Minnesota’s Capitol not an active front in ‘War on Christmas’

Coleman lights the Capitol menorah (Fox 9 News)

Washington state’s capitol has been beset with proliferating religious displays this holiday season — some of which are being taken as shots across the bow in the annual “War on Christmas” promoted on Fox News. “Fox and Friends” co-host and former Miss America Gretchen Carlson has been especially exercised about it, citing her Minnesota roots as she attacked a Festivus display at the Washington’s state capitol and free speech on Dec. 25 generally.

Minnesota’s own state capitol has been comparatively quiet, though a stray line in a recent TV news story caught my ear: U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman was on hand, the newscaster said, for the lighting of “the Capitol Menorah.” Wait a sec, I thought: “Capitol Menorah”? Does Minnesota state government sponsor religious displays?

A call to Jim Schwartz, who issues use permits for the capitol grounds as part of his job at the state Department of Administration, put my fears to rest. The menorah is put up by a private group and is the only religious display at the Ccpitol during the year, he said — not including, of course, the state capitol’s holiday tree, a living evergreen not far from the menorah on the grounds near the Capitol’s west wing. The tree is decorated each year by Department of Administration staff and is lit by Gov. Tim Pawlenty and First Lady Mary Pawlenty — this year the lighting took place during a Dec. 4 ceremony.

A group of rabbis from the Upper Midwest Merkos-Lubavitch House submitted the Capitol Facilities Use Request for the giant menorah on the Capitol grounds, Schwartz said, as they have for nine years now. In its application, the group wrote that the menorah is a “symbol of freedom … especially freedom of minorities from the tyranny of dictatorships,” Schwartz said. A call to the group so far hasn’t been returned. The menorah at the state capitol will remain through Dec. 29.