The Nativity is not Welcome in the City of Chicago

Posted on November 27, 2006

Kim Preistap reports on the details. In a nutshell:

the city of Chicago has supported the Christkindlemarket Chicago, a traditional German American market and festival that lasts 4 weeks long and offers shopping, music, traditional German American food and drink, and entertainment. It’s a free family friendly celebration of the Christmas season that hosts over one million people and is home to the Chicago Christmas Tree. It’s so popular that a variety of groups and companies are eager to sponsor it every year.

However, this year there seems to be a problem. Since one of the sponsors was The Nativity Story Movie the city of Chicago is pulling its support. I guess they think if they support an event that happens to be sponsored by something with a Christian perspective towards Christmas that they would somehow be violating the sacred “seperatio of church and state”, and that somehow it would equate to Congress establishing a National religion. I don’t know. Whatever the reason it is quite stupid.

The ACLU are not involved, but this is the kind of political correctness run amok that they helped create.

The Corner has New Line Cinema’s reaction to the city of Chicago’s demand that the move be banned:

We were stunned that our paid sponsorship of Christkindlmarket Chicago - the largest Christmas celebration in Chicago - was rescinded based on the “religious” content of our film The Nativity Story.

We had committed to a $12,000 sponsorship for the market, which was to include a display area in the Festival tent, logo signage in all print ads, direct mailings, brochures, flyers and on the website.

We don’t understand why our sponsorship would be rejected for religious reasons, particularly considering the fact that our film details the story that inspired the holiday season that the Christkindlmarket was created to celebrate.

Express your displeasure to Chicago city officials here.

See Wizbang for more details.
Captain Ed strikes at the heart of the matter.

Their excuse? Mindless multiculturalism, meaning that they reject one culture in order to keep from offending others. The festival will have displays that reflect other religious traditions, which it should, but apparently having The Nativity Story as a sponsor of the event twisted the delicate balance that the city believes it must strike in order to legitimize their involvement. Apparently, they want to keep too much Christmas from invading Christmas.

Rational multiculturalism means accepting everyone’s culture, not keeping scorecards and points about how much of one we get at the expense of the other. Irrational multiculturalism has governments trying to protect the tender feelings of a handful — if that — of overly sensitive critics who will find any excuse to complain about everything, no matter what effort gets made. Anyone who worries that there’s too much Christmas in Christmas has defined himself as a practitioner of the latter.

By the way, like the Anchoress, I’m looking forward to seeing this movie.

Here is the trailer.

» Filed Under Christmas, Church And State, News

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One Response to “The Nativity is not Welcome in the City of Chicago”

Nazareth on November 27th, 2006 10:48 pm

Good let Chicago experience the same thing Walmart did for their transgressions against Christian traditions- lost sales! http://sacredscoop.com