A bizarre holiday display of a skeleton dressed as Santa Claus and hanging on a cross outside a Virginia courthouse has caused controversy.

Decorating at the Leesburg, VA, courthouse grounds was delayed until the owners of the Santa crucifix removed it from the property.

The skeleton was in a heap on the court house lawn along with a letter addressed to Christians, and signed “Jesus.” Many believe the display belongs to an atheist.

“I think it was horrible to have that on the courthouse lawn, and I’m glad it’s gone,” said a Leesburg resident.

To avoid the ongoing clash between Christians and atheists, County Supervisor Stevens Miller pushed a bill to ban all displays entirely for the rest of the season.

“Our children are going to be going shopping with their parents, [they] have a right to walk down the street and not be accosted by threatening, violent, nightmarish imagery like a skeleton of Santa on a crucifix,” Miller said.

The measure was rejected, leaving the conflict unresolved.

In spite of Miller’s effort there will be more displays, as Leesburg is decked out in preparation for Saturday’s big holiday parade. A nativity scene will be set up on the courthouse lawn for the parade, as will a display by atheists.

The Christmas sprit is alive in downtown Athens, Texas. Reindeer pull Santa, carolers stand on the corner, and a Christmas tree stands tall.

But on one corner, a nativity scene — and it’s stirring controversy. The Freedom from Religion Foundation wants it out.

“A group from Wisconsin notified us and said we were in violation in federal law with our nativity scene and they wanted us to remove it.”

The Keep Athens Beautiful Committee has been putting up the nativity scene since 2002, and County Judge Richard Sanders says it’s not violating any law.

“Because we have all the other decorations, it’s legal,” he said.”Our county attorney has looked into it.”

But the Freedom from Religion Foundation says the nativity scene shows favoritism. They tell CBS 19 they want it removed, or they want their own sign added.

It would read, “At this season of the winters solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

“Don’t come down here and tell me there is no god,” Henderson County Commissioner Joe Hall said.

Hall says he’ll fight to keep the nativity intact.

“This nation is a Christian nation regardless of what those fruit loops and fruitcakes in Washington D.C. say,” Hall said. “Hell will freeze over before I vote to have it removed.”

And, his passion is echoed by people who live in Athens who are gathering signatures for a petition to keep the manger scene.

“We love our display and we love our Lord,” Tracy Lyda said as she held her clipboard full of signatures.

“Christianity is a majority and it is time to stand up and speak up,” First Baptist Church of Malakoff Pastor Nathan Lorick said.

Lorick is organizing a rally at noon on December 17th at the Henderson County Courthouse to show unity among believers.

“I hope this is a platform all across the nation that says, let’s take America back,” he said.

A movement born from this small display in this small East Texas town.

The Henderson County judge says that Keep Athens beautiful is in charge of all decorations because the county made a resolution that put them in charge back in 2002. They decorate the courthouse throughout the year.

Judge Sanders says if another group wants to add decorations to the display, like that sign the group wants added, he said they can go through the commissioners court.

A traditional Christmas carol is at the center of a controversy at an elementary school in Michigan. The music teacher decided to change the lyrics to “Deck The Halls” because one particular word had the students giggling.

The music teacher at Cherry Knoll Elementary School removed the the word gay: changing the verse to “Don we now our bright apparel” rather than “gay apparel.”

“There were some students that had been snickering at the lyrics to deck the halls, she had been attempted to get them back on track quite a few times, and just decided to make a change in the wording,” said principal Chris Parker.

Parker says when he found out the lyric had been change, he immediately talked with the teacher. “I had not heard of the subtitution of the word bright before in that song it sort of caught me by surprise,” said Parker.

Parker wishes the teacher would have used the situation as a teachable moment — the word gay in the carol means happy or joyful.

“We have an anti-bullying and discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation, so going forward the teacher will be addressing, this is how we’re supposed to be reacting, this is a way to be respectful about this.”

Many parents thought the teacher’s decision to change the lyrics was completely inappropriate. Some said they were now taking time to explain to their children that gay is not a bad word.

“There was a different way to handle that, and a different decision that could have been made,” said Parker, who had the teacher go back to using the original lyrics.

At Hopkins Elementary, students recently dressed up as Christmas trees as part of the Judson Independent School District school’s annual holiday musical. Several held up signs spelling out “Merry Christmas.”

This week at North East ISD’s Huebner Elementary, fourth-grade students gave presentations about their family’s holiday traditions. A row of children’s books about Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa lined a nearby shelf.

And in many other schools in San Antonio, Santa Claus has been spotted roaming hallways adorned with Christmas trees, wreaths, festive garlands draped near images of snowmen and reindeer, all the while greeting kids and sometimes distributing gifts.

But exactly how public school children celebrate Christmas has become a matter of public debate. Two recent incidents in which school officials in Beaumont and Fort Worth tried to set guidelines on how Christmas could be celebrated — or not — made national headlines.

