‘Soldiers’ gear up to defend Christmas

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — ‘Tis the season to fight folly.

Troops are massed on the ground floor of a nondescript, green-glassed building that’s become ground zero for an annual campaign to defend Christmas.

The “soldiers” lined up for the fight are 832 lawyers ready to charge any municipality or public school that dares excise the mention or observance of the world’s most widely celebrated holiday.

A framed poster near the entrance asks: “Have you ever experienced discrimination because you are a Christian?” It hints at the philosophical bent of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a Christian legal group based here.

The phones are busy in Scottsdale. The first week of December alone brought in 159 calls from around the country for legal advice on everything from protecting creches at city hall to what to do when a school in Wisconsin changes the first line of “Silent Night” to “Cold in the night, no one in sight.”

The ADF is not alone. The Rev. Jerry Falwell recently started a “Friend or Foe Christmas campaign,” offering the free services of 700 lawyers with the Liberty Counsel of Orlando, Fla., ready to file suit over any holiday infringements.

Earlier this month, the newly formed Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation held a press conference calling on American Jews to defend Christians’ right to say “Merry Christmas” and to celebrate openly the birth of Jesus Christ.

“Christmas is disappearing,” Don Feder, the group’s president, says. “It’s disappearing from our culture at an alarming rate, disappearing from stores, disappearing from schools and disappearing from the public square.”

The ADF says it’s been aware of the trend since its founding 12 years ago by 30 Christian organizations.

Two Minnesota cases were what drew the attention of Joseph Infranco, the ADF’s senior vice president. One involved two girls who were suspended in 1999 from a middle school in Rochester for wearing red-and-green scarves and saying “Merry Christmas” in a school video. The other case involved Ramsey County Courthouse in St. Paul, which in 2001 banned red poinsettias for being a religious symbol.

“We looked at each other one day and said, ‘It’s a sad, sad day in America when you have to retain an attorney to say Merry Christmas,’ ” Mr. Infranco says.

What’s helped the ADF grow from $400,000 in gross revenues in 1993 to $17 million today is its annual “Christmas project,” which enlists lawyers around the country to take up cases where Christmas is under attack.

But first these lawyers had to be trained.

“There’s a litigious component to our culture wars,” says Jeffery Ventrella, an ADF vice president. “You can’t just have a good-hearted lawyer. You have to be a good-hearted, skilled lawyer.”

In 1997, the ADF began its “national litigation academies.” In weeklong sessions, legal experts coach attorneys on the concepts of religious freedom, parental rights, the First Amendment and equal access.

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