| Politics

‘Tis the season for tree lighting rituals in the nation’s Capital. This year’s event on Capitol Hill also served as time of confirmation that Christmas is under attack in Washington.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) – ‘Tis the season for tree lighting rituals in the nation’s Capital. This year’s event on Capitol Hill also served as time of confirmation that Christmas is under attack in Washington.

Rev. Rob Schenck, President of Faith and Action, was invited as a VIP guest to the Christmas Tree lighting ceremony, December 2, on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol. The observance included traditional Christmas carols played by a US Air Force band and the lighting of a 70 foot tall subalpine fir from Montana's Bitterroot National Forest.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was present, along with Montana's governor and a congressional delegation, for the annual ceremony to light the Capitol Christmas Tree. At the event, Pelosi stated that the faith represented by the Christmas tree on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol is a part of America's heritage.

Pelosi acknowledged “all the gifts God has given us and how blessed we are.” She then encouraged Americans to pray for world peace this holiday season. The Speaker of the House and Montana fourth-grader Chris Gabrielsen together threw the switch to light the tree.

After the ceremony, Rev. Schenck thanked Speaker Pelosi for keeping, as he said it, "Christ-mas" at the US Capitol, emphasizing “Christ.” Speaker Pelosi politely acknowledged the remark, then pursued Rev. Schenck to tell him she had been “mugged” for doing so.

Rev. Schenck commented, “At first I didn't understand what Mrs. Pelosi was saying, so I simply nodded and thanked her again, but she repeated it emphatically. I realized the Speaker was saying she had paid a serious price politically for allowing the Christmas celebration to go on. She obviously took some political heat for it. For that, Nancy Pelosi deserves to be commended, and I made sure I did so.”

Schenck also said, “The fact that Nancy Pelosi said she was assailed for allowing a Christmas observance at the US Capitol confirms the war against Christmas is not a figment of the so-called religious right's imagination. If one of the most liberal, arguably left-wing political leaders in our country, the woman third in succession to the presidency, is getting pummeled for lighting a Christmas tree and allowing Christmas carols on the lawn of the Capitol, that would qualify as a war against Christmas.”

Rev. Schenck has served as a missionary to Capitol Hill and the Supreme Court for more than a decade with Faith and Action as well as Director of the National Clergy Council.

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Randy Sly is a communications specialist and Associate Editor for Catholic Online. A former Archbishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Church, he has served in full-time Christian ministry for over 30 years. He and his wife Sandy came into the full communion of the Catholic Church three years ago.