And a political ad by Gov. Rick Perry claiming kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas in school also fanned the political firestorm.

But in San Antonio, the spirit of Christmas seems to mostly be alive and well.

Even though state law prohibits public schools from using the holiday to promote any one religion, most local school districts have no ban on Christmas-related events and say that students are allowed to openly celebrate Christmas in school, according to an informal San Antonio Express-News survey.

“We let the kids sing Christmas carols as they were written at our events,” Harlandale ISD Superintendent Robert Jaklich said. “It’s more of a cultural celebration and we don’t intend to impose any kind of religion.”

Still, because Texas law doesn’t provide strict, detailed guidelines on the issue, school districts acknowledge Christmas differently — even, for example, in how they use the word “Christmas.”

East Central ISD calls the time off around the holidays “Christmas break.” But at Northside ISD, the city’s largest, it’s called “winter break.”

As a whole, larger districts in Texas with more diverse populations tend to go as secular as possible when describing the time off around Christmas or events touching on Christmas.

Rural or smaller districts with a more religiously homogenous student population, such as the Catholic or Christian strongholds in South San Antonio, more openly celebrate Christmas.

By law, public school officials are barred from advancing a religion, making children pray, or celebrate solely the Christian aspects of Christmas, according to the Texas Education Agency.

But there’s no federal or state law that prohibits a student from praying or celebrating Christmas in school by distributing gifts at school outside of class time, as those actions are protected under the First Amendment.

Christmas actually can be discussed in class as long as it’s for academic purposes, said TEA spokeswoman Suzanne Marchman.

“We discourage anything done where the instructional period be interrupted, but each district is left to resolve how it handles Christmas,” Marchman said.

Last week in the Beaumont area, students singing “Joy to the World” replaced “the Lord has come” with “my shopping’s done.” They sang “the first snow ball” instead of “The First Noel” at an elementary school’s annual Christmas pageant to avoid using religious references, the Beaumont Enterprise reported.

And earlier this month in the Fort Worth ISD, the school district’s attorney told staff that students should not be allowed to exchange gifts or “distribute personal holiday messages” during class. Santa Claus was also banned.

The next day, after a media firestorm, the district issued a statement with the headline “Fort Worth ISD Loves Santa Claus,” clarifying that these activities could be done before or after school or during lunch — but not during class.

While some saw Perry’s ad as an inflammatory overstatement, others point to those examples as evidence that there may very well be a so-called “War on Christmas.”

One Texas-based organization, The Liberty Institute, has launched a website called StopScrooge.com where people can submit complaints about Christmas-related prohibitions in schools.

Most districts do ban decorations using religious imagery such as a Nativity depicting the birth of Jesus Christ or the Star of David, said Tim Carroll, Allen ISD spokesman and president of the Texas School Public Relations Association.

However, Christmas trees and Santa Claus are seen more as iconic figures and not religious, Carroll said.

Edgewood ISD spokesman Maclovio Perez said districts walk a tightrope with concern that they could get sued for either being too lenient or too strict on guidelines regarding Christmas.

In one of Texas’ best-known examples, the “Candy Cane Case,” the issue has dragged on in the courts for more than eight years.

After administrators at an elementary school in Plano stopped an 8-year-old boy in 2003 from distributing candy cane pens with religious messages on them, several parents sued the district on free speech grounds.

Usually, controversy over how a school or district handles Christmas doesn’t arise until a parent or community member publicly voices concern, which then can lead to a change in policy, said Sylvester Vasquez, a Southwest ISD trustee and immediate past president of the Texas Association of School Boards.

“I don’t recall having that problem locally, or really too often around the state,” Vasquez said, noting his school board prays before meetings. “I think it depends on the culture of the area.”

In the Bible, shepherds and wise men paid homage to the newborn baby Jesus. In Venezuela, it seems Hugo Chavez turned up in the manger, too.

A Nativity scene in Caracas showing the socialist president standing before the traditional crib-in-a-manger has stirred up a pre-Christmas controversy in the politically polarized country.

“It has nothing to do with the real Nativity, with religion. I don’t like it,” said passerby Arnaldo Amundaray, tutting as he took a close look at the model.

For Chavez supporters and the Nativity’s creators, it is a legitimate and innocent tribute to their man.

“The intention is to show off all the revolution’s achievements because the media silence the good things President Chavez has done,” said Maria Alejandra Mijares, a Women’s Ministry employee who helped make the Nativity.

The lovingly constructed model, which stands in a concourse of residential and business towers in central Caracas, has the traditional Christian scene at its heart. But it also politicizes the Nativity by paying tribute to some of Chavez’s most popular policies during his 13-year rule.

To symbolize his infrastructure achievements there is a miniature cable car reaching up to a replica shantytown. The flagship social projects of the Chavez government, including his Barrio Adentro (Inside the Slum) clinics, also are painstakingly represented.

In the middle — in front of and below Jesus’s crib — stands Chavez next to a model of his hero, South America’s 18th century independence fighter Simon Bolivar.