November 28, 2006 -

An edited version of this was published as a letter to the editor on November 28, 2006.

I must confess that when I saw the headline on page A15 on Sunday's paper - "Pope to visit nation hostile to Christians" - my first thought was wondering which part of the U.S. the Pope was planning to visit. Maybe it's our schools which have replaced Christmas vacation with "Winter Break" which, oddly enough, doesn't happen in the middle of winter but rather at the beginning, right around December 25th. Maybe the Pope is going to visit the big-box retailers, who like to profit from Christmas, but can't bring themselves to say "Christmas" in their advertising.

Perhaps removing the word "Christmas" from many facets of society isn't the kind of hostility the Pope may see elsewhere but we certainly see an unnatural aversion to an important Christian event in a nation where nearly 80% of us are Christians. Hostility has to begin somewhere and maybe that self-inflicted aversion is the first step.