I just ran across an article describing a recommendation by officials in Fort Collins, Colorado to ban the use of red and green lights as Christmas decorations because of their association with... well, with Christmas. Upon examination, their reasoning as expressed by Seth Anthony, one of the fellows who supports this recommendation, is exposed as a fine example of Orwellian doublespeak:

Some symbols, even though the Supreme Court has declared that in many contexts they are secular symbols, often still send a message to some members of the community that they and their traditions are not valued and not wanted. We don't want to send that message

OK Seth, you want to avoid sending a message to "some members of the community" that their "traditions are not valued." Sounds nice. And your method for doing this is to utterly trash and obliterate the "traditions" of some other members of the community. Do I have it right?

Later in the article, Anthony is quoted as saying:

I expect criticism from people who feel like we are taking Christmas away. And I expect we will get criticism from people who think educational display endorses religions.... (But) to the extent we can, recognizing that offending no one will be impossible, we want to be inclusive.

In other words, only the Christians will be "included" in the offense.

It occurs to me that "red and green lights" have absolutely no biblical significance whatsoever. They are an entirely secular tradition, and completely irrelevant to the Christian aspects of the holiday. To the extent that I can make sense of this recommendation, it seems to be geared towards removing the last vestiges of anything that might possibly remind someone of our Lord and Savior. It reminds me of the commandment to clean out the leaven prior to the Feast of Unleavened (Exo 12:15-19; Lev 16:4), except in reverse.