I love the main library in Birmingham, Alabama.
I have been a loyal customer since age five.
I pay my fines immediately before they cut me off and I don't dog-ear their books.
I am, in fact, a perfect patron, so to speak.

But I am also a busybody and I don't mind rocking boats.

Wednesday morning I returned some overdue books to the front desk and said,
"Merry Christmas, librarian, where is your Christmas tree this year?".

“Uh, yeah, right,” she hem-hawed. “ We don’t have the staff to put the tree up.”

“I see” I said. Not seeing at all but suspecting a vast conspiracy most grave and foul.

Jumping on the escalator I rode up to Arts and Literature on the second floor.
A single poinsettia adorned the desk there .

Turning, I raced over to the Used Book Store and saw not even a poinsettia but three fat white cardboard snowmen who stood without comment on the far wall.

Zip! I was off to Science and Technology on the third floor where no snowman , no poinsettia, no nothing, awaited a visitor to the plush work station where the Staff milled about but did no work.

“Humbug!” I said loudly. A awkward moment passed. Finally a young fella stepped forward and said ...”We had a poinsettia ...but it died.”

“Wait Mister!” He called as I turned away . “Over in Southern History... in the Annex; I think they’ve got a Christmas Tree over there.”

He was right. There, in the main high-vaulted reading room was a grand twelve-foot-high Christmas Tree - or it might have been a pagan tree, or a witch tree; no sign told.
Silver balls and white lights were hung about its spreading silver branches along with miniature paper hymnals of sheet music lettered in German. How stylish, how sterile.
No presents were under the tree and no sign wished anyone a happy anything. This was great!
Carefully I began plotting my assault on this stunning example of bureaucratic ineptitude ...but wait! The children’s department! Surely they celebrated Christmas over there.

Double stepping stairs I was back in the new building in a flash and what I saw in the Children’s Department there would make a cornsnake cry - the entire display for the budding young future book readers of Birmingham , Alabama consisted of two ten-inch-tall fat Santas - one white and one black. The white Santa was animated and slowly gyrated his hips doing the boogaloo although there was no music. Across from him the unanimated black Santa simply stood there grinning , or maybe he was just embarrassed. He was outfitted in the short pants of a tyrolean mountain climber. Very quaint, very stupid. I waited a long moment... half-expecting the black Santa to suddenly yodel.
Neither Santa, I noticed, had a sack.

But then out of the corner of my eye I saw some papers scotch-taped to a big round pole over by the stuffed dinosaurs where the kindergarten kiddies play. I walked over and examined the crayon drawings there.

I found the artwork generally poor, only marginally better than say, Andy Warhol or Jackson Pollock. But if unrefined these crude drawings exhibited a sweet and innocent courage found nowhere else in this library of a million books. Somewhere in each, amid odd-looking reindeers, wall-eyed snowmen, Santas, and snow blizzards and such, could be found the crudely lettered greeting “Merry Christmas”. A simple message that a fey committee of library high staffers had lacked the courage to say.

I wore a determined grin as I walked out the library door.
This is not Oregon or Vermont; this is Birmingham, Alabamdama ! Birmingham - where over a dozen right-wing radio talk show hosts curse all forms of governmental bureaucracies twenty four hours a day except Sunday. Yes,- the great state of Alabama, - where we the people dare defend our rights.
And this is Birmingham , where 85% of the people and 75% of the people who work at the Birmingham Library, and 65% of the library “staff” are card carrying members of a Christian church.

I walked lightly. I was a man who knew the future. No hurry. Christmas is a time of peace and not a time of contestation, contestation will come Monday. I’m a nice guy but I will not have the library that I have loved since I was five being surreptitiously corrupted by weak and cowardly administrators who hide behind money-grubbing lawyers and jack-leg judges who bring shame to the concept of freedom of speech.

I am a peaceful man but Monday comes slow.