Airport officials understood that they confronted three alternatives: Christmas trees alone, a holiday display, or no display. What they may not have understood is that each alternative also represented a different vision of America: a Christian nation, a religious nation, or a secular nation.

Historically, many distinguished Americans have considered ours to be a Christian nation – one where Christmas trees are privileged and the symbols of all other faiths kept out. Even the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declared in 1892 that “we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth: . . .this is a Christian nation.”

Other famous Americans, however, have proclaimed the nation to be broadly religious rather than narrowly Christian. To them, a mix of Christmas trees, Chanukah menorahs, and other religious symbols would have been just fine. Abraham Lincoln, for example, famously described the United States as a “nation under God” – a term that embraces much beyond Christendom.

President Dwight David Eisenhower once argued that it makes no difference what religion one subscribes to. "Our form of government,” he declared, “has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."

Still other Americans have insisted that the nation is officially secular and without any religion whatsoever. Religious symbols, to their mind, belong only on private property. Public places like airports, they believe, should be free of holiday symbols altogether. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison might well have concurred. “While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe the religion which we believe to be of divine origin,” Madison wrote, “we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.” Jefferson refused to proclaim so much as a Thanksgiving Day lest he “indirectly assume to the United States an authority over religious exercises.”

These three visions of our country -- Christian America, Religious America, and Secular America – have battled for supremacy for over two centuries now, and as the events at Seattle- Tacoma Airport reveal, no resolution is in sight (even though the airport has now temporarily restored the Christmas trees to their former locations).

Perhaps, in the end, that is a good thing. For in a religiously pluralistic country like ours, where Christians are in the majority, the free exercise of all religions is guaranteed, and church and state are separated, we need all three visions. How to accommodate all three in one airport remains an unsolved riddle.