It’s beginning to act a lot like Christmas everywhere you go including Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Hubs over at Artifacting found a news story about a woman who has stirred up ‘controversy’ due to a Christmas wreath that just happens to be in the shape of a 60’s peace sign. Thus far the ‘offensive’ wreath is still up and the arguments being used to remove the wreath are becoming more asinine as the battle gets more over-the-top.
Lisa Jensen is the cause of all this wasted energy. She put the wreath up on her home in a subdivision of around 200 homes in the spirit of peace and says she had no ulterior motives and that the symbol is simply about peace as it pertains to spirituality. There was no other reason she said she had; however, people in the community have projected their own meaning onto her decoration.
The current president of the Home Owners Association, Bob Kearns, who will from now on be known as Baby Scrooge (or BS), said, "We have had three or four complaints." Three or four complaints? There are 200 homes in the subdivision. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say only two people live in each house. That’s at least 400 people living in the subdivision. Doing the math…. carry the decimal… that’s 1% of the population of the subdivision — at the most. Obviously this is hardly the majority or even enough to back any action in my opinion.
BS then gave this as a reason, "Some people have kids in Iraq and they are sensitive." Again, this is projection. Why would these people’s minds automatically jump to the conclusion that Jensen put the wreath up as a protest to the Iraq war? I guess they are sensitive, which I will not mock them for here; however, I will say this: Do you love your kids? Do you not want to see them back? Peace would certainly make sure that they would no longer be in danger of dying in a war. I would think you would embrace an end to the aggression and killing. Guess what? That’s called peace, people. Anyone who wants peace also wants your kids to come home safely. That’s the point of being in support of peace.
He also claims that some believe the symbol to be a sign of Satan. It is not. The biggest problem with meddlers — if I can borrow that from Hot Doctor Wife — is that they only use history when it gets them what they want. Meddlers never compare their current ‘righteous’ actions with those of the past otherwise they would see that they are making a mistake. Again. Symbols are indeed powerful; however, they take on different meanings during different periods of time. The inverted crucifix was used by Romans nearly 2,000 years ago and, yes, satanists used it in their rituals 500 years after the Romans (see? full disclosure here); however, (and with only two minutes of my life used to look it up) the peace symbol that we know today was made to mean ‘nuclear disarmament’.
☮ = 
+ 
It’s a combination of the letters ‘N’ and ‘D’ in semaphore and was developed in early 1958 by Gerald Holtom thus giving the inverted crucifix a new meaning. Like people, symbols can be worked to have their direction changed, but the symbol doesn’t care that it’s being manipulated. It is, after all, only a symbol. It’s people that give it meaning be it for good, bad or some shade of grey.
And now for my favorite part of our story:
The subdivision’s convenants [SIC] say no signs, billboards or advertising are permitted without the consent of the architectural control committee. When Kearns ordered the association’s architectural control committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath removed, they refused. Jack Lilly, chairman of the group, said it decided it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn’t say anything. Lilly also said he had received no complaints from homeowners.
Kearns fired all five members of the committee.
Let’s repeat that: BS fired the entire committee. If I were a political cartoonist, I would be inspired to draw BS as a man-child swaddled in a diaper in his office surrounded by his HOA rules. His head would be thrown back with tears flying from his tightly-closed eyes. The mouth would be open in a Charlie Brown scream: "YOU’RE FIRED, BOB CRATCHITS!!". The office would be in shambles due to his tantrum. The members of the control committee would be leaving with their heads bowed, but their faces would be broken with a smile so sardonic there would be no doubt of the relief of being outta there — almost as if an abusive father had just died.
I wonder if it would make BS and those very, very few complainers happier if Jensen were to join the NRA, buy a rifle, shoot and kill a dove, have it stuffed, cram an olive branch into its dead, useless beak, wrap the entire ornament in colored, blinking lights and mount it on her house as a symbol that she desired peace in the world for her holiday wish. It certainly would seem to be the current American way: killing an innocent just to appease an ignorant, vocal minority.
Listening to: Cope - The Futureheads
UPDATE: Yes, a Web Pen first. An update BEFORE the post goes up. Hubs just sent me an urgent message to read the latest on this story before I posted. It turns out that the house in question received an early Christmas present last night — a letter of apology from the HOA. The wreath gets to stay up! You see the power of blogging? Things change by just thinking about posting something.
Obviously I’m kidding. The cool thing is the amount of support they received. From calls offering to pay the fine to keep the wreath up to people from around the world voicing their concern including South America, the Netherlands AND troops in Baghdad. From now on, why don’t we let the women and men serving America speak for themselves?
