One of the trees on campus was transformed Wednesday night as hundreds of colored lights lit up its branches, bedazzling the crowd around it and creating a bright spot on central campus.

The festivities that followed threw participants into the holiday spirit, but were careful not to focus on any particular religion, singing and speaking instead about the joyous spirit of the season.

This is a great example of what makes the holiday season special, continuing traditions and giving happiness to others, no matter what faith a person may subscribe to.

While it is important to keep neutrality in public celebrations like this, this caution is not always enough.

People like to complain — it’s just part of human nature. The problem comes when too much attention is paid to the insignificant issues and timeless traditions are eliminated or mutated because of the overly sensitive and vocal few.

Even though Wednesday night’s celebration was as religiously non-biased as possible, there were still complaints about the lighting of the tree on central campus. A tree with a string of lights on it does not jive with some people’s religious beliefs.

Christmas trees don’t exactly reek of Christianity. They are a co-opted pagan symbol whose significance in the holiday season goes back centuries before Christians ever set foot in Europe.

American culture is based on Judeo-Christian beliefs. There is no escaping that fact. We can scrub clean every ritual and tradition that bears any resemblance to religious traditions from our campus and we will still be living under the rubrik of Judeo-Christian norms, mores and laws.

Decorating an evergreen may actually be the perfect tradition to keep around since it is a pagan tradition adopted once by early Christians and again by commercialism. It is multi-cultural, political correctness with an old- world flavor.

Regardless, let’s keep things in perspective — it’s just a tree.

Editorial Board:Carrie Tett, Greg Jerrett, Katie Goldsmith, Amie Van Overmeer, Andrea Hauser adn Jocelyn Marcus.