[shhhhh!]

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Nov 28, 2006

Each year the Christmas holiday season brings in a fresh new crop of legal cases, in which government officials forbid the display of religious symbols, performance of religious hymns, and so forth. Each year these test cases are a bit more ridiculous, and 2006 promises another bumper crop on absurdity.

Credit the city of Chicago with the silliest decision in the before-December-begins category, and this one is going to be tough to beat.

Sponsors of a Christmas holiday festival have decided not to allow New Line Cinema to display a trailer from the new film, The Nativity Story, because it might be offensive to non-Christian patrons of the festival.

That festival, by the way, is a traditional German observance known as the Christkindlmarket.

It's OK to say it, apparently, if you use a foreign language. Don't spread it around, but it the people who might get offended must not be very b_r_i_g_h_t.