Last week a group of lawmakers penned a letter to Governor Jim Doyle, asking him to change the name of the Capitol's evergreen from "Capitol Holiday Tree" to "Wisconsin State Christmas Tree.
This action is part of a larger campaign to put a halt to the supposed "War on Christmas."

We feel this is an immense waste of time on the part of the legislators.

Time is something nobody has enough of, yet many state politicians seem bent on spending it obsessing over putting the Christ back in Christmas, rather than working on meaningful legislation.
Does it truly matter if the tree has a Christian or a secular name? Individuals passing the Capitol are free to call it whatever they please, and if Rep. Scott Suder wants to think of it as a Christmas tree he certainly can. And Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has every right to see it as a holiday tree.

This board does not fancy one name over the other; in fact, we are wholly unconcerned with the issue. It could be called the "Brett Favre December Tree" for all we care.

The sad truth is that right now we have 46 state representatives attempting to raise all kinds of hell over the official name of a tree.

Let's forget the state is in the midst of an epic budget deficit, let's forget the University of Wisconsin could raise tuition again next year and let's forget about Wisconsin losing millions of federal dollars for not having a working voter registration list. These and many other issues certainly are trumped by the colossal ramifications that will undoubtedly ensue if we fail to change the name of a single tree.

State legislators chose to champion an inconsequential cause that will likely be forgotten on the morning of December 26th, and in doing so they are ignoring issues that deserve to be brought to the forefront. Rather than tackling a problem that actually concerns those in Wisconsin, the legislature has picked a schoolyard fight that should have been broken up before it started.