OLYMPIA – ‘Tis the night before Christmas, plus about 18, and all through the statehouse not a creature is stirring with complaints about how Washington is waging war on the holiday.

Thankfully.

The Association of Washington Business Holiday Kids Tree went up in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday. Gov. Jay Inslee flipped the switch for lights on Friday and the Capitol Building is suffused with the smell of noble fir  that almost obscures the aroma of bacon cooking in the basement café most mornings. Ut may be a minor Christmas miracle that no one has resurrected the complaint that if it looks like a Christmas tree and it smells like a Christmas tree, it by gosh by golly ought to be called a Christmas tree. . . 

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. . . A Living Nativity was scheduled for nearby Sylvester Park this weekend, courtesy of a local Lutheran church, a Menorah will go up there Thursday, and throughout the month various school bands and chorale groups will perform carols beneath the dome in the Rotunda, where acoustics, if not great, are at least interesting.

Perhaps the national pundits seeking battlefields in the annual denunciation of the war on Christmas will give Washington a pass this year. If not, they should consider that some legislative committees were filling in for Santa Claus in recent weeks, listening to the wish lists of various groups for things in the upcoming biennium during “work sessions.” Instead of children in their photogenic best, agencies were dressed in business attire, with Power Point presentations instead of hand scrawled notes.

State agencies will have to leave their stockings hung by the chimney long past Christmas, possibly until June, to see what a budget deal puts in them. 

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