It’s that time of the year again — the time when the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) is besieged with communications from family members of deceased veterans deeply worried that their loved ones’ graves will be most unwelcomely decorated for Christmas.
Yes, December 17 is the third Saturday in December, the day designated by a Senate resolution introduced by Maine’s senators each year as “National Wreaths Across America Day” — the day that the Maine “non-profit” Wreaths Across America indiscriminately carpet bombs the graves in veterans cemeteries across the country with Christmas wreaths, whether the families of the veterans interred in those cemeteries want an unquestionably Christian symbol on their loved one’s grave or not.
Despite their claims that Wreaths Across America’s wreath-laying volunteers are instructed to not place wreaths on graves marked with the Jewish Star of David or the symbols of other non-christian religions, every year MRFF receives a slew of photos, like those at the end of this post from last year’s wreath-bombing, showing Wreaths Across America’s Christmas wreaths on the graves of numerous Jewish, Muslim, and atheist veterans.
Wreaths Across America was created in 2007 by Morrill Worcester, the owner of the Worcester Wreath Co. Morrill Worcester’s wife, Karen Worcester, is the executive director of Wreaths Across America. In other words, the Worcester’s for-profit Christmas wreath company created a non-profit organization with a need for millions of Christmas wreaths every year, and then their non-profit gave the contract for these millions of Christmas wreaths to none other than their own for-profit business.
How much money are we talking about here? Well, according to their latest available tax return, the Worcester’s non-profit Wreaths Across America took in nearly $25 million in donations in 2019 and then paid nearly $17 million of that to their for-profit wreath company to supply the wreaths.
The Worcesters have faced much criticism over the years for the profitably incestuous relationship between their non-profit organization and their for-profit Christmas wreath company. In 2015, The Wall Street Journal came out with an article titled “Wreaths Across America Has Family Ties to Its Supplier,” and in 2018, an article from Nonprofit Quarterly magazine titled “Wreaths Across America: Is a Nonprofit Built on Conflict of Interest Still a Nonprofit?” revealed more details, such as that when the Worcester Wreath Co. lost its long-time contract with L.L. Bean, which had provided 90% of its business for decades, the Worcester’s non-profit Wreaths Across America suddenly expanded, and as of 2018 was providing between 75 and 80 percent of the Worcester Wreath Co.’s revenue.
More locally, also in 2018, The Portland Press Herald reported in an article titled “As Wreaths Across America has grown, so has scrutiny about its practices that “In five years the company has nearly tripled its business from the nonprofit.” The article also noted that “CharityWatch listed Wreaths Across America among three ‘outrageous’ examples of nonprofits operating with clear conflicts of interest.”
In 2016, apparently for show, Wreath Across America instituted a bidding process to quell all the criticism it was getting after a 2015 Money Talks News article titled “Should You Donate to Wreaths Across America? A Lesson in Charitable Giving” was widely distributed by outlets such as Yahoo! News, but the Worcester Wreath Co. provided the only bid in this bidding process, and now has its role as the sole wreath supplier for Wreaths Across America locked in until 2023.
Not surprisingly, Wreaths Across America gets a failing grade from Charity Navigator on its finances and accountability. (MRFF, by the way, enjoys a 100% “Give with Confidence” rating.)
But while all of this information about the incestuous money-making relationship between Wreaths Across America and the Worcester Wreath Co. certainly deserves much scrutiny, it is not the primary concern that MRFF or its clients have with Wreaths Across America.
As I wrote last year in a post titled “Wreaths Across America: Forcing veterans who didn’t celebrate Xmas in life to celebrate it in death,” MRFF’s issue with this so-called “non-profit” is their indiscriminate placing of their Christmas wreaths on every grave in Arlington National Cemetery as well as thousands of other cemeteries in which our country’s veterans are buried, with no regard at all to the religion of the veteran buried at any given gravesite. For example, while having issued a statement in 2014 claiming that they don’t place their wreaths on graves marked with the Star of David, the image below from the 2017 wreath-blanketing at Arlington National Cemetery, from a video shown in a 2019 FOX5 news report on the group, clearly shows a Wreaths Across America volunteer placing a wreath on a grave clearly marked with the Star of David.
Besides the fact that a Christmas wreath is an undeniably Christian symbol, and for that reason alone should not be placed on a non-Christian’s grave, Wreaths Across America shows no regard for the reasons that Jews don’t place flowers on graves, which would also apply to wreaths. Likewise, Muslims do not place flowers or wreaths on graves. According to the website eCondolence, which provides religion-specific guidelines on visiting graves, for Muslims: “Flowers, wreaths or other memorabilia which would adorn the grave would be considered inappropriate.”
This defiling of their loved ones’ graves is deeply personal and distressing for the many family members who contact MRFF each year asking if anything can be done to stop Wreaths Across America’s congressionally-sanctioned and military-supported desecration, and MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein knows from personal experience just how these family members feel. In his case, it wasn’t a Christmas wreath but a Christian cross left on his Jewish veteran father’s grave at Easter. Weinstein has so far been able to keep his father’s grave wreath-free, but not without the significant time and effort it takes him each year in dealing with the VA cemetery in which his father rests to ensure that this one Jewish veteran’s grave isn’t defiled during the annual wreath-bombing:
“My dad was a veteran of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. He passed away 5 years ago and is buried in a VA cemetery not far from our home. Having had his grave already desecrated once before with a Christian cross for Easter, let me just say that NOTHING is more hideous, hurtful and humiliating than having your loved one's final resting place denigrated with a gang sign of a faith that was never that of the deceased during his or her lifetime!
“Every year now, I have to go well out of my way, as our family’s representative, to advocate numerous times on the phone with the cognizant VA cemetery personnel at my father’s cemetery to ENSURE that they understand why we want NO Wreaths Across America proselytizing object strewn on our Jewish patriarch’s grave. Every successive year it’s like the freaking movie ‘Groundhog Day”. I have to totally start over with fresh VA cemetery faces who do not seem to recall the prior year’s plea from me and my family to spare my dad the wretched shame of a Christmas wreath diminishing, disparaging, and denigrating his final resting place.
“WHY MUST WE, AND SO MANY OTHER AMERICAN FAMILIES SIMILARLY SITUATED, HAVE TO ENDURE THIS YEARLY, HORRIFIC CHRISTMAS DOMINATION AND SUPREMACY RITUAL?”
The following are some of the many photos received by MRFF after last year’s “National Grave Desecration Day,” and I’m sure we’ll be receiving the usual flood of similar photos of Jewish and other clearly non-Christian graves reprehensibly “Christianized” this year.
