This is an honest-to-God quote from the City of Boston’s official calendar:
Join the Boston Children’s Chorus (BCC) to kick off the start of the city’s holiday season! The singers will join Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino for one of the city’s most cherished events- the lighting of Boston’s official non-denominational holiday shrub, and trees throughout Boston Common, The Public Garden and Commonwealth Avenue Mall. The BCC is an accomplished children’s singing group with nine choirs and 300 singers ranging from ages seven to eighteen years old. BCC has performed at the Democratic National Convention, Governor Deval Patrick’s Inauguration, and with the Boston Pops.
A few years ago there was a big stink about the City of Boston keeping an official Christmas tree on the Boston Commons. Mayor Menino’s decision to keep the tree but not call it a Christmas tree surprisingly drew the ire of the pro-Christmas folks, which I think is pretty stupid. They accused him of bowing to political correctness, but in reality it was more like mooning the PC crowd. Clearly decorating a tree but not calling it a Christmas tree is not in the spirit of what the PC folks were demanding, and the pro-Christmas people got pretty much everything they wanted save the name. I guess the symbolism was important to them.
Anyway, I can’t imagine this hilarious title being anything but an attempt to portray the PC demands as absurd. Regardless of what you think about the whole issue, it’s pretty badass I think to poke fun at the whole thing in so public and official a fashion.
It’s a commemorative ecumenical woody plant!