Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and the Acres of Love Alpaca farm, are taking a stand. Neither will participate in Tulsa’s holiday parade this year after officials changed its name from the Christmas Parade of Lights to the Holiday Parade of Lights.
“This is a bigger picture,” Inhofe said this morning on Fox and Friends. “You look around the country and see the atheist billboards and school boards saying you can’t have a nativity scene but you can have a Muslim star… I would expect that in other places, but not here in Tulsa.”
Inhofe said that he hadn’t missed riding in the parade for 30 years, and this year mounted up for the nearby Broken Arrow Christmas Parade so he could be in a “real” Christmas event.
“Christmas meant the birth of Jesus Christ,” he said. “That's what I'm celebrating. That's what my 20 kids and grand kids are celebrating.”
(The Five Most Pivotal Debates in the ‘War on Christmas’ During the Past Decade)
While a number of people and organizations are publically upset about this so-called act of “war on Christmas,” Inhofe’s refusal to ride a horse in the parade has become national news. Inhofe, who served as the mayor of Tulsa from 1978 to 1984, had been an annual participant in the parade until last year, when city officials changed the name to be more inclusive to religions other than Christianity.
Larry Fox, the chair of the Tulsa parade also spoke on Fox and Friends, and said they changed the name to better represent the diversity of the city.
“It was to be more reflective of what we actually were,” Fox said. “In fact, if you looked at our rules, to apply to be in the parade, all it required was that your entry have a holiday theme not a Christmas theme. So, you know, it was a Christmas parade in name but in practice, it was a number of things, you know, including Christmas.”
Fox said he thought people were making too much of the name, and choosing to not participate in a parade just because it is no longer named after Christmas was “silly.”
Fox also told the Tulsa World that "if Sen. Inhofe is saying he won't ride again unless or until we change the name, then he may have ridden in his last parade."
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