As we sat in church yesterday, I thought about our trip to Munich and Berlin last month and how glad I was that those cities were not in the United States. Let me explain.
For years our church had a huge Christmas tree in the front of the church. (It is, after all, a German Lutheran congregation.) After Christmas, the church would cut off the branches and use the trunk for the cross on Good Friday.
But a couple of years ago, our village passed an amendment to its building code (or fire code, I am not sure which) that prohibited “real” Christmas trees in public buildings. The worry was about fires. After all, I am sure you remember reading about dozens and dozens of deaths and injuries every year because of real Christmas trees catching on fire in public buildings. Oh wait, you probably don’t remember that. Because there weren’t those stories. Because they didn’t happen.*
In any case, as I looked at our church’s artificial Christmas tree, I thought about our time in Munich. When we were taking our “grand tour” of Europe in 1994, we had to bypass Munich, which was unfortunate because our son had wanted to see the stadium from the 1972 Olympics. So we went out to Olympiapark in Munich this year. There was lots of snow on the ground, but I hoped we would at least be able to go up the Olympia Tower. We could see Munich from there, and we would be able to see the Olympic Stadium. But when we got there, the Stadium itself was open! It was incredible. There was snow all over. The aisles were covered with snow. But the Stadium was open, and you could walk in and see it. You had to be a little careful, but it was no big deal.
Except that it would have been a big deal in the United States. There is no way that a stadium would have been open in those conditions in the United States. The fear of personal injury lawsuits would have closed everything up tight. Nobody would have been able to get it to see it. Our lawyers and our society’s view that everything is somebody else’s fault would have made sure of that. But, as I said, fortunately, we were not in the United States.
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* Obviously, if this rule had been in effect in 1965, Charlie Brown wouldn’t have been able to get a real Christmas tree for his school play. It would have been against the law.
Walking around the Olympic Stadium wasn't any worse than walking on the sidewalks in Berlin.
Posted by: Jennie | January 04, 2011 at 11:52 AM