A satanic Christmas display is available for viewing in the state Capitol, not in the main rotunda but in a narrower hall behind it where the display commands the center of the room. The rotunda features an 18-foot balsam fir from the Happy Land Tree Farm in Sandstone, Minn., its homegrown origin boasted on behalf of what might be considered commerce, if not good will.

First the kids can see the big decorated Christmas tree and then, if you want, you can wander a little way back and see the red-and-gold phoenix of Lucifer and Beelzebub. It took somebody at least five minutes to throw this thing together. It’s mainly a paper bird, the phoenix, oddly enough of Christian heritage, and a mobile above it, not unlike in a child’s nursery, of small construction paper birds. They are either birds or the little hats worn by court jesters.

On the day I visited, with great pride as a Minnesotan, I was the only one present, the only one in the Capitol it seemed. I walked through the front door like I owned the place, which I do, in part, I suppose, but I had no say in granting Satan any due. I was trying to figure out the mobile when a woman appeared. She was eating a confection of sorts, which she must have acquired elsewhere.

“Are you a Satanist?” I asked for the first time, of anybody, anywhere.

“No,” she said. “I just wanted to see what it’s all about.”

“Me, too,” I said. “Do you think these are hats?”

I indicated the mobile.

“I think those are birds,” she said.

Where perhaps a star would be placed atop a Christmas tree there is a pentagram, a five-pointed star that either symbolizes protection from evil, or is the symbol of Baphomet, a major player in the church of Satan. I have no idea. We fancy many curious things in life, even flirting with the devil.

Spared are we of a goat’s head and a cauldron of some steamy elixir.

Had I, a part owner of the building, after all, been asked by the Satanists for permission to have a display, I would have suggested “why not across the street next to the unneeded new State Office Building?” Ah, but it’s a First Amendment issue. Perhaps so, but the timing is unfortunate. This country’s moral and ethical standards have all but disappeared. Significant percentages of young people polled think it’s justifiable to murder a heath care insurance executive in cold blood.

We have vehicles of an unknown creation flying ’round the country. Yes, drones, drones, drones, drones. I can buy a drone in a hardware store. I can’t buy whatever commercial airline pilots are attempting to explain in their cockpit chatter back to the tower.

There is clearly no leadership from the White House on the mystery flights nor is there any credibility in whatever thin gruel they offer about anything. Nothing to see here, move along. A non-elected guy, Elon Musk, is telling the elected guy, Donald Trump, how to button his shirt and what tie to wear. The polio vaccine, which saved millions of people, is held in suspicion by Robert Kennedy Jr., who needs a job and probably found the right crew to hire him.

Shootings, theft, car jackings, drug addiction, fraud, corruption.

Satanists, your timing suggests greediness. You’re on display every day anyway.

Merry Christmas.

God is embarrassed by the lot of us.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic’’ podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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