-be-inclusive "Happy Holidays", although see also McKenzie, Robert and McKenzie, Douglas on what exactly are the 12 days of Christmas) is as meaningful as greeting someone with "Appropriate Remark!" One is also reminded of a grocery store attempting to be inclusive in its weekly circular: "To our Christian friends, we wish a Merry Christmas. To our Jewish friends, we wish a Happy Chanukah. To our Atheist friends, good luck." Meanwhile, those who are calling for the Protection of Christmas Act should take a good look at just what difficulties American Jews have with holding seders, and fasting on Yom Kippur, and building succot. It isn't that hard to practice any religion in this country. OTOH, I live one town over from Lexington, home of one of these creche bans, and my city still puts up a creche each year, and the schools are still teaching, explicitly in the words on one Christmas Pageant song, that everybody has a holiday this time of year, and implicitly, that Chanukah is the high point of the Jewish religious calendar. My children are half-breeds (making them halachically gentile -- it's a long story) and in 2005 we are still facing the issue that I never faced in the Bronx of whether taking part in (one half of) their heritage will subject them to negative social pressure. FWIW, my all-Jewish birth family celebrates both solstices with a passing recognition of the change in the trend of daylight length. And what's with Kwanzaa? How did what is at best an ethnic or cultural statement so quickly obtain the status of millenia-old religious celebrations, while Festivus remains a joke?

Brett Arends (Boston Herald, December 9) suggests that Fenway Park move from paper to electronic tickets to defeat scalpers. He suggests that the fact that people are buying tickets to resell (at a profit -- scalping) contributes to "real fans" not being able to get tickets. It’s the only way to cut out the scalpers, free up season tickets, and let the ordinary fans get back into their ballpark. He concludes that his scheme would mean a much better chance they’d be bought by people who actually want to see the game. To whom does he think the scalpers are selling the tickets? Who does he think is occupying every seat at every game (post-season excluded)? John Henry, to his credit, has dismissed any suggestion that the Sox should try to pocket that $100 million themselves by auctioning tickets to the highest bidder. He knows that would price many fans out of the market. No matter how they slice it, there are only 3 million seats in a season (36,200 seating capacity time 81 home games is 2,932,200.) Some fans are getting seats for less than they'd be willing to pay. Some fans don't go to the games because the price is too high. No matter the price the Red Sox sells them to the public, and no matter the final markup price, it's going to be that way. What better way to judge how much a seat is worth to a fan than how much he's willing to pay, how much he's willing to give up for that seat?