Ronnie Polaneczky: At Comcast Center's dazzling show, where's the 'J word'?

ROB LEHMANN isn't a religious man. He hasn't attended church since his childhood in the South, where he was raised Methodist. In fact, he says, organized religion "gives me the willies."

But, lordy, does it irk him that not one traditional Christmas carol is included in the fabulous new multimedia holiday show playing daily in the lobby of the Comcast Center.

"I'll Be Home for Christmas"?

Check.

"Sleigh Ride"?

Check.

"The Twelve Days of Christmas"?

Twelve checks.

But no "Silent Night," or "Joy to the World" or "O Come All Ye Faithful." Not one tune to indicate that this time of year would be no different from February if not for the birthday celebration of a certain deity born in a manger to a virgin mother and her carpenter husband.

"It's political correctness run amok," says Lehmann, a Fitler Square resident and adjunct design professor at Moore College of Art and Philadelphia University. "It's not like this is a public building where you have to worry about separation of church and state.

"It saddens me that we're so chicken s--- about offending people that we don't say the 'J word' " - that would be "Jesus" - "or 'Merry Christmas' anymore, lest we make someone mad."

Lehmann was so worked up when he called the Daily News to vent, I dropped by the Comcast Center yesterday to experience the object of his ire.

If you've not seen the show, which opened last week, you're missing a dazzling addition to Center City's holiday distractions. Those distractions include the charmingly reworked light show at Macy's and a nifty new Christmas Village of shops and food kiosks, modeled after Germany's Christmas markets, installed on the apron of City Hall.

That's a heap o' yuletide fun in one area.

The Comcast extravaganza is a video presentation, displayed on a huge, 10-million pixel LED screen that allows for holographic images so real, it truly appears that men and women are dancing across the wall and birds fluttering to the ceiling.

Each breathtaking "scene" in the 15-minute video is set to a different holiday tune.

I was mesmerized by a montage of ice skaters twirling to "Christmastime" and the dizzying sleigh ride, set to - duh - "Sleigh Ride." The closing scene of blessedly ordinary-looking children (with extraordinary voices) singing "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year"would make Scrooge go gooey.

Still, I understood what Lehmann was getting at: Would it have hurt to include a few bars of "Away in a Manger," a nod to the holiday's sacredness?

"I wish they'd included something to herald the season, beyond the P.C. music," said Fran Harkness, of Wayne.

She prefers the low-tech charm of Macy's light show. Except that Macy's show avoids religious music, for the most part, focusing on secular tunes like "Frosty the Snowman."

"I'd like to hear 'Silent Night,' " said Diana Drayton, of Mount Airy, whom I met at Macy's, where she'd just just caught the noontime show. "Maybe it would offend someone to hear it, but it's Christmas! How can you not hear these songs at Christmas?"

The more people I spoke with, at both locations, the more it seemed silly to exclude traditional carols in these shows.

Until, that is, I chatted with Ann and Michael Muderick, of Havertown, back at the Comcast Center.

They were bedazzled by the show - Michael called it "a work of art" - and grateful for its secular nature.

"We don't observe Christmas, so I appreciated that there were no religious references," said Michael. "They managed to capture the holiday spirit in a very inclusive and unusual way."

Which was the whole point, said Jeanne Leonard, spokeswoman for Liberty Property Trust, which owns the Comcast building and, with Comcast, designed the show.

"The songs were chosen to be inclusive of all Philadelphians."

And that makes Barry Morrison smile.

"We respect Comcast for trying to find a way to be in the spirit of the holiday without appearing in any way to make anyone feel unwelcome or excluded," said Morrison, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.

It can get so touchy, can't it? All anyone wants, really, is to feel part of the spirit that envelops us this time of year.

Charles Dickens describes it so beautifully in A Christmas Carol as " . . . a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time . . . when men and women seem by consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

So maybe people like Rob Lehmann and others can attend the Comcast show with open hearts - then head to Macy's for its live music, performed between light shows. This time of year, longtime organist Peter Richard Conte sometimes raises the roof with "O Holy Night," "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and other carols that stir the soul.

"I play whatever I want," says Conte, who has just released, with Philadelphia Brass, a CD called "Christmas in the Grand Tradition," a stocking-stuffer steal at $10. "The music is gorgeous." *

E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/polaneczky. Read Ronnie's blog at http://go.philly.com/ ronnieblog